Enabling support for the IPv6 protocol on Windows systems

To enable support for addresses and URLs that adhere to the IP version 6 (IPv6) protocol, you must define an environment variable that instructs the system to use only IPv6 socket addresses.

Before you begin

Complete the following steps to prepare your system:

Verify that the values for the LocalHostName property and LocalIPAddress property (if given) in the ES_INSTALL_ROOT/nodeinfo/es.cfg file contain either a host name or a valid IPv6 address for the local machine. If you change this file, save the changes.
Verify that the value for the server.host property in the ES_NODE_ROOT/master_config/database/db.properties file is a host name. This value cannot be an IPv4 address or an IPv6 address. If you change this property, save the file.
Verify that the values for the destination property and serverhost property in the ES_NODE_ROOT/master_config/nodes.ini file on the master server contain either a valid IPv6 address or a valid host name. These values cannot be an IPv4 address. If you change this file, save the changes.

About this task

Support for the IPv6 protocol is available only in Watson Content Analytics systems that you install on Windows 2003 or Windows 2008 servers. After you enable support for IPv6 addresses, the system will no longer use IPv4 addresses for any socket communications.

The Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox browsers handle IPv6 addresses differently:

Mozilla Firefox

To run the administration console, enterprise search application, or content analytics miner, you can specify the IPv6 address or host name in the URL. For example:

http://[2001::db8]/ESAdmin
http://SearchServer.com/search/

Internet Explorer

To run the administration console, enterprise search application, or content analytics miner, you cannot specify the IPv6 address in the URL. You must use the following format and ensure that the host name is mapped to the IPv6 address in DNS or the c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file:

http://SearchServer.com/ESAdmin/
http://SearchServer.com/search/

If you specify an IPv6 address in the URL, the message Invalid syntax error is displayed. For additional information about this restriction, see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/325414.

Start URL format: Data sources that run on an IPv4 server are supported by default by the crawlers. When you configure the Web crawler and specify the start URLs in IPv6 address format, ensure that the URLs are enclosed in brackets. For example:

http://[2001:db8:0:1:0:0:0:1]
http://[2001:db8:0:1::1]

Procedure

To enable support for the IPv6 protocol:

On the master server, log in as the default Watson Content Analytics administrator and stop the system:
esadmin system stopall

Important: When the system is stopped, users cannot query collections.
Stop the common communication layer (CCL) server on all servers:
1. Launch Windows Services: Start > Programs > Administrative Tools > Services.
2. Right-click IBM® Watson Content Analytics and click Stop.
Define ES_IPV6=1 in the system environment variables. For a multiple server installation, do this step on the search servers.
If you use WebSphere® Application Server instead of the embedded web application server, do the following steps on the search servers:
1. Update the Java™ Virtual machine (JVM) custom properties in WebSphere Application Server.
  1. If it is running, stop the ESSearchServer application server in WebSphere Application Server.
  2. Open the WebSphere Application Server administrative console and navigate to the Java virtual machine custom properties panel. Select Servers > Application Servers > ESSearchServer > Java and Process Management > Process Definition > Java Virtual Machine > Custom Properties.
  3. Configure the following properties:
```
java.net.preferIPv4Stack=false
java.net.preferIPv6Addresses=true
```
    If the custom property is not already listed, create a property. Enter the property name in the Name field and a valid value in the Value field.
  4. If you are running WebSphere Application Server Version 6.1, add the LocalIPAddress property to the ES_INSTALL_ROOT/nodeinfo/es.cfg file to contain the IPv6 address for that search server.
  5. Restart the ESSearchServer application.
Restart the CCL on all servers:
1. Launch Windows Services: Start > Programs > Administrative Tools > Services.
2. Right-click IBM Watson Content Analytics and click Start.
Restart the Watson Content Analytics system:
esadmin system startall

Check the ES_NODE_ROOT/logs/ccl_hostname_0.log file and verify that the CCL server started without errors. If IPv6 is correctly enabled, messages similar to the following are logged:

INFO: CCL server ready for business. Now, waiting for external requests.
   CCL host name is fe80::250:56ff:feb4:27d1
   CCL host dot.ip address is fe80:0:0:0:250:56ff:feb4:27d1
   CCL server port is 6002
   Total JVM Runtime memory is 33022Kb
   Current free memory is 21346Kb
   java.net.preferIPv6Addresses=true
   java.net.preferIPv4Stack=false
INFO: Session "TraceDaemonSession" was attached PID=4992

Do the following steps to verify that the enterprise search application and administration console are operating correctly:
1. Start the search servers for any collection, and then open the enterprise search application and submit a query. This step verifies that the query submission processing is working, even if there are no documents in the index to search.
2. Open the administration console and verify that you are able to log in.

Disabling support for the IPv6 protocol

Procedure

To disable support for the IPv6 protocol:

See the previous steps for preparing your system to use the IPv6 protocol. For every instance of an IPv6 address, replace the value with a host name or IPv4 address.
Follow the procedure for enabling support for the IPv6 protocol with these exceptions:
- In step 3, remove the ES_IPV6 environment variable.
- If you use WebSphere Application Server, remove the custom JVM properties that were set for the ESSearchServer application in step 4.
Remove the LocalIPAddress property from the ES_INSTALL_ROOT/nodeinfo/es.cfg file if it contains an IPv6 address.
Restart the Watson Content Analytics system:
esadmin system stopall
esadmin system startall
Follow the procedure in step 8 to verify the enterprise search application and administration console.