ITSM 7.0 Installation

Well, the saga continues. I've now installed ITSM 7.0 several times, with each time taking several days to complete. By the end, I still don't have a working installation. Learning from my mistakes, here are some tips:

* You need a lot of memory. We're talking 4GB minimum.
* You need a lot of hard drive space. Your database needs to be 2GB minimum, with another 1GB allocated to your transaction log.
* Get the latest version. If you, like me, downloaded a pre-release version, you'll find it sorely lacking and downright confounding when it doesn't match the documentation. While you're at it, get all the patches too. There's already patches for Change Management and the CMDB.
* Installation order of the apps is now unimportant, HOWEVER, you do need to install approval and assignment engine prior to the applications. Both of these come with ARS 7.0, but are installed separately (as is the email engine and flashboards). CMDB is also a prerequisite, as one might expect - being the basis of any ITIL process.
* You need to license before you install the apps.
* If your app installation goes wrong and you want to repeat it, you'll need to remove all evidence of the application from your system, or it will not reinstall.

I've settled for the fact that my two-year-old laptop, used and abused as it has been by years of consulting, is not a welcoming environment to the new applications.

Disconcerting ITSM 7.0 Installation Discoveries

Heard a nasty rumor that, despite the documentation, you must install in a particular order or risk issues...that order would be ARS 7 -> Approval Engine -> CMDB 2 -> Assignment Engine -> IM -> PM -> CM -> AM. Even having done this and after over 24 hours of installation time (on vmware), I discovered I was missing workflow right away.

The Application Administration Console (RAC:Config:Console) had no attached workflow and I was unable to begin configuring ITSM 7.0, which by the way does not come with sample data. Now, I was able to locate the relevant workflow in the unpacked binaries from my installation...
\servicedesk\im\incident700[1].win\win\incident\cdrom\ar\rac\workflow\en

The question is - what other definitions were not imported...I guess we'll find out.

Oh, also one might think that you could reinstall the product to get the missing workflow. The answer is no - the installation detects that it is already installed and will not re-install. I guess they assumed that it would work right the first time.

Some of my colleagues have run into similar problems with missing workflow and failed installations. I assume that we're all using the same older machines, hence the anomalies. On a real server, up to the latest specs, these issues should not occur.