› Communications Manager Installation Guide › Manual component installation › Adding a Communications Manager Instance › Starting Communications Manager Instance

Starting Communications Manager Instance

This section describes how you can use the StartInstance.exe tool to start the Communications Manager instance in your installation.

StartInstance.exe is a command-line tool intended to:

  • start Windows services of the instance and set their startup type to Automatic

  • finish the configuration of the instance

  • modify the configuration of the instance after installation

You can find the StartInstance.exe installation tool in the <deploy root>\CommunicationsManager\Programs\<version>\Management folder.

Manual registration of Communications Manager instances at the Contract Manager is possible. However, the preferred way is to have StartInstance.exe register the instance automatically, or use the instance registration file that StartInstance.exe generates. Any manual registration may get overridden by StartIntance.exe and StopInstance.exe.

Requirements

This section describes the requirements that must be satisfied before you run the StartInstance.exe tool.

  1. The account used to run StartInstance.exe must have the local Administrator permissions on the target server.

    The following steps are required only if you are starting the instance for the first time, or you are changing its configuration.

  2. License. For additional information, refer to the License section of this guide.

  3. Communications Manager instance database. For additional information, refer to the "Communications Manager Repository database" section below.

  4. Configuration import file if you plan to import the existing configuration of the Communications Manager instance. For additional information, refer to Export functionality and initialization of new components topic.

  5. Database load if you plan to load the already existing content to the new database. For additional information, refer to the Dump and load the Repository database section of Tungsten Communications Manager Repository Administrator's Guide.

  6. Contract information for registering this instance on the Contract Manager.

The installation will automatically create the Communications Manager Designer Administrator account. You can change its password as described in the Change your password topic in Communications Manager Designer Help.

Communications Manager Repository database

Communications Manager installation requires a database for Communications Manager Repository.

A default Communications Manager instance must have its own dedicated database for the Tungsten Communications Manager repository that cannot be shared with other instances. This database will be initialized when the instance is started. When you deploy multiple instances, you can create secondary instances that share a repository database with a default Communications Manager instance. If you plan to deploy multiple Tungsten Communications Manager instances, refer to the following topic for additional information: Adding a Communications Manager Instance.

Whenever you use an Oracle or an SQL Server database for Communications Manager Repository, you must supply an ODBC Connection String. A 64-bit ODBC driver is required.

To prepare the database, follow the steps below:

  1. Create an empty database or make sure one exists on the database server.
  2. For SQL Server database, consider the following:
    • 64-bit DBMS drivers are not supported for DID connections. These drivers must be configured as the 32-bit DBMS drivers.
    • Database must be created with case-insensitive collation.
    • SQL Server authentication mode must be set to Mixed mode (both SQL Server and Windows Authentication).
    • Default authentication method is SQL Server authentication. SQL Server account for database access must satisfy the following conditions:
    • To enable Windows authentication, leave out the database user and password parameters, and if needed add Integrated Security=True to the connection string.
  3. For Oracle database, consider the following:

    • Minimum table space available for Communications Manager Repository database is 60 MB.

    • 64-bit DSN configuration is required.

    • Oracle Client versions 11.02.00.01 and 11.02.00.02 are not supported for use with Communications Manager Repository.
    • The Oracle user you plan to use for database access should have the following privileges:

      • Create Session

      • Create Table

    When creating a user in Oracle, do not use lowercase characters in a quoted user identifier. When logging on to Oracle, Communications Manager extends the connection with a user identifier without quotes. This causes Oracle to interpret the user name as uppercase.

    For example, if you create CM_USER in Oracle, Communications Manager will be able to log in with this user, but if you create Cm_User, Communications Manager will not be able to log in, because Cm_User is automatically interpreted as CM_USER, and that user does not exist.

How the tool works

This section describes how the StartInstance.exe tool works.

  1. It compiles the Communications Manager Core scripts.

  2. It starts all Windows services of the Communications Manager instance and sets their startup type to Automatic.
  3. When a new database is configured for the first time, the following steps take place:

    • Communications Manager verifies that the database is empty.

    • If a database file is specified, this file is loaded, and the content is subsequently upgraded to the current Communications Manager version.

    • If no database file is specified, the initial tables for the Communications Manager Repository are created, optionally the InstallationTest project is loaded and a snapshot is created for it, and the repository Administrator user is created.

    • When Instance!CreateRuntimeDatabase=True, the database is marked as a shared runtime database.

    • The database is associated with the contract of the Communications Manager Instance.

    • The database is associated with the instance identifier of the Communications Manager Instance. If the database is shared runtime, this marks the current instance as the primary instance of the runtime database.

    • The predefined channels are imported into the database.

  4. When an existing database is configured, the following steps take place:

    • Communications Manager verifies that the database has existing repository content, and this content must always be associated with the same contract as the instance. Additionally, for a secondary instance it is verified that the content is associated with another instance, while for a default instance this may not be the case.

      If the content of an existing database does not match the Communications Manager instance, you can use the ManageRepositoryDatabase tool to forcefully associate the database with a contract and/or an instance.

    • The following steps only take place for a default instance, but are skipped for a secondary instance:

      • The content of the database is upgraded to the current version of Communications Manager.

      • The predefined channels are imported into the database on top of all the channels that already exist.

  5. Optionally: the previously exported configuration is imported.

  6. The instance is registered on the Contract Manager (unless Registration!ContractManagerLocation=None).
  7. If a contract does not exist, it will be created and associated with the Communications Manager Instance.

This command also provides an option to install an example web application that you can use for testing purposes. For more information about this, refer to the following topic: Manage example web application.

Execution steps

To run the installed Communications Manager instance, execute the following steps:

  1. Open the command line interface (CLI). It could be PowerShell or Command Prompt.

  2. In the CLI, navigate to the folder where the StartInstance.exe is located.

  3. Call the StartInstance.exe file with the necessary parameters.

    If you launch StartInstance.exe without any parameters, it will start the Communications Manager instance with default configuration.

    If everything is correct, the process will run without errors. You will be able to follow the it by reading the CLI output.