Book Image

IBM WebSphere Application Server 8.0 Administration Guide

By : Steve Robinson
Book Image

IBM WebSphere Application Server 8.0 Administration Guide

By: Steve Robinson

Overview of this book

Administrators require a secure, scalable, and resilient application infrastructure to support the development of JEE applications and SOA services. IBM’s WebSphere Application Server is optimized for this task, and this book will ensure that you can utilize all that this tool has to offer with the exciting new features of IBM WebSphere Application Server 8.0.IBM WebSphere Application Server 8.0 Administration Guide is fully revised with details of the new functionality of WebSphere Application Server 8.0, including the new installation GUI, managed deployment, and HPEL. With this book in hand, you will be equipped to provide an innovative, performance-based foundation to build, run, and manage JEE applications and SOA services.IBM WebSphere Application Server 8.0 has been tuned for higher performance out of the box, and numerous enhancements have been made to give you as an administrator more options for increasing runtime performance. This book will allow you to utilize all of these features, including HPEL logging and disabling WebSphere MQ Messaging. You will be taken through how to configure and prepare WebSphere resources for your application deployments, and by the end of IBM WebSphere Application Server 8.0 Administration Guide, you will be able to successfully manage and tune your WebSphere 8.0 implementation.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
IBM WebSphere Application Server 8.0 Administration Guide
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

WebSphere Application Server terminology


Throughout this book we will be referring to WAS-specific terminology. There are some key points and terms we need to clarify to aid in understanding WAS as we discuss the finer points of WAS administration. The following section outlines important keywords and terminology, referred to in later chapters.

Runtime binaries

The core product files are the actual product binary files, and can be shared by many profiles. The directory structure for the product has two major divisions of files in the installation root directory for the product. One division is the runtime binaries and the other is for profiles. We will discuss this in detail in Chapter 2, Installing WebSphere Application Server.

Profiles

A profile is an 'instance' of a WebSphere Application Server configuration. A profile contains its own set of administration scripts, its own environment, its own repository, and its own node agent. Many profiles can be created from a single install. Profiles can be installed to share runtime binaries allowing multiple profiles to benefit from a single maintenance update. It is also possible to allow each profile to have its own copy of the runtime binaries allowing profiles to update independently.

An example of using multiple profiles might be that a developer needs to create separate profiles of the product in order to segregate development and testing, each profile being based on a different fix-pack level, and/or containing specific configuration settings. In the following chapters, we will explain profiles in more detail.

Cells

A unit of management is a Cell. The entire administrative configuration data is stored in XML files containing the master configuration of the Cell. It is also a grouping of nodes into a single administrative domain. For WebSphere Application Server, it means you group (federate) several servers within a Cell, then you can administer them with a single administrative console. Federating multiple application servers into a single administrative console is covered in Chapter 9, Administrative Features.

The following diagram outlines the components of a Cell:

Nodes

A node is the term which can be given to the physical OS instance on which the WebSphere process will run. Another important term related to nodes is the Node Agent. Node Agents are responsible for spawning or killing server processes and also configuration synchronization between the Deployment Manager and the Node in the WebSphere Network Deployment product.

When using WebSphere Application Server, there is no node agent process available for a standalone application server node, unless you decide to federate the application server node with a Deployment Manager for a given Cell of an existing WebSphere Network Deployment installation. In short, a standalone installation of a WebSphere is in fact a single Cell, Node, Node Agent, and Server all in one.

It can be quite confusing at times, because WAS is designed for scalability and extension, so depending on the version of WAS purchased, you can extend its architecture and infrastructure footprint. Some of these terms come into their own once you upgrade to WebSphere Network Deployment and other extended variants of WAS.

Since version 7, the administrative agent has become available. This provides a single interface to administer multiple standalone application servers. Multiple servers may exist for development, test, staging, pre-production, and so forth, thus having a single administration console to manage many servers provides administrators with new capability.

Servers

Each standalone Application Server node needs to run a JVM in which a deployed JEE application will run. With WAS base, each profile will have a single JVM. In WAS ND, we can have multiple JVMs per node, which is part of the highly-available design architecture of WAS ND. You could say an installation of a standalone WebSphere application server is a cell, a node, and a server with a single JVM all in one along with an administration console.