IBM Systems Director : Lessons Learned

Two points regarding installing IBM Systems director:

1. On a fresh install of windows server 2008, the IBM systems director will ask to upgrade the windows installer version, and will prompt you to manually run an upgrade program from the install directory. However when attempting to run the program, we were presented with the error:
“The update does not apply to your system”

This error is usually presented when all system prerequisites are not installed. In the case of the IBM Systems Director, it  was quite easily resolved by downloading and installing the latest version of the .Net framework
2. After a seemingly successful install, the Systems Director will show a small status icon in the system tray, with the following representations:
Red circle: all components of the ibm systems director are stopped
Green Triangle: the ibm systems director is still starting up (transient state)
Green Circle: the ibm systems director has all services started and is ready to use
In a fresh install of windows server 2008, what was happening in my case was that the status icon would start off as a red circle, and shortly after turn into a green triangle, meaning that the systems director was attempting to start up its components. However, after a log, random amount of time, it would go back to displaying a red circle. Trying to restart the server or the service itself (via services.msc > ibm systems director) would make no difference. Even uninstalling and reinstalling the system made no difference. Attempting to log on to the web UI of the server while the system director displayed the green triangle was also to no avail, we were simply presented with an error message reading:
ATKMDL001E
The required Universal Management Services are not available. Log out of the management server and login after a few minutes

There are in fact, a couple of forum posts about the exact same symptoms I experienced. In my case there was a very idiotic solution…. the password I used for installation. During IBM systems installation, you are prompted to enter a local username and password that will be used during install. Following good security practice, I used an administrator password cotaining alphanumeric characters as well as special characters. Obviously one of these special characters was to blame. After uninstalling, changing to a simpler, alphanumeric-only, password, and using that password during the install, I was finally presented with a green circle in the status bar

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