BW6.X - How to run two different versions of BusinessWorks 6.X on the same machine

When upgrading your BusinessWorks 6.X configuration to a newer version you can take the path suggested in the BusinessWorks release notes document to upgrade the existing environment or you can also take the alternative path to create a new configuration on the existing machines. In the second approach, the two configurations remain on line during the upgrade process and it is possible to deploy BusinessWorks applications to the new configuration in a progressive manner and fall back to the initial configuration in case of problems. Overall, in the second approach risks are reduced and better managed.

In order to be able to use the second approach you need to be able to two runs two BusinessWorks versions at the time on the same machine, including two bwagents. This article explains how to do it.

Installation

The two installation must be in two different directories (usually referred as TIBCO_HOME).

Pre-requisites

Assuming that the BusinessWorks configuration is using a database back-end and EMS as a transport, the two points below have to be taken into account.

1) The new installation must have its own database schema (different from the database schema of the initial configuration).

2) The new installation can use a dedicated EMS instance to manage the bwagent network or it can use the same EMS instance as the initial configuration. In the second case it is important to take into account the following points :

a) The bwagents of the new configuration should be configured with a network name different than the one used in the initial configuration. In other words, the property ‘bw.agent.networkName’ should be set to a new value when setting up the new configuration, for example:

bw.agent.networkName =BW6Network661

b) Each bwagents should use a dedicated queue to listen for events from other agents. This means the property ‘bw.agent.technology.dbems.ems.requestQueueName’ should be updated if agent names are not changed, for example:

bw.agent.technology.dbems.ems.requestQueueName=bw6.admin.operations.queue.server01.new

bwagents configuration

Existing bwagent names can be kept but all ports have to be changed to new values in the bwagent.ini file, this include:

. bw.agent.http.port (for example it can be changed to 8179)

. bw.agent.tea.agent.port (for example it can be changed to 9191)

It is important also to uncomment the following line and update the port number :

bw.appnode.agent.http.communication.port (for example it can be changed to 57565)

The property defining the TEA server URL (teaserverurl) may also have to be updated if a new TEA configuration has been set-up.

Talking about bwagents, in the suggested approach you will have two bwagents running on the BusinessWorks machines during the upgrade. This will increase a little bit the memory usage on those machines.

Domains, Appspaces and Appnodes configurations

Existing configurations from a given domain can be exported with the following command :

bwadmin backup -s <BACK_UP_DOMAIN_NAME>.cmd domain <DOMAIN_NAME>

The generated .cmd file has to be updated to change the following elements:

· The appnode -httpPort parameter values (to avoid conflicts with the appnodes from the initial configuration — only needed to run the old and new appnodes at the same time)

· All parameter values that includes the file path of the initial TIBCO configuration need to be updated to take into account the new path

The updated configurations can be imported in the new configuration by copying the exported elements (include the archives and profiles folders) in the bin folder of the new configuration (TIBCO_HOME/bw/6.X/bin) and using the following command :

bwadmin -f <BACK_UP_DOMAIN_NAME>.cmd

Summary

Using the elements above it is possible to run two BusinessWorks configurations on the same machine at the same time. This allows to upgrade your BusinessWorks platform with limited risks.