Plan your installation

Before you install TeamForge 17.1, let's take a look at the product from a system administrator's perspective, so that you know exactly what you are getting into.

Overview

A TeamForge site consists of a core TeamForge application and several tightly integrated services that support it. In addition, you can integrate TeamForge with other third party applications such as Review Board, Nexus, Git, and so on.

Integrations

TeamForge supports integration with a wide array of third party applications such as Review Board, Git, Nexus, Jira and so on. As a customer you may or may not always want (or have) all of TeamForge's supported integrated applications. It's also quite possible that some of the integrated applications may not always run on all the platforms supported by TeamForge.

To accommodate a wider audience, by default, TeamForge install and upgrade instructions include steps to integrate such third party applications with TeamForge. However, use your discretion to ignore and skip such steps if they are not relevant to your site. See TeamForge installation requirements to understand what it takes to run TeamForge 17.1 with integrations.

Plan your TeamForge installation setup

TeamForge supports multiple options for customizing and expanding your site to fit your organization's unique use patterns. TeamForge 17.1 can run on RHEL/CentOS 6.8 or 7.3.

In the default setup, all services run on the same server as the main TeamForge application. But in practice, only the TeamForge application needs to run on the TeamForge application server. The other services can share that server or run on other servers, in almost any combination. When you distribute your services on multiple servers, you must do some configuration to handle communication among the services.

Install considerations for RHEL/CentOS 6.8 and 7.3

Though TeamForge 17.1 can run on RHEL/CentOS 6.8, it is a best practice to install TeamForge 17.1 on the most recent version of RHEL/CentOS supported by TeamForge, which in this case is RHEL/CentOS 7.3.

Assess your own site's particular use patterns and resources to decide how to distribute your services, if at all. For example, if you anticipate heavy use of your site, you will want to consider running the site database, the source control service, or the reporting engine on separate hardware to help balance the load.

PostgreSQL or Oracle?

PostgreSQL 9.3.12 is installed automatically when you install TeamForge 17.1. If you intend to use Oracle, CollabNet recommends that you let the installer run its course, make sure things work normally, and then set up your Oracle database and switch over to it.

If you want to use Oracle as your database, consider the following points:
  • TeamForge 17.1 supports Oracle server 12c and Oracle client 12c.
  • Oracle express edition is not supported for both client and server.
  • Review Board 2.5.6.1 was tested with PostgreSQL 9.3.12 only. Review Board with Oracle was not tested. Note that Review Board (application) must be installed on the TeamForge application server and therefore uses the PostgreSQL database that is installed by default during TeamForge installation. However, Review Board database can be installed on a separate server.
  • GIT integration works only with PostgreSQL. The Git integration will use PostgreSQL even if your TeamForge site uses Oracle.

The efficiency of your database can have an impact on your users' perception of the site's usability. If your site uses a PostgreSQL database (which is the default), you may want to consider tuning it to fit your specific circumstances. The default settings are intended for a small-to-medium site running on a single server. See What are the right PostgreSQL settings for my site? for recommendations from CollabNet's performance team on optimizing PostgreSQL for different conditions.

Choose your hardware

TeamForge can run on a wide range of hardware configurations.

For more information, see TeamForge installation requirements.

What's new in TeamForge 17.1

End-of-life for APIs / Event handlers

TeamForge SOAP50 APIs and event handlers are no longer supported in TeamForge 16.10 and later. Instead, Customers can use the latest TeamForge SOAP/REST APIs.