Chapter 1. Installing WebSphere Application Server

To begin our journey, we will need to install IBM WebSphere Application Server (WAS). WebSphere is based on Java and can run on many platforms from Windows through to Unix and even Mainframes. We have chosen Linux Red Hat as our IBM certified Operating System (OS). For the remainder of this book, we will discuss WebSphere Administration from a Linux/Unix standpoint using Red Hat (RHEL) version 4 update 6 as our Linux distribution. It is easy to acquire Linux Red Hat trial ISO images which can be downloaded from the Internet; it is also readily available on CD from your local PC store. We use Linux as opposed to Windows as using WebSphere on Linux lends to being Unix-ready. What we mean is that by learning to install and administer Websphere using Linux, you will be well-prepared and equipped to work with WebSphere for Linux or WebSphere for Unix versions. The skills learned in this book are transferable to WebSphere installations and configurations on all the supported versions of Unix; for example, Solaris, AIX and HP-UX, and other versions of Linux like SUSE. It must also be mentioned that Websphere for Linux can also be installed on CentOS and Fedora and also Ubuntu, which are all open source versions of Linux; however, they are not supported by IBM.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics: