Installing Enterprise Developer in an Offline Environment

Enterprise Developer is typically installed on a machine which is connected to the internet. This makes it easier for the installers to access and download any prerequisites, and that the Enterprise Developer installer validates the required certificates.

However, in order to install in an offline environment, an administrator with internet access needs to prepare the installation by making sure all of the required installers, certificates, and licenses are available to the 'offline' machine.

Preparing the installation

  1. Visual Studio - an administrator with internet access needs to prepare an offline installation of Visual Studio to make available to the offline machine. Refer to Visual Studio Subscriptions (formally known as MSDN) for instructions on this - a link to the creation of a Visual Studio 2019 offline installer is listed below.

    The following table includes the mandatory components required within an installer. (These are the component names added using the --add parameter.)

    Component name Display name
    Microsoft.Net.Component.4.5.TargetingPack .NET Framework 4.5 targeting pack
    Microsoft.Net.Component.4.5.2.TargetingPack .NET Framework 4.5.2 targeting pack
    Microsoft.Net.Component.4.6.1.TargetingPack .NET Framework 4.6.1 targeting pack
    Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Debugger.JustInTime Just-In-Time Debugger
    Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.GraphDocument DGML editor
    Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.NuGet NuGet package manager
    Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Windows10SDK.17763 Windows 10 SDK (10.0.17763.0)
    Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.DockerTools Container development tools
    Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VisualStudioData Data sources and service references (Server Explorer)

    The following table includes the optional components, depending on how you plan to use your COBOL development product:

    Component name Display name
    Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Web .NET Web development
    Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.ManagedDesktop.Core .NET Desktop Development (e.g. WPF)
    Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.Azure Azure development
    Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Wcf.Tooling Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
    Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.SQL.SSDT SQL Server Development (e.g. SQL CLR)
    Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.NetCoreTools .NET Core development
    Note: It is recommended that all of these components are included in the installation layout.
  2. Digital certificates - a number of certificates need to be made available for manual installation in the offline environment:
    • DigiCert certificates: if you have access to an already-installed version of Enterprise Developer on the network, open the Certificate Manager on that machine, locate the following two certificates in the Trusted Root Certification Authorities folder, and export them somewhere accessible. If you do not have access to a working version of Enterprise Developer, you can download these certificates from the Digicert website (https://www.digicert.com/digicert-root-certificates.htm).
      DigiCert Assured ID Root CA       Valid until: 10/Nov/2031 
      Serial #: 0C:E7:E0:E5:17:D8:46:FE:8F:E5:60:FC:1B:F0:30:39 
      Thumbprint: 0563B8630D62D75ABBC8AB1E4BDFB5A899B24D43 
      Demo Sites for Root:  Active Certificate   expired   revoked 
       
      DigiCert SHA2 Assured ID Code Signing CA           Issuer: DigiCert Assured ID Root 
      CA 
      Valid until: 22/Oct/2028 
      Serial #: 04:09:18:1B:5F:D5:BB:66:75:53:43:B5:6F:95:50:08 
      Thumbprint: 92C1588E85AF2201CE7915E8538B492F605B80C6 

      After installing the required certificates, you need to download the following Certificate Revocation List files and copy them on the offline machine:

      • http://crl3.digicert.com/sha2-assured-cs-g1.crl
      • http://crl3.digicert.com/DigiCertAssuredIDRootCA.crl

      Execute the following commands on the offline machine with Administrator's privileges to add the CRL into the certificate store:

      certmgr -add -crl sha2-assured-cs-g1.crl -s -r localmachine CA
      certmgr -add -crl DigiCertAssuredIDRootCA.crl -s -r localmachine CA
    • Microsoft certificates: The required certificates are placed in the certificates sub-folder of the Visual Studio layout folder you created in the previous step. For more information on these, click here.
  3. Micro Focus licenses: if you are using license files to license each product, make these available; otherwise each offline installation will have to authorize the product manually, with the help of a computer that is online; see Authorizing your product manually in the Micro Focus License Administration Help.

Running the installation on the offline client machine:

  1. Run the offline installation of Visual Studio.
  2. Install the certificates in the Certificate manager - the DigiCert root certificate needs to be installed in the Trusted Root Certification Authorities folder, and the DigiCert Code Signing certificate needs to be installed in the Intermediate Certification Authorities folder.
  3. Run the Enterprise Developer installation, appending the skipmstools=1 parameter.
  4. License the product using the License Administration tool.