Creating the pre-production environment

In the pre-production environment, you can deploy i2 Analyze in the same physical deployment topology as your target production deployment. The process starts with your configuration from the configuration development environment, which you modify to match your chosen deployment topology.

Before you begin

Ensure that you have access to the following files and directories so that you can copy them to the pre-production development environment:
  • The toolkit\configuration directory from the configuration development environment
  • Liberty user configuration, for example:
    • user-registry.xml
    • server.xml
  • Any configuration that you completed in the Information Store database. For example, your merged property values definition views.
  • Any certificates and certificate stores that are required

If you are planning to deploy in production with high availability, you should configure and deploy high availability in the pre-production environment to develop the configuration. To create a pre-production environment configured for high availability, complete the instructions in i2 Analyze with high availability rather than the steps on this page.

About this task

Create your pre-production environment, and update your configuration to match the physical deployment topology of the pre-production environment.

Procedure

  1. Install any prerequisite software to prepare your servers for the pre-production environment.
    For the pre-production environment, use the same deployment topology as your intended production environment. For more information, see Deployment topologies.
  2. Copy the toolkit\configuration directory from the configuration development environment, to the toolkit directory at the root of the deployment toolkit on the Liberty server in the pre-production environment.
  3. Update the values for any configuration settings that are specific to the environment.
    1. If you are creating a deployment with a database that is remote from the Liberty server, follow the instructions in Specifying remote database storage to update the environment.properties and topology.xml files for this deployment topology.
    2. If you are creating a deployment with multiple Solr and ZooKeeper servers, follow the instructions in Specifying remote Solr and ZooKeeper servers to update the topology.xml file for these deployment topologies.
    The environment.properties, http-server.properties, and topology.xml contain host name and file path settings that you might need to update for the servers in your pre-production environment. For more information, see Configuration files reference.
  4. If your deployment uses a proxy server or load balancer to route requests from clients, ensure that it is configured for use with i2 Analyze. Specify the URI that clients use to connect to i2 Analyze.
    For more information, see Deploying a proxy server for use with i2 Analyze.
  5. Deploy and start i2 Analyze:
After you deploy i2 Analyze, you can replicate any configuration changes that are not stored in the configuration of i2 Analyze.
  1. Configure Liberty security for your environment. To do this, repeat any changes that you made to the Liberty configuration in the previous environment.
    This might involve copying the user registry file, or updating the server.xml file.
  2. Complete any configuration changes in the Information Store database.
    1. If you created any rules or schedules to delete records by rule, replicate the rules and schedules that you created in the previous environment.
    2. If you created any merged property values definition views for your ingestion process, replicate the view definition that you created in the previous environment.

What to do next

After you deploy i2 Analyze in the pre-production development environment, you might want to configure aspects of the deployment that are topology specific. For example, in a multiple-server environment you can secure the connections between servers by using SSL.

To configure i2 Analyze in pre-production, see Configuring i2 Analyze in pre-production.