Click the button for a New customization installation package to start two wizards in sequence. The two wizards are the Product Selection wizard and the Build Definition wizard.

Click the button to Open a build definition file. Opening an existing build definition starts the Build Definition wizard only. If change WAS ND, start a new customization installation package.

• Contain 35 or fewer characters on Windows platforms

• Start and end with English-only alphabetic characters (A-Z, a-z) or numbers (0-9) only

• Contain English-only alphabetic characters (A-Z, a-z), numbers (0-9), periods (.) or underscores (_) only

• Not contain special characters (such as à é í ö û æ ñ ☐)

• Not contain spaces or these characters: ~ ` ! @ # $ % ^ & ( ) { } [ ] | \ / : ; , ? ' " < = > + *

During the creation of a CIP, the maintenance packages are not validated for product appropriateness. When creating a CIP and bundling maintenance packages, therefore, make sure that the maintenance packages are for the correct product. If creating a WAS CIP and want to bundle maintenance packages, for example, make sure that the maintenance packages are for WebSphere Application Server rather than for any other product. If creating a feature pack CIP and want to bundle maintenance packages, make sure that the maintenance packages are for the feature pack rather than for any other product. Make sure that we are already at or above the application server version required by any feature pack maintenance packages or the CIP will not install correctly and you will be prompted to apply further maintenance.

The Build Definition wizard cannot verify the installation image, the maintenance packages, or any other files or scripts that you enter in disconnected mode. Always enter directory paths and file names in relation to the target operating system machine and not the machine we are using to create the build definition.

You can split, or span, a customized installation package image into multiple smaller images if the installation image contained in the CIP is also spannable. For example, if we are creating a CIP that contains WAS V7.0, we can split the resulting CIP into several images because the application server product image itself is spannable.

Specify the maximum size for each part you want to create. Different installation images might have different minimum sizes for spanned images. If you select a size which is too small we are alerted with an error message that indicates the minimum spanned size of that image. For example, if we are creating a CIP that contains WebSphere Application Server ND V7.0, we cannot split the image into sizes smaller than 335 MB.

Click Finish to save the build definition file on the Build Definition machine.

Avoid trouble: If the CIP contains a spanned installation image, then keep all of the spanned installation image directories in the same parent directory and name them by disc number, or DISC<disc_number>. For example, if we are creating a CIP which contains a spanned installation image, name the first disc image DISC1, the second disc DISC2, and so on. Each directory must contain a valid installation image or the CIP creation will fail.

The amount of time required to generate the CIP is dependent on the number of maintenance packages and the number of features that we are including in the package.