Sametime Advanced 8.0.1 on Windows 64bit

IBM has so nicely provided us with a single package installer for the prerequisite apps required for Sametime Advanced.  This list is not short, and the installers, scripts, etc tally up to a 1.7 Gb download.  This does not even include WAS or ST:Adv it’s self.  Installing these days on a 32bit system seems to be far and few between.  I wanted to capture my recent experiences in Windows 2003 64bit and Windows 2008.

Windows 2008 is not supported according to the documentation.  If you want to install on Windows 2008, there are numerous workarounds required.  I would suggest at that point, not using the prereq bundled installer and plan to install the components separately.  You will likely want to reach out to techline or IBMSERV to have them validate the versions of MQ, Event Broker, DB2, etc before you begin.  I was able to confirm with IBM Support that you should be able to use DB2 9.5.1 which ships with Sametime Standard 8.5.1 and use that with some helpful scripts they were able to provide.

When installing on Windows 2003, the most notable issue I encountered was the prerequisite install failed when installing the fix pack in the bundle for WebSphere MQ 6.0.  This is the update to take it to 6.0.2.2, where the fix for this particular issue was targeted to be corrected.  You will encounter an issue similar to the one outlined in http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=171&uid=swg1IC52411.  The error will read:

"Ensure the prerequisite 'Microsoft Visual C++ 2005
Redistributable Package (x64)' is installed before continuing
installation of this Fix Pack. (AMQ4765)"

The fix pack installation will fail, halting the bundle installer, and present you with an error.  I addressed this as follows:

1. DO NOT CLEAR THE ERROR.  The side effect of the error halting the installation of the next components gives you opportunity to correct the current issue and still complete the installation successfully.
   
2. Launch regedit
   
3. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\IBM\MQSeries\CurrentVersion\
   Maintenance and add a string value VC80Redistcheck with a value of 0.
   
4. Next, navigate to the %TEMP%\WZSE0.TMP\STA8_PI\SupportingFiles\MQ-image directory and launch the fix pack installer.
   
5. Let the fix pack install on it’s own and then clear the error from the bundle installer.  It will then run to completion.

I also found that the prerequisite server was not listening on port 1506 as it should be.  Follow the steps in this article for correcting this condition:  http://www.martdj.nl/martijn.nsf/dx/SametimeAdvanced.htm

Don’t forget to restart the system.  I hope this helps.