DB2: The Complete Reference

Chapter 3: Installing DB2 Products Across Your Enterprise

Product installation has become a lot easier over the years with the help of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and the emergence of user-centered design (UCD) groups that take knowledge about human factors and ease of use and translate that knowledge into installation interfaces. Why has there been such a focus on installation? Many reasons, really. Deployment of code across an enterprise, including maintenance of that code—which is delivered in DB2 through FixPaks—can be an expensive and time-consuming task. This adds to a software's inherent total cost of ownership (TCO).

Suppose a customer is running DB2 on over 185,000 DB2 clients with over 15,000 DB2 servers. Even if this customer reduced these numbers by a scale factor of 1000, a significant TCO would still be associated with the deployment and maintenance of the software. Therefore, it is useful for DB2 experts to understand the various methods and options available for deploying DB2.

Administrators will likely need to deploy hundreds, perhaps thousands, of clients and multiple servers. For example, the task of installing a DB2 client on sales reps' computers cannot be left up to the sales reps. They need to focus on their assignments, marketing mix, and delivery of the right products to the right place at the right time. The responsibility for providing a method of mass deployment lies with the software provider (IBM in the case of DB2) and the IT support staff.

For an installation program to fit into the enterprise, it must meet these two requirements:

• It has to be easy to use.
• It has to be flexible enough to allow for mass deployments.

However, another facet to code installation is sometimes overlooked but can involve just as much expense—configuration. If you were to install a DB2 client on an accountant's workstation, it wouldn't help her much if her DB2 client did not know how to connect or which databases to connect to. For example, she may be working with the PeopleSoft Financials package. If the workstation doesn't understand that this database is at a specific node (which contains the IP addressing information required to make the connection and a few other details that don't matter right now), having DB2 isn't going to help.

Just as the code deployment cannot be left up to lines of business, neither can the configuration of the system. This is also the responsibility of IT. What's more, this configuration information may change. If you were to configure database connections to every client in your enterprise and suddenly you had to add a new database (let's say you purchased the Human Resources package), you would have to add that connection to every workstation. If you were using a database that was not designed to be flexible and extendable like DB2, you would have a big headache on your hands!

This adds a couple more potential requirements to our installation software:

• It has to be able to configure performance and database connection information.
• It needs a facility for incremental updates.

This chapter takes you through the installation options that you can use to deploy DB2 software across your enterprise. Most of the examples in the deployment section of this chapter focus on the deployment of clients across your enterprise; however, you can extend most of the information in this chapter to the deployment of servers as well (unless otherwise noted).

Installation Methodologies

You can use one of four installation methodologies to distribute DB2 across your enterprise:

• Interactive installation
• Response file installation
• Citrix installation (also referred to as a Windows Terminal Server installation)
• Code server (Thin-client) installation

Note

A distributed version of DB2 refers to DB2 on the AIX, HP-UX, OS/2, Solaris, Linux, Sequent/PTX, and Windows environments. A mainframe version of DB2 often refers to DB2 for iSeries (formerly known as an AS/400 server). And a host version of DB2 refers to DB2 for zSeries (formerly known as the OS/390 servers). Only the distributed version of DB2 is covered in this chapter.

The Interactive Installation

You have surely had many experiences with the interactive installation. This installation type derives its name from the one-on-one interaction between the code and the individual charged with the responsibility of performing the installation. This installation interactively asks the user questions about the DB2 installation and configures the installation based on the user's responses.

You will likely perform this installation if you install the copy of DB2 that is available in the back of this book. You can take the CD-ROM provided, or mount that CD-ROM on a network drive for access by all users, and install DB2 with the help of the GUI-driven installation windows. Another option is to copy the installation code to a shared drive and perform the installation without reading directly from the CD-ROM device, thereby reducing any CD-ROM I/O performance issues. (This might be a good idea if you are planning to give access to the DB2 image to multiple people for their own personal use so that everyone does not tie up your workstation's CD-ROM device.)

The interactive installation is available on all DB2 platforms in one form or another and for all DB2 products. In the Windows environment, the installation program is called setup.exe and is set to auto-start each time you insert the CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive. In a UNIX and Linux environment, it is called db2setup (often referred to as the DB2 Installer), and in the OS/2 world, it is called install.exe.

In the UNIX and Linux environments, you can also use each operating system's native installation tools (for example, rpm in Linux and installp in AIX). When you use the native installation tools for your platform (referred to as a manual installation), you cannot take advantage of the intelligence built into the DB2 installation tools to auto-configure your system, set it up for inbound DB2 communications, etc.

Of course, you can write scripts that interact with your operating system's installation commands and distribute code that way, but again, you cannot leverage the intelligence of the DB2 installation tool. For this reason, manual installations are not covered in this book. If you are installing a DB2 product, we strongly recommend that you use the methods outlined in this book—it will save you many hours of work and you will end up at the same place!

There are advantages and disadvantages to an interactive installation. Although most people are familiar with menu-driven installation programs, each person performing the installation must be somewhat knowledgeable about the product. This means that if you are installing a DB2 server, you should understand what the DB2 Connect component is, and so on. This may not be a steep learning curve and online help is available to guide you through the installation; however, if your workers are focused accountants, they should be concentrating on credits and debits for the Account Receivables ledger, not worrying about the software that enables them.

Tip

The installation program comes with default selections and settings that are designed to run in a typical DB2 environment. If you are in a position where you must have inexperienced users install DB2 software using this method, they can simply accept the defaults and perform the installation.

The interactive installation is advantageous because the code is installed locally on each machine (yielding great performance), it is easily customizable for those “in-the-know,” and it can be performed by those without vast experience (see the previous tip). This installation type is familiar to most people who own their own personal computer, and the environment will be configured automatically.

However, interactive installation is prone to error when performed by inexperienced users. A user may have to face many decisions, such as setting up user accounts, selecting components, etc. If you give 1000 people the opportunity to install the exact same DB2 product and configuration across your enterprise, you are likely to end up with different outcomes.

If you have mounted the CD-ROM or created a code image on the server, performing the installation over a network can give rise to other considerations. Is the network connection suitable for mobile users? Is the LAN fast enough to accommodate local and remote users, or does it introduce a latency factor? Is the LAN robust enough?

Another disadvantage with an interactive installation is that the code is local to the machine where the installation takes place. Any maintenance must be completed on every machine. Each FixPak (released quarterly) must be applied (if needed) to each workstation. Also, if it was determined that a FixPak was not needed, the same cost to deploy the FixPak would be associated with rolling it back.

If your deployment strategy includes plans to ship a CD to various target users who are not local to the brick-and-mortar enterprise, you may need to send a CD shipment for each FixPak as well.

If your shop keeps up its maintenance (which is recommend), a high cost could be associated with an interactive installation.

In conclusion, the interactive installation deployment strategy is not suitable for mass deployments. This method could be suitable for three-tier solutions where only a few copies of the product exist and users have local or dedicated support staff for each system. (For example, a deployment may include thousands of DB2 clients but only five DB2 servers, so it may very well make sense to use an interactive installation to install the DB2 servers and another process to install the DB2 clients.)

When multiple installations of a DB2 product are required, however, an interactive installation is impractical. It is also not suitable to require your business units to install their own software. Finally, if users are remote or spread across the company, you have to ensure that costly support staff is available for installation and support at each location.

Table 3-1 summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of using an interactive installation....