Taming the IBM WebSphere beast

I'm preparing for a big installation round at a client's production site. It's going to be a hell of ride, I can tell you that.

As usual I have difficulties getting all sorts of doom scenario's out of my head, but than again deep down inside I feel pretty confident: during my 12+ year-career I've learned to rely on my instincts, and my "gut-feeling" is pretty accurate, most of the time. The problem is, of course, dealing with the unexpected.

I'll be setting up the foundation for a new online marketplace for fast-moving goods. In this clustered environment, the middleware is based on "classic" IBM offerings: WebSphere Portal , WebSphere Process Server, DB2, Tivoli Directory Server and HTTP Server.

So much for simplicity...