Click the button for a New customization installation package to start two wizards in sequence. The two wizards are the Product Selection wizard and the Build Definition wizard.

Click the button to Open a build definition file. Opening an existing build definition starts the Build Definition wizard only. If change WAS ND, start a new customization installation package.

Browse to select the installation image directory and the maintenance package files.

File paths and file names must comply with the following guidelines:

• Contain 35 or fewer characters on Windows platforms

• Start and end with English-only alphabetic characters (A-Z, a-z) or numbers (0-9) only

• Contain English-only alphabetic characters (A-Z, a-z), numbers (0-9), periods (.) or underscores (_) only

• Not contain special characters (such as à é í ö û æ ñ ☐)

• Not contain spaces or these characters: ~ ` ! @ # $ % ^ & ( ) { } [ ] | \ / : ; , ? ' " < = > + *

During the creation of a CIP, the maintenance packages are not validated for product appropriateness. When creating a CIP and bundling maintenance packages, therefore, make sure that the maintenance packages are for the correct product. If creating a WAS CIP and want to bundle maintenance packages, for example, make sure that the maintenance packages are for WebSphere Application Server rather than for any other product. If creating a CIP that contains a feature pack and want to bundle maintenance packages, make sure that the maintenance packages are for that feature pack rather than for any other product. Make sure that we are already at or above the appserver version required by any feature pack maintenance packages or the CIP will not install correctly and you will be prompted to apply further maintenance.

New feature: You can split, or span, a customized installation package image into multiple smaller images if the installation image contained in the CIP is also spannable. For example, if we are creating a CIP that contains WAS V7.0, we can split the resulting CIP into several images because the application server product image itself is spannable

If you want to span the image across multiple discs, then specify the maximum size for each part you want to create. Different installation images might have different minimum sizes for spanned images. If you select a size which is too small we are alerted with an error message that indicates the minimum spanned size of that image. Any additional files, scripts, or configuration archives which we have included are all subject to spanning.

Review the customized installation package information and click Finish to build the CIP. If the installation image is spanned, then we are prompted to specify the location of the next disc or image.

Best practice: We can avoid image prompts if you keep all of the image directories in the same parent directory and name them by disc number, or DISC<disc_number>. For example, if we are creating a CIP which contains a spanned installation image, name the second disc DISC2. For each additional disc increase the disc number. Each directory must contain a valid installation image or we are prompted to specify the correct image during CIP creation

The amount of time required to generate the CIP depends on the number of maintenance packages and the number of features that you include in the package.

• After the CIP installation, run the Profile management tool.

• After the CIP installation, run the manageprofiles command once to do a create and augment.

• After the CIP installation, run the manageprofiles command twice sequentially to do a create and then an augment.

  Alternatively, we can run the command once to augment an existing profile.

  For more information, see the topic manageprofiles command.

• In a scratch installation, do the following within the CIP installation wizard:

  In a scratch installation of WAS Base or Express edition, a custom standalone profile will be created during the installation.

  In a scratch installation of WebSphere Application Server ND edition, we can select which profile to create during the installation.

  For WebSphere Application Server Base and Express, on the Install Sample Applications panel, select the Install profile customizations checkbox.

  For WAS Base, if you select the checkbox and we have appserver customizations, they will be used. If you do not have customizations, you get a regular appserver.

  For WAS ND, the Web Services feature pack, and the Service Oriented Architecture feature pack...

  1. On the Install Sample Applications panel, select the Install profile customizations checkbox.

  2. On the WAS environments panel, select a profile that has profile customization defined.

     If the profile that you select has profile customization defined, then the installation wizard will effectively run the manageprofiles command once to do a create and augment. If there is no profile customization defined, you get a regular profile.

If the profile created has a configuration archive in it, then it will be imported.