Siemens Help Server Installation Guide For Windows
Siemens Help Server Installation Guide For Windows
Siemens Help Server Installation Guide For Windows
Server
Installation Guide
for Windows
Contents
Troubleshooting 10-1
Siemens Help Server Installation Guide for Windows, Siemens PLM Documentation Server 1.0 2
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1. Conventions and requirements
Conventions
All references to "Windows" in this manual refer to 64-bit versions of Windows 10 or Windows 2016.
Windows menu items and commands appear in bold letters or courier font.
An arrow (→) is used to represent submenus on Windows machines, for example, Start→Siemens Help
Server→Launch Help Server. If you do not have the Symbol font installed, or if you browse this
document on a non-Windows computer, you may see the registered trademark symbol (®) in place of
the arrows.
Requirements
Note: For products requiring Java 1.7 (for example, Teamcenter 11.2.x), use one of the following
workarounds:
• Access the help directly from the Siemens Support Center internet site rather than a local installation.
• Run the Siemens Help Server on a different machine that has Java 1.8 installed. One system can
support many users, so multiple people can point to the same documentation server.
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1. Conventions and requirements
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2. Hardware and Software requirements
Siemens Help Server does not require a high-end server configuration hardware. However, if you intend
to deploy a single instance of the Siemens Help Server accessed on Intranet by a large number of users,
you must deploy it on a computer with better processor and RAM configuration.
Hardware requirements
• Processor
A modern processor with multiple cores is recommended. The Siemens Help Server tends to be light
on processor usage.
• Memory
While 32 GB RAM is recommended, Siemens Help Server works on machines with 16 GB RAM also.
• Disk space
The Siemens Help Server requires about 250 MB of hard disk space. However, the space required
increases as you install the documentation packages. You must provision for a minimum of 5 GB of
hard disk space if you intend to install documentation for multiple products.
Software requirements
This release of Siemens Help Server is supported on Windows 10 and Windows 2016 only.
The Siemens Help Server uses Elasticsearch to provide the search capabilities. The version of
Elasticsearch bundled with Siemens Help Server requires Java 8 or Java 11. Elasticsearch supports only
Oracle's Java and OpenJDK. The following Java version is supported:
• Oracle Java 8
• AdoptOpenJDK 8
• AdoptOpenJDK 11
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2. Hardware and Software requirements
JAVA_HOME must be defined as a system environment variable only and not as a user
environment variable. You must set it to a 64 bit Java installation.
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3. Web-served documentation
The Siemens Digital Industries Software product documentation is a web served application that can be
locally deployed for a single user or be hosted on an Intranet site for multiple users.
The Siemens Help Server is a common documentation server intended to be shared by Siemens Digital
Industries Software products. Customers must decide on either a local installation using the help server
kit or a company-wide deployment of the same Help Server for multi-user environment.
Installing the Siemens Help Server does not automatically give you access to the product
documentation. You must download and install the product documentation after installing the Siemens
Help Server.
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3. Web-served documentation
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4. Setting up the Siemens Help Server
The Siemens Help Server and the documentation bundles are available on Siemens Support Center.
2. Click Downloads.
3. From the Select a version dropdown list, select Siemens Documentation Server 1.
Note:
To download the help for the Siemens Help Server installer, click docs-siemens-plm-
documentation-server-1.0-en-US.zip.
For information on installing documentation, see Installing product documentation.
Note:
You must run the installer as an administrator or with an account with administrative privileges.
To view if you have administrative privileges, open Control Panel and click User Accounts →
Manage User Accounts. See the groups that your user account is added to.
1. Navigate to the location where you downloaded the Siemens Help Server installer and double-click
HelpServer.n.n.n.exe.
Where n.n.n is the numeric version number for the installer.
The installation is a wizard driven process.
4. On the Choose Shortcut Location screen, select a location where you want the shortcut to be
created and click Next.
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4. Setting up the Siemens Help Server
5. On the Choose Installation Folder screen, select the location where you want to install the
application and click Next.
Note:
If you are installing the Siemens Help Server on Windows 2016, change the installation path
to C:\apps\HelpServer. Ensure that you do not have spaces in the path name.
Note:
You must ensure that the drive where you are installing the Siemens Help Server has
sufficient space for the document installation later. If the location where you are installing
the Siemens Help Server is monitored by a virus scanner, the subsequent installation of the
product documentation takes significantly longer.
6. On the Set Ports screen, enter ports for the application and storage and click Next.
7. On the Set Multiuser mode screen, you can configure if the installation of Siemens Help Server
needs to be accessible over the network.
If you want the Help Server to be accessible over the network, select Yes and click Next.
8. On the Pre-Installation Summary screen, review the installation parameters. To accept the
parameters and install the Siemens Help Server, click Install.
9. After the installation is complete, on the Install Status screen, click Next.
The Siemens Help Server is installed and the corresponding services are started on your machine.
However, you will not be able to access any documentation until you install it.
If you encounter errors during installation, see the Troubleshooting section of this guide to resolve
common errors.
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5. Installing product documentation
Depending on your entitlement, you will be able to view and download the documentation for a product
from the Siemens Support Center. For accessing the documentation locally, you must download and
install the documentation after installing the Siemens Help Server.
1. Click the product tile for which you want to download the documentation.
2. Click Downloads.
Support Center displays a list of available versions for the product.
3. Click the version of the product for which you download the documentation.
A list of files available for downloads is displayed.
Caution:
You must download and install the English documentation package before installing the
documentation package of any other language.
Note:
You must run the documentation installer as an administrator or from an account with
administrative privileges.
Note:
If the folder where you extracted the installer bundle is scanned by a virus scanner, the
installation process can take significantly more time. The time taken can extend to three
hours for larger documentation set.
2. Navigate to the folder where you unzipped the documentation bundle and double-click
DocInstaller.n.n.exe. (Where n.n is the current version of the DocInstaller. For example,
DocInstaller.1.0.exe.)
The documentation is installed.
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5. Installing product documentation
Depending on the size of the documentation, the installation process can take up to 30 minutes.
3. After the installation completes, click the corresponding link on the installer screen or open the URL
in a browser instance to access the documentation.
4. Click Done.
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6. Access deployed documentation
After you have installed the Siemens Help Server and the product documentation, you access the
documentation using a Web browser. To access the documentation, open a Web browser and navigate
to the following URL:
http://localhost:<PORT>
Replace the PORT with the value that you specified for the application port during installation. For
example, if you accepted the defaults, the URL is:
http://localhost:5000
During the installation, if you selected to install the Siemens Help Server to be accessible over the
network, you can access the help page with the name or IP address of the host computer also. Open the
help page in a browser window using the following address format:
http://nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn:<PORT>
Where nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn is the IP address of the computer where the Siemens Help Server is installed
and <PORT> is the port that you specified during the installation. For example,
http://999.999.999.999:5000
The Siemens Help Server Documentation listing page is displayed. Click the link for the documentation
that you want to view.
Alternately, you can navigate to Start→Siemens Help Server→Launch Help Server. Siemens Help
Server is launched in your default browser.
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6. Access deployed documentation
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7. Changing the ports
You should plan your installation and ports before you install the Siemens Help Server. However, if you
need to change the ports after the installation, you need to repeat the installation with the same or a
newer version of the installer.
Change ports
1. Run the Siemens Help Server installer by navigating to the location where you downloaded the
Siemens Help Server installer and double-click HelpServer.n.n.n.exe.
Where n.n.n is a numeric version number for the installer. For example, HelpServer.1.0.3.exe.
The installation is a wizard driven process.
4. On the Set Ports screen, enter the new application and storage port and click Next.
5. Click Install.
The installer updates the application and storage ports and refreshes the installation.
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7. Changing the ports
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8. Removing the Siemens Help Server
You can remove the Siemens Help Server from your computer using the Siemens Installer Program.
Siemens Installer Program is installed automatically when you install the Siemens Help Server. You can
uninstall the Siemens Help Server and the Siemens Installer Program. However, Siemens recommends
not removing the Siemens Installer Program as it can be used to manage other installed applications.
Note:
If you select Uninstall Siemens Install then the Siemens Installer Program is removed. You
will not be able to remove the Siemens Help Server and will need to run the Siemens Help
Server installer again to install the Siemens Installer Program.
If you want to keep the log files for diagnostics, you can leave the Keep user-modified files check
box selected.
5. Click Remove.
7. When the installer prompts you to remove the Siemens Installer Program, click No.
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8. Removing the Siemens Help Server
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9. Log files
The Siemens Help Server has log files that can help you diagnose problems if the server does not run
correctly.
The following log files are created and maintained by the Siemens Help Server.
• app.log
• errors.log
• exceptions.log
Elasticsearch logs information on all operations and failures in different log files. These log files are
located in <Install_location>/elasticsearch-<version>/logs folder. The information in the logs are used for
debugging.
The documentation installer also creates log files during the installation process. These log files are
located in <Unzip_location>/logs.
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9. Log files
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10. Troubleshooting
Here are some errors that you could possibly encounter during the installation process. The fixes for the
errors are listed.
Download and install the documentation for the product for which you want to view the help.
On opening a documentation zip with the Windows file archiver, the following error is displayed:
Windows cannot open the folder. The compressed (zipped) Folder <zip_file_name>
is invalid.
Unzip it using a non-Windows file archiver like 7-Zip.
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10. Troubleshooting
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11. Installation assistance
The Siemens Help Server installer and the documentation installer is designed to install and configure
the Siemens Help Server with minimum user intervention. However, if you run into any issues with the
installation and need help with the installation, you can file a request by navigating to the following
URL:
https://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/global/en/support/
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