In this hands-on lab course, students explore the basic and advanced operational aspects of an IBM WebSphere Portal version 6.0. The student will practice such tasks as installing and configuring WebSphere Portal, migration of data to a relational database, and utilization of a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) directory, creating a vertically clustered WebSphere Portal node, deploying resources (such as portlets, themes and skins) in a clustered environment, and troubleshooting a portal installation. This course focuses on the deployment and management of portal resources, such as portlets, pages, themes, and skins. Students will manage page hierarchies, configure resource permissions on portal resources, and configure virtual portals. In addition to the basic operational tasks, students explore portal topologies and installation scenarios.
Objectives :
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Topics :
Introducing WebSphere Portal
What are portals and why implement a portal?
WebSphere Portal as a portal
Basic infrastructure and components
Personalization vs. customization
Understanding portal terminology
Portlets
Themes and skins
Menus
Installing WebSphere Portal
Planning for an installation
Steps for successful installation
Verifying installation
Basic command-line commands
Troubleshooting installations
Post-installation migration to a DB2 (relational) database
Post-installation configuration of WebSphere Portal version 6 to access an LDAP user registry
Understanding the WebSphere Portal architecture
Overall conceptual architecture
Administration architecture
Data configuration split
Key standards
Port assignments
Impact of LDAP and security
Cluster definitions and scalability basics
Navigating WebSphere Portal
Nodes: pages, labels and URLs
Site structure
Administration pages
Breadcrumb trail
Palettes
Context menus
Drag and drop
Managing portal page hierarchy
Create new pages in the page hierarchy
Configure page properties
Portlet installation and configuration
Configuring access control
Authentication vs. authorization
Authorization (access control)
Role types, resources and roles
Role inheritance
Role blocking
Traversal permissions
Shared vs. private resources
Implementing attribute based administration
Visibility rules
Resource policies
Personalization and attribute based administration
Implementing composite applications
Business components
Application templates
Package and deploy
Security considerations
Re-branding a WebSphere Portal installation
What does it mean to brand the portal?
Define themes and skins
Work with theme policies
Deploy and manage themes
Theme performance
Implementing virtual portals
What are virtual portals?
Use cases for virtual portals vs. multiple true portals
Planning
Scoped resources
Non-scoped resources
Creation via scripts
Administering virtual portals
Realm support
Identifying WebSphere Portal architecture and high availability topologies
Vertical and Horizontal Portal Clusters
Replicating Databases
Replicating LDAP Servers
Example Topologies
Defining WebSpnhere Portal installation scenarios from standalone servers to clustered environments
Installing WebSphere Portal with an existing instance of WebSphere Application Server
Installing coexisting WebSphere Portal products on the same machine
Advanced installation options
Verifying Installation
Troubleshooting Installation Problems
Creating a portal cluster and implement vertical and horizontal scaling
Network Deployment concepts
Cluster concepts
Vertical clusters
Horizontal clusters
Steps for creating a portal cluster
Cluster topology
Session persistence and caching
Dynamic caching
Deploying portlets, skins, and themes to a cluster using various administrative tools
Portlet deployment
Node synchronization
Review of themes and skins
Using administrative scripting tools
Creating themes and skins
Installing skins and themes in a cluster
Moving portal content from staging to production environments
Portal staging process
Build a release process
Full or solution release
Incremental/differential release
XML configuration interface tool (xmlaccess)
Building a differential release
Using the ReleaseBuilder tool
Troubleshooting problems in a clustered environment
Problem determination overview of components
Categories of problems
WebSphere and Portal logs
How to enable tracing in WebSphere and Portal
Using the IBM Support Assistant
Using the Tivoli Performance Viewer
Performing database backups and other production procedures in a clustered environment
Backup configuration and restore configuration procedures
Database and LDAP directory backup/restore procedures
How to switch the Portal database to another server
How to switch the LDAP user registry to another server
How to apply Portal and WebSphere updates and fixes in a clustered environment
Overview of Config split
Steps to configure Config split for a clustered environment
How to implement a database configuration split
Enabling support for multiple LDAP servers and multiple realms
Configuring multiple LDAP directories
Audience :
The target audience for this course is Independent Software Vendors, Systems Integrators, and IBM technical staff. Architects and developers responsible for implementing solutions using WebSphere Portal version 5 will benefit as well.
Prerequisites :
The prerequisites for this course include
Intermediate administration skills using WebSphere Application Server version 6.0, acquired through experience and/or completion of IBM WebSphere Application Server V6 Administration(SW246 or WF381)
Basic knowledge of portals and WebSphere Portal, acquired by completing IBM WebSphere Portal Version 6.0 Fundamentals (WP010)
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