Best Practices for Novell Service Desk Installation

  • 7007393
  • 17-Dec-2010
  • 26-Apr-2012

Environment

Novell Service Desk 6.1

Situation

Best Practices for Novell Service Desk Installation. 

Resolution

I. Preparing the Novell Service Desk Server

Server Usage
The Novell Service Desk software should be installed on a server dedicated for Novell Service Desk. 
 
Operating System
You should use one of the following operating systems for the install.
- Windows Server 2003 SP2 x86_64 (Enterprise and Standard editions)
- Windows Server 2008 R2 x86_64 (Enterprise and Standard editions)
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 SP1 x86_64 (Intel and AMD Opteron processors)
 
Hardware
You should use a x86_64 bit system with 4 GB of RAM. You should have 20 GB of available disk space. If you are using a supported virtual machine you should have dedicated ram and hard disk if possible for Service Desk.
 
Software
Novell Service Desk requires that you have 64 bit SUN JDK/JRE 1.6 or later installed
 
Configurations to Avoid
Do not install Service Desk on a server that is being used for any of the following services.
- ZENworks Configuration Management Server
- Host Novell eDirectory / Active Directory
- Terminal server
- Groupwise / Exchange server
- Database Server ie.. Microsoft SQL 2008

II. Preparing the Novell Service Desk Database

Database Requirements
Novell Service Desk requires an external database to function. The Service Desk Software does not include or install a database. The database needs to be installed before you can perform the Service Desk installation.
 
Database Version
- Sybase SQL Anywhere ASE 12.5 or later
- Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008 (Enterprise and Standard editions are supported)
- Oracle 10g Standard Release 2 - 10.2.0.1.0
 
Database Settings
Regardless of the SQL environment, the database sizing must have a minimum of 10 MB for data and 5 MB for the associated transaction log. You should let these grow as needed.

III. Performing the Novell Service Desk Install

Installing Service Desk
After meeting the system requirements you can perform the installation.
On SLES run java -jar Installer.jar
On Windows double click on the Installer.jar file.
The default prompts will work to install Service Desk, you can choose to use port 80 to simplify use.
 
Creating the Schema
After the installation is finished, you can open a web browser and go to your Service Desk Server ie.. HTTP://ServiceDesk.YourDomain.com:8700
After entering your database information and testing the connection, hit the schema button. Select all and copy the content to a file.
After you have the script saved, run it on the database to create the schema.
 
*Note: Check the schema to make sure you got the whole script. Some clipboards will not be able to handle the whole script and will only copy a portion at a time.
 
Verifying the Install
After creating the schema on the database, go back to the browser and hit save. Then you can login using the default credentials; admin, admin.