New: Improved installation and configuration, with profiles

This topic describes how the product directory structure and use of profiles separates the binary system files from the installation-specific configuration information, leading to easier installation, maintenance, and configuration management.

The version 6 product installation program places the files it creates into one of two separate environments. It installs the binary system files that may be read-only. It also creates an initial profile, which is a run-time execution environment that includes configuration files, the default location for deployed applications, logs, and other data. All profiles on a machine can share the same system files, but do not change the system files.

Administrators can use any of the administrative clients to administer the configuration of each profile. It is highly recommended that you browse wasprofile command for a full introduction to profiles.

Administrators must now address commands to particular profiles
System administrators of multiple Application Server instances on a single machine should note the following change. System administration commands are now profile-specific. In previous releases, commands were executed from the bin directory of the product installation root. Now commands must be executed from a particular profile/bin directory. For example, use the -profileName parameter to identify which Application Server to start.

Profiles can be exported
You can propagate the configuration from one wasprofile to another by exporting a wasprofile to a configuration archive and importing it to another wasprofile. This mechanism works between wasprofiles of the same installation or different installations. A restriction is that this mechanism only works for an unfederated wasprofile.
For more information, see Working with server configuration files.

Profiles sharing the same system files may be upgraded (or rolled back) individually.
Because the version 6 binary images are installed at a different location, it is possible to upgrade each version 5 profile individually.

Directory structure changes
Files pertaining to a particular application server runtime environment are in a directory path containing the word profiles , as well as the particular profile name.

Related concepts
What is new in this release

Searchable topic ID: welc_newadmin5

Administrators must now address commands to particular profiles	System administrators of multiple Application Server instances on a single machine should note the following change. System administration commands are now profile-specific. In previous releases, commands were executed from the bin directory of the product installation root. Now commands must be executed from a particular profile/bin directory. For example, use the -profileName parameter to identify which Application Server to start.

Profiles can be exported	You can propagate the configuration from one wasprofile to another by exporting a wasprofile to a configuration archive and importing it to another wasprofile. This mechanism works between wasprofiles of the same installation or different installations. A restriction is that this mechanism only works for an unfederated wasprofile. For more information, see Working with server configuration files.

Profiles sharing the same system files may be upgraded (or rolled back) individually.	Because the version 6 binary images are installed at a different location, it is possible to upgrade each version 5 profile individually.

Directory structure changes	Files pertaining to a particular application server runtime environment are in a directory path containing the word profiles , as well as the particular profile name.