DTS installation question and configuration on live server

After the reading of the DTS install of IIS 7 frontend with DTS backend(http://help.percussion.com/admin-topi…) I suddenly was confused when I went to follow the steps. I installed the DTS on live server and I cannot find the “\Deployment\Server\bin directory”. I see it on my CM1 application server. This document does not explain well enough for me what server I should be on. Does the DTS not get installed on the Live server?

Am I supposed to install the entire CM1 on the live server as well, then the DTS and then configure the servers to work together. I was under the impression that the CM1 application server does not have to be running for the site to run. I also am starting to believe that I do not understand what the differences of the application, production and live servers are. I picture the live server as well as the production server as one and being a completely different, for lack of a better word, computer than the CM1 server.

Please advise

Steve

Hi Steve,

It sounds like something went wrong with your DTS installation, as you certainly should have a [dts_root]\Deployment\Server\bin folder on your live web server after running the DTS installer.

No, you don’t need CM1 on both your application server and your live web server (which is also referred to as your “production web server” in that doc - sorry for any confusion). As diagrammed at the top of the doc, this deployment calls for two servers:

  1. App server, running CM1
  2. Web server, running IIS and the DTS Tomcat

That being the case, let’s circle back to what appears to be the issue: did the DTS installer give you any errors when you ran it on your live web server? Was only a root Percussion folder containing an rxconfig folder created by the installer, or nothing at all? Lastly, are you installing on Windows Server 2012, by any chance? Thanks!

Good, I thought I was lost. My original thought process was that the production and live server were the same. The DTS did not state any errors and yes only the rxconfig and JRE folders were created. As well as on the root c:\Percussion folder there is an install log.

17 successes, no warnings or other errors. I am installing this on a 2012 server, I do have a compatibility of windows 7 on it. This is what worked for the CM1 install on the application server. I will try running it again as administrator to see if maybe I did not do that the first time.

Great, let me know if you have any luck this second time through running the installer as an Admin.

Same thing happened, no other folders. I am using the Percussion_CM1_3.1.6_20137R30Windows installer package. Does that make any difference?

Very strange. I just tried that package and had no issues. Please confirm that your installation process is exactly as follows:

  1. Right-click on SetupDTS.exe > Properties > Compatibility > Check “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” > Windows 7 > Apply

  2. Right-click on SetupDTS.exe > “Run as administrator”

  3. Select “New install” > Specify a non-existent directory > Install

I found the answer. I had only extracted the SetupDTS.exe not the entire folder when I ran the setup program. Once I extracted the entire Percussion_CM1_3.1.6_20137R30Windows.zip file and ran the setup it installed more folders, including the deployment folder. I would have thought it would have thrown an error without the rest of the install to copy over. oh well. We now have an answer.

thank you.

Steve,

I’m also surprised that this didn’t throw an error for you. This is very good to know, though, so thanks for the follow-up!

Hello

I’m also slightly confused:

I’ve set up my CM1 server, and now I’m setting up my Production Web Server. I’ve installed DTS on the Production Web server, but what does that do? Does DTS = Tomcat? Do I still have to install Tomcat?

I set up the FTP information in CM1, and attempted to publish, but nothing happened. In looking at the reports, the log indicates that No Data Available in Table. Do I have to FTP the site to a certain folder or location, or can I use a location of my choosing and just point IIS to that directory?

Also, on a side note:
The documentation kinda takes you around in circles as you have to go through a series of links to get all of the information for deploying a production server. Is there a page with all of the information on it that I may have missed?

Thanks!
Greg

Greg,

Great questions, and yes the decoupled nature of our content management system is somewhat confusing at first.

DTS = Tomcat (Yes). When installing the DTS (Delivery Tier Services) it is executable file that should have been part of the .zip when you downloaded Percussion. The DTS has an embedded Apache tomcat web-server. So no need to install anything else. Some of our clients leverage this built-in web-server to serve their website. It is completely optional, but most companies already have the infrastructure to use something like IIS, or Apache and just use that.

When leveraging a web-server like IIS for example, those proxy rules that are discussed in our documentation proxy over to DTS for our dynamic services.

Q: I set up the FTP information in CM1, and attempted to publish, but nothing happened. In looking at the reports, the log indicates that No Data Available in Table.
A: For the FTP, I would be interested in seeing what sort of error message it gave you? There should be no need to create tables in a database or anything of the sort. Percussion does all this for you. Have you verified your credentials are correct? Also with these credentials do you have the ability to add/delete/modify content? This is something that if it continues to give you problems, I would suggest creating a support ticket by emailing technical_support@percussion.com, and we can communicate more offline.

Q: Do I have to FTP the site to a certain folder or location, or can I use a location of my choosing and just point IIS to that directory?
A: Point it at any folder of your liking, and point IIS to it when you create your new site. IIS however does give you a default site built into it, that uses the folder Inetpub by default. A lot of the organizations I have worked with that only have one site just do this for simplicity.

Documentation to configure IIS and DTS: Configuring an IIS Frontend with DTS Tomcat Backend

I would also suggest configuring DTS to use SQL or mySQL: Connecting Percussion DTS to SQL Database

Let us know if we can help with anything else.

Chris