Workplace Managed Client Provisioning Server Woes
Category Collaboration
It's been a week of multiple installs and troubleshooting, but I've had no luck getting the provisioning server operating. Over the last couple of years, IBM support has certainly improved, but on this issue they have been less than stellar. Having been at the other end of the support equation many times, I certainly recognize the issues and the nightmare it must be for IBM to provide support for a product like WCS and I am hesitant to blog about any experiences both good and bad. Of all of the support options that are available, email support works best for me. I think communicating technical issues works best in print, and with email support, I avoid playing phone tag, and I can revisit the problem and solution at a later date if desired. I have used this resource dozens of times with portal and LWP issues and in many cases, I receive a return email the same day with some additional instructions or configuration suggestions that are "spot on". In this support incident most of the subsequent communication has been via phone. I send emails, and the support technician calls me on the phone with a response. Unlike some other support organizations IBM support people are well spoken and typically responsive, but that does not mean that they are able to solve every problem. I realize that the product is quite new and that so far, I am dealing with first level support, but I knew that things were not going to go well when the first thing the technician told me when he called was “we haven’t had a chance to install the product yet.”
It's been a week of multiple installs and troubleshooting, but I've had no luck getting the provisioning server operating. Over the last couple of years, IBM support has certainly improved, but on this issue they have been less than stellar. Having been at the other end of the support equation many times, I certainly recognize the issues and the nightmare it must be for IBM to provide support for a product like WCS and I am hesitant to blog about any experiences both good and bad. Of all of the support options that are available, email support works best for me. I think communicating technical issues works best in print, and with email support, I avoid playing phone tag, and I can revisit the problem and solution at a later date if desired. I have used this resource dozens of times with portal and LWP issues and in many cases, I receive a return email the same day with some additional instructions or configuration suggestions that are "spot on". In this support incident most of the subsequent communication has been via phone. I send emails, and the support technician calls me on the phone with a response. Unlike some other support organizations IBM support people are well spoken and typically responsive, but that does not mean that they are able to solve every problem. I realize that the product is quite new and that so far, I am dealing with first level support, but I knew that things were not going to go well when the first thing the technician told me when he called was “we haven’t had a chance to install the product yet.”
To be specific, my problem has consistently occurred during the installation of the WMC provisioning server. I split the custom installation into two halves as recommended in the documentation and first installed the update bundles and installation files. Once these were successfully installed, I reran the program to install the Portal and WCS content. Each time I ran this portion, the installation program would hang 96% of the way through, and the installwizard log would show that the last attempted action was “InstallDbAppTemplateWin”. Varying the install program made no difference, and I spent the days while I waited for some additional information trying different scenarios and reinstalling various modules. Finally after 2 days, I got a call from the support technician who said “We tried the install and it worked for us”. I congratulated him on his success, and asked what I should try next. We completed a pretty thorough review of both installations and isolated the few differences between them. I had implemented Domino LDAP prior to the attempted installation of WMC so it was decided that I should reinstall WCS and attempt the installation of WMC before implementing LDAP security. Unfortunately, this didn’t work and the next and final suggestion for the week was that I download the installation package again. (My experience is that if the installation package has any corruption at all, the zip checksum algorithms will alert me to the problem). I downloaded the installation packages and tried running the installation again after extracting the installation files from the .exe version and then from the .tar versions, with exactly the same results. I then tried an installation on a second test server with again the same results. I’m sure that in the end there will be some configuration step that I have consistently forgotten, or a parameter that I misinterpreted. It’s important to note that while I may be having issues with support and the WMC install, the base WCS system is consistently installed without problems.
I’m glad I’m not installing this product for a customer at this point – waiting a week for any thing other than the most basic support would not inspire confidence. I’m sure that behind the scenes, the support wheels are churning and I will receive an answer shortly. I would also expect that a month from now support will have a ready answer for the problem. However, this indicates to me that there may be a serious lag in ramping up the support organization. I would have expected IBM to have trained a number of support technicians with early releases of the product and that at a minimum there would be at least a database of knowledge items already available. Hopefully, the escalation process is already working, and I will find out shortly that the second level support is better prepared.
Of course, one of the fastest and most consistently excellent support vehicles for Domino has always come in collaborative fashion from the business partner community. It seems to me that IBM would be well served to figure out how to identify and foster some the same environment and participation with the rest of the Workplace family product set.