ISHBootstrap

Bootstrapper for SDL Knowledge Center Content Manager deployments

Description

I do not like repetive tasks and this repository is all about automating the deployment of SDL Knowledge Center Content Manager. SDL Knowledge Center Content Manager is also known as with historical names Trisoft, InfoShare or as we recently established ISH.

Goal

With the ISHBootstrapper the following flow gets automated for a clean/default Windows Server 2012 R2 installation

1. Enable and configure the WinRM (Windows Remoting) for secure connections and CredSSP
2. Install the PowerShellGet powershell module to easily install modules. Windows Server 2012 R2 offers out of the box Powershell v4.0. Content Manager 12.0.* supports version v4.0.
3. Install Content Manager prerequisites as described in the [documentation](docs.sdl.com/LiveContent/web/pub.xql?action=home&pub=SDL Knowledge Center full documentation-v2&lang=en-US)
4. Copy the deliverable of the Content Manager CD
5. Install Content Manager. One or more deployments.
6. Execute ISHDeploy based code as configuration scripts

Do all of the above with minumum manual actions and all should work locally and remotely. At the end the dream goal is to execute a seamless update of a Content Manager deployments

Remarks:

• Typically a Content Manager deployment is deployed on a server already part of Active Directory. For this reason, some remote instructions fill face the double hop limitation described in Powershell Remoting Caveats and to work around the problem sessions with CredSSP will be required.
• Not all modules available here will be published to PowerShell gallery. Setting up an internal nuger repository is easy. The process is described here.
• The code base will work against current Knowledge Center 2016 Content Manager 12.0.0 but the code base will support future minor releases like Knowledge Center 2016 Content Manager 12.0.1 and future major releases that is only internally available.
• To avoid revealing internal asset names some variables will not be defined in code but we'll be acquired with cmdlets such as Get-Variable

Future

If you can fully automate the delivery of a deployment then you can trigger this from any Continuous Integration (CI) system. Potential targets of a trigger can be:

• Deliver a collection of servers.
• Spin up a server on demand and then take it down.
• Spin up a environment for full client/api/data testing and then take it down.

Acknowledgements

This a personal effort and by no means reflects an official deliverable for SDL.