LSF 9.0 Install

The issue with this (doing the install on your own) will be that the first time you call GSC with a problem, they will ask if you had Lawson install it. If you answer no, they are going to say, "Sorry, Charlie".

We just went through an LBI9.0 install ... long story short, the install was done remotely while a couple of us watched and participated. (Because of the limited consulting services and our time schedule).

I would say the consultant and we were done in about 4 long days. Hard to guage accurately, as his time was limited to after hours, and over lunch that he could help us. All in all, we are very happy with having the install done this way, however. You are going to want to watch and suggest titles, database issues, naming conventions used by your site, etc.

Make sure you can get a hold of the database install scripts ahead of time, so that your DBA's can go over them, and make sure that they have everything the way that your company likes things.

I'd say the most important part to really pay attention to is the post install config that you'll need to go through.... We actually had to go through it SEVERAL times with twice being with the install consultant. I've gone through it again myself several times since then adding little tweaks, options, optional to the config settings, etc.

I'd type more, but ran out of time for now.
-Greg Moeller

Greg,

Was the four long days just LBI or did that include the LSF part too? I would like to get LSF and LBI done at the same time. Would you recommend the consultant that did yours? If so, can you get me his name?

Your advice is GREATLY appreciated!

Mike Couto-Erickson

Mike (and others):

The four days did NOT include anything to do with LSF. Strickly LBI.

Also, a couple weeks prior to the install of LBI, we installed LRS with an on-site consultant. Beings we didn't have anything in LRS (and the consultant said that it was much easier to do a fresh install than an upgrade... a lot less time consuming), we just trashed our LRS install and started over with clean servers for LBI.

You will probably want some work done before the consultant gets there if doing a fresh install. Have IIS installed, Have IIS Service Packed, have access to JDK 1.4.2_10 (consultant says that this is the ONLY JDK he has been able to get LBI to work with even though doc says JDK 1.4.2_x or higher). Have SQL Server installed, with MS-OLAP, have an Oracle client installed (if going to use Oracle database) or some client with permission to connect to your specific Lawson database. All of this will save the consultant time and you money! Have all of the LBI installation binaries (latest version) - (and documentation) downloaded, etc.

Yes, our consultant really knows his stuff, (LRS & LBI) and gladly (although really not supposed to) shares his knowledge with you. We are having some config issues yet, and he knows about them via an email that I sent him last week... but I have yet to hear back from him. Take that however you'd like.

Oh, also..... if you are security conscious as we are here, having a chroot-ed ftp will NOT work with Reporting Services. There are config options for opening this up based on your ftp server choice.

Greg,

All of this is EXCELLENT knowledge and will help compute costs while I work on getting approval for a consultant to come out! We'll be running it on W2003, ADAM, and Oracle 10G. What are you running it on and was the Lawson consultant very knowledgeable on WebSphere and ADAM or did you have to take care of that part in house?

We are running on Oracle 9i, wth Apache Tomcat, so the framework is different... but I'm guessing that the functionality is very much the same.. probably more differences in the config, but I'm sure that you will be amazed at what the install really doesn't come pre-configed with... I know I was. Then the consultant explained a little. Lawson BOUGHT Reporting Services from one company, Smart Notification from another, ScoreCard from another, IM module from another.... and made them all work together. No wonder the task is so difficult getting them all to mesh well. Once up and stable and working, though, I think you'll be happy with the end result.

You will also need an instance of IIS for ScoreCard to run on, as I believe that is the only web server that that particular component supports. Not real sure though.

Hi Charlie
Do you still have any issues? Its gradually turning into childs play for me though. Post your questions if you have any issues & I'll do my best to help you.

Regards
Ganesh .R

As mentioned on this thread already, Lawson will only support a system that was installed by a Lawson certified installer. To answer your question about timing. Actually installing LSF9 takes about a week. Implementing LS Security takes 3 - 6 months. For a fresh install, the time will be less, for a large install, it could be more. LBI also requires about 1 week for installation.

Hi Jeff
I agree with you that it takes about a week to get LSF installed on a brand new box. This is because, we need to get the DB ready, third parties like, perl, java, netexpress/server express configured, bouncy castle, WAS etc.
Since I haven't done before, why would it take about 3-6 months to get the security implemented? Could you pls explain the steps that we may need to undergo.

Thanks
Ganesh .R

We just finished a LSF9.0 install about a month and a half ago now... There were some very strange problems that we encountered... Wanting LSF9 to run on a newly upgraded Solaris box (to v10), I believe it took the consultant a half a day to get one of the components, Tivoli, or something like that installed as it kept coming up with the version of Solaris not being supported and that you had to be on Solaris 7 or higher to be compatible. Turns out, it was getting information on the version from the OS and only taking the "1" into account. Not the complete "10" like it should have. Just one example.

We are on LSF 9.0.0.2 on HP-UX using ADAM.

It took us about a week for the install itself, and we have been tweaking things here and there since the initial install. From planning to production implementation, it took us about a year - however, 90% of that was planning.

Our actual deployment to production took about 2 months once we had the tech part down to a science. That 2 month period includes 6 weeks of testing by our payroll department. The actual cut-over to production took about 14 hours, and that included about 4 hours of our developers / key users making sure everything looked good.

Doing a test platform before we migrate over to LSF9.0.0.3

WS2003 Standard running Virtual Server 2005 R2, I split the workstation into 5 virtual servers on my test server.

1) Domain controller (WS2003)
2) Lawson Web Server (WS2003/IIS)
3) Lawson App Server (WS2003/WAS6.1.0.9) <--- run that jdk1.5 pak from IBM!
4) SQL Server (WS2003/SQL Server 2005)
5) LDAP Server (WS2003/ADAM)

So far, it's running pretty smooth beyond my imagination. Lawson doesn't support VM with LSF9 I was told. Took me 2 weeks set up LSF9 on the virtual network. Would be much less now since I already know how to do it. I really took my time to pause and document everything. I even kept a log for version/patch control.

Jimmy, nice job--glad you got it all running smoothly. Once you done it a few (or a hundred, perhaps!) times, you really can start to crank thru it, and it really can be done in just a few days.

Note that Lawson DOES support MS Virtual Server and VMWare for NON-PRODUCTION use.

I'm curious about the SQL VM you set up....did you set up full SQL 2005 Enterprise, Express, etc. ? and how much RAM did you allocate to that VM?

I have SQL 2005 Standard SP2 running on the SQL VM. Allocated 8GB of ram on it. It is kind of pushing the performance treashold with virtual server 2005 R2 because it only supports 1 processor per VM. It's not too bad though. The test box i have is dual Quad-Xeon w/32GB of ram. So even if the VM can use only 1 processor. The single Quad still put out some good performance for around 300 users. I am looking at VMWare ESX3 and downloaded the eval. It will be fun to do it over AGAIN in another box when it gets here next month.

Jimmy, that's a pretty impressive setup, and certainly an example how virtualization is a great way to utilize servers. I do agree about the CPU issue, that you'd want to have multiple physical/virtual CPUs available on the SQL Server. Luckily you were able to allocate that much RAM. I do have to say that one of my disappointments with SQL 2005 vs. 2000 is it's appetite for RAM...I can't for the life of me figure out why the RAM requirements are so high compared to SQL 2000...

Hi Ganesh or Others,
Can someone share Lawon's technical paper/guide regarding "Installing ADAM for 9.0 Lawson System Foundation" or any cheat sheet/pointers for Adam installation for Lawson 9.0