Home
HCL Digital Experience Product Documentation
Welcome to the product documentation for HCL Digital Experience. Find information about how to install, configure, maintain, and use HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend solutions.
HCL Digital Experience 8.5
Learn how to install, configure, troubleshoot, maintain, and use Version 8.5 of HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend.
Migrating
Successful migration requires significant planning and preparation, understanding the tools that are involved, and careful execution of the appropriate steps in the order provided.
Setting up the target environment
The migration requires you to install the required Portal and WebSphere® binary installations. To prepare your target environment, ensure that you have applied the latest cumulative fix and the most recent fix pack before you start migration. In addition, create new copies of the source databases for the target environment to use, and prepare the target environment for any custom applications that have dependencies or any other tasks that need to be performed for remote or cluster migrations.
Database considerations
Depending on the type of database that you use, there might be extra considerations or tasks to complete before and after you migrate your data. Review the information that is tailored for your database type to ensure the migration process completes successfully.

HCL Digital Experience Product Documentation
Welcome to the product documentation for HCL Digital Experience. Find information about how to install, configure, maintain, and use HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend solutions.
- HCL Digital Experience 9.5
- HCL Digital Experience 9.5 [Legacy Content]
- HCL Digital Experience 9.0
  Learn how to install, configure, troubleshoot, maintain, and use Version 9.0 of HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend.
- HCL Digital Experience 8.5
  Learn how to install, configure, troubleshoot, maintain, and use Version 8.5 of HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend.
  - Overview
    HCL Digital Experience (formerly IBM WebSphere Portal and IBM Web Content Manager) empowers you to create, manage, and deliver engaging omnichannel digital experiences to virtually all audiences with responsive content, targeted offers, seamlessly integrated applications, and consistent branding across channels (web, mobile. and hybrid mobile/web applications and more).
  - Roadmaps to deploy your system
    Review the roadmaps to understand the common deployment, configuration, migration, and integration patterns.
  - Roadmaps to create your website
    Review the roadmaps to understand how to create your website.
  - Online Help
    This Online Help is made available in the HCL Digital Experience Help Center for quick references on how to install, configure, maintain, and use HCL Digital Experience.
  - Installing
    HCL Digital Experience provides flexible deployment options that range from proof-of-concept where you can examine and test functionality to a highly available and scalable production environment. Review the planning information to learn more about hardware and software requirements, high availability, scalability, supported topologies, and much more. Select your operating system and then select the installation pattern that most reflects your business needs.
  - Configuring
    Run the following tasks after you install and deploy HCL Digital Experience. They address tasks that are typically run one time and have a global effect. Some configuration changes are made more frequently or do not have a global effect. These tasks are addressed in the Administering section.
  - Backup and restore
    Backup and recovery of data files and databases is an essential operation for any business system, particularly for data and applications that run in production environments. Create and follow a plan for backing up and recovering data on all tiers of your HCL Digital Experience deployment. IBM Installation Manager must also be included in backup and recovery planning. If you back up the HCL Portal file structure and then install a fix pack, your HCL Digital Experience and IBM Installation Manager become out of sync after you restore the HCL Portal file system. This condition is not recoverable.
  - Migrating
    Successful migration requires significant planning and preparation, understanding the tools that are involved, and careful execution of the appropriate steps in the order provided.
    - Overview
      Migration is the process of collecting configuration data and applications from an earlier installed version of HCL Digital Experience and merging them into a newer installed version. So that the new environment is identical to the earlier environment. For the z/OS® platform, the new version must be on the same server as the earlier version. Migration to a different (remote) server is not supported.
    - Planning for migration
      Completing a thorough plan before migrating to the latest version of HCL Digital Experience has a direct impact in the effort invested during the actual migration. Become familiar with the environment you are migrating to (target environment). Also, make sure that the environment you are migrating from (source environment) is up to date with fixes and meets the requirements for migration.
    - Preparing your source environment
      Before you begin the steps for migration, you must perform some critical tasks on your source environment, such as creating back ups, installing the latest cumulative fix and one of the two most recent fix packs, and disabling automatic synchronization if you are migrating a cluster. Review the topics in this section, and perform the required tasks to ensure that your source environment remains functional and the migration completes successfully.
    - Setting up the target environment
      The migration requires you to install the required Portal and WebSphere® binary installations. To prepare your target environment, ensure that you have applied the latest cumulative fix and the most recent fix pack before you start migration. In addition, create new copies of the source databases for the target environment to use, and prepare the target environment for any custom applications that have dependencies or any other tasks that need to be performed for remote or cluster migrations.
      - Target environment considerations
        Installation planning of the target environment must be part of your overall migration planning. There are some considerations to keep in mind when you install HCL Portal and you plan to do a migration from your existing installation.
      - Installing Portal and WebSphere binary files
        On your target system, you must install the portal and WebSphere® binary files.
      - Installing fix packs on the target environment
        Periodically, fix packs are released to integrate product code fixes. Between fix pack releases, there are interim fixes to ensure product reliability and stability. You must apply the latest available fix pack and cumulative fix to the target environment. The Recommended fixes link provides links to fix pack and interim fix downloads. There is also information about what is recommended and what is required.
      - Copying portal binary files to the deployment manager
        Complete this task if the deployment manager is not sharing application binary files with a Portal install.
      - Copying files for third party and custom applications
        The Portal migration attempts to install custom applications in the target environment, but it does not automatically copy the files required for those applications. If the files are not copied over, it is possible that the applications will fail to install or not work properly.
      - Maximum open file descriptors for Unix-based platforms
        For Unix-based platforms, the default open file descriptor must be set to 200000 to allow the Configuration Wizard commands to run properly during migration.
      - Copying files for third party and custom applications
        To keep the earlier portal environment in production and reduce the amount of downtime during migration copy the earlier portal server JCR and Release domains. Connect to the domain copies and then update the new portal server with the domain copies. The process of connecting to the domain copies must be done after you upgrade the ConfigEngine tool but before you upgrade the Portal profile.
      - Database considerations
        Depending on the type of database that you use, there might be extra considerations or tasks to complete before and after you migrate your data. Review the information that is tailored for your database type to ensure the migration process completes successfully.
        Configuring transaction logging space
        When you migrate from earlier versions of Portal, certain portions of the actual database migration use database transactions that can contain large volumes of data change. In order for the database to accommodate these transaction changes, the amount of space available to the database transaction logs might need to be increased.
        Oracle: Disabling the auto space advisor background task
        To prevent deadlocks during migration, you must complete a task to disable the Oracle background task called "Auto Space Advisor" before your run the upgrade-profile task during migration using the Configuration Wizard. After you complete migration, you can enable "Auto Space Advisor" as a post-migration task.
        DB2 database migration considerations
        Database migration is one of the most time consuming portions of the migration process. If you are migrating from DB2®, review the following topics to improve the speed of the database migration process.
    - Migrate data using the configuration wizard
      For Version 8.5, data, applications, databases, property files, security settings, and configuration are migrated using the Configuration Wizard. Use the roadmaps for cluster and stand-alone environments to guide you through the process.
    - Next steps
      To complete migration, you must first perform several post-migration steps that depend on how Portal is being used. After completing the post-migration steps, review the Enabling new functionality section to take advantage of the new tools available in HCL Digital Experience 8.5. Enabling new functionality should not be started until all post-migration steps have been completed.
  - Integrating
    Integrate HCL Digital Experience with software such as HCL Sametime to enable your users to collaborate more easily. You can also use the unified task list portlet to integrate HCL with your backend business process software, such as IBM Process Server.
  - Administering
    Use the administration tools that are provided with the portal to do various day-to-day administration tasks. There are two methods for editing portal setup: using the administration portlets or the XML configuration interface. The administration portlets are a convenient way to make real-time updates to the portal's configuration. While the XML configuration interface is suited to more advanced administration, including batch processing of updates.
  - Securing
    Security tasks include setting up property extension databases and custom user repositories, configuring and activating SSL, and configuring authentication. In addition, tasks such as activating Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) and NIST SP800-131a security modules and configuring external security managers such as Security Access Manager might be required to secure your portal environment.
  - Monitoring
    HCL Portal includes tools and features to help you monitor the portal site.
  - Setting up a website
    Setting up a website includes, creating pages, adding navigation, setting up search, and adding content to the site. Themes are used to customize the portal's look-and-feel. Out-of-the-box templates and the site wizard can help you set up your portal site faster. You can add wikis and blogs to your site and let users tag and rate content on your site.
  - Staging to production
    During portal solution development, the solution is initially developed, tested, and refined on one server or a limited number of servers. The solution is deployed later on live systems, referred to as the production environment. The process of moving the solution from the development environment to the production environment is called staging.
  - Developing
    This section includes developer documentation on extending applications and development assets for HCL Portal and HCL Web Content Manager.
  - Troubleshooting
    This section helps you resolve problems, use diagnostic tools and tracing to capture HCL Digital Experience system errors.
  - Reference
    View information that can help you use the Digital Experience Help Center including directory conventions, terms of use, trademarks, a glossary, and more.
  - Glossary
    This glossary includes terms and definitions for HCL Digital Experience.
  - Content Template Catalog 4.4
    The Content Template (CTC) is a set of templates that accelerate the process of building a website.

Database considerations | HCL Digital Experience

Depending on the type of database that you use, there might be extra considerations or tasks to complete before and after you migrate your data. Review the information that is tailored for your database type to ensure the migration process completes successfully.