Here I go, installing Sametime 8.5 in my lab environment. Figured I’d try it out in my lab before Golden Axing(tm) our production environment — you’re welcome Sally ;)

Before I continue, let me explain the term “to Golden Axe” something is to destroy it. Usually I tend to “Golden Axe” things when I’ve been a little reckless, and yeah, it came from the video game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Axe.

Alright, back to Sametime 8.5, my ADHD kicks in sometimes, sorry…

So, I’m going to start my tests by installing the following:

Windows 2003 Enterprise 64-bit – Why Enterprise? Because it was already installed!
Sametime 8.5 Standard Community Server – Downloaded CZA62ML.zip, thank-you IBM for using friendly file names…
Lotus Domino 8.5.1 64-bit

My installation, verbatim step-by-step (

- I’ve decided to add my new Sametime Domino server to our existing production environment to ensure enough testing will go into this prior to placing it into production.

- So far the installation went smoothly, with the exception of a minor DNS issue. I pointed my lab server to our internal DNS server but since it’s not on the same domain I had to create a local entry in the hosts. file for our Domino server name Domino1.

- Just stopped Domino and started the Sametime 8.5 install running the demo32.exe file (I never understood why they called demo32) and Sametime didn’t detect my Domino 8.5.1 installation. Going to fire up Domino and try again!

- Still no luck. Maybe it really won’t run on 8.5.1 and wants 8.5? Let’s try and find out… Going to start the download of 8.5. Too bad it’s too early for a beer… I wonder…

Here’s my error:
IBM Lotus Sametime Server 8.5 requires Domino to be installed before Sametime can be installed, but no Domino installation was detected. Install Domino and then install IBM Lotus Sametime Server 8.5.

As you can see in my image (below) I clearly have Domino installed and running!

- Didn’t work with 8.5.0 64-bit. I believe the problem is 64-bit. Going to try 32-bit version of 8.5.1.
UPDATE: Well, that did it. Sametime 8.5 works in a 64-bit environment (OS) but Domino needs to be 32-bit.

As of 3.15pm today I’ve moved along nicely.

Here’s what I’ve learned:

1. You can still install Sametime on one box.
2. I’m working on it…. please be patient :)