Reducing the size of IBM installation media with the IBM Packaging Utility

This came up on Twitter earlier today: -

vanstaub How and why I reduced the #WebSpherePortal installation media from 17GB to around 3GB https://t.co/13nxxcHa #ibmportal 25/01/2013 14:33

The author, Van Staub, has written a rather neat article on IBM developWorks - Reducing the size of IBM installation media with the IBM Packaging Utility - which is definitely worth a read: -

 Recently, I received an inquiry on reducing the size of the installation media for WebSphere Portal 8.  An administrator had downloaded ~17GB of installation media consisting of:

• IBM WebSphere Portal

• IBM WebSphere Application Server ND

• IBM WAS Supplements

• IBM WAS FP005

• IBM WAS FP005 Supplements

 This was simply too much data to transmit or maintain as they conducted installations in the field.  So I created the user story below and sought a way to reduce the installation media's size as much as possible.

Check it out, it's worth your time AND disk space :-)