Yup. Believe it or not, yesterday was the first time I installed Lotus Connections 3.0. While I had the beta 1 and beta 2 code I never had the time to sit down and install it in my own image. In between my job role change, the new baby, planning two product launches and Lotusphere, it's been a crazy second half.
Things seem to be settling down and I'm getting used to my new workload. I did the install as I'm helping prepare a new super awesome demo environment with Quickr, Cognos, Sharepoint, Sametime, and Connections all integrated together ( I will soon release more details on it once it's ready).
I was pleasantly surprised with all the improvements that have been done in the installer of this new version. The install took about 6 hours to get everything up and running. A couple of notes:
- I did this on a VMWare so in real hardware this time would definitely be less.
- I also did this sequentially. If you did it all in parallel it would be ~3 hours.
- Most of the time was spent just watching progress bars since the installation has been streamlined where I just click Next, Next, Next, Next, and so on.
Here's what I installed (and how long each step took me):
- WebSphere 7 + fixpacks (~1.25 hrs)
- TDI v7 + fixpacks (~30 mins)
- DB 9.7 (~30 mins)
- IBM HTTP Server v7 + fixpacks (~15 mins)
- Lotus Connections v3.0 (~1.5 hrs)
- Post-installation steps (~1.5 hrs)
To help me along, I followed the step-by-step instructions with screenshots provided in the wiki here. Those instructions were definitely key in helping me move along so fast. One of the things that I always like in documentation is screenshots and that document definitely fits the bill. I'm assuming that anyone who's doing a Show-N-Tell session at Lotusphere 2011 on how to install Connections will be able to just rip off the screenshots from there!
Anyway, congrats to the development team and the documentation for all the improvements that have been made in this area.