Concepts: FileNet P8 domain

The FileNet P8 domain represents a logical grouping of physical resources and the Content Engine servers providing access to those resources. Each resource and server belong to only one domain. A server can access any resource in the domain, but cannot access any resource that lies outside of the domain.

The FileNet P8 domain is associated with one or more Java™ 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) security policy domains. The J2EE domain is used to authenticate users and establish their group memberships. The identity and group membership of the user determine which FileNet P8 domain objects the user can access.

A FileNet P8 domain has the following characteristics:

The Global Configuration Database

The Global Configuration Database (GCD) contains definitions of the common set of attributes that control functional characteristics of the collection of resources and services for the FileNet P8 domain it represents. The GCD provides hierarchical object storage and contains bootstrap data and global configuration information for the FileNet P8 domain. The GCD defines domain resources such as object store databases, full-text index areas, fixed content storage areas, content cache areas, feature add-ons, and marking sets.

The GCD can contain sensitive information. Only specified users or groups (typically an administrator) have read and write access to the data contained within it.

FileNet P8 domain structure

The FileNet P8 domain contains the following entities. Although there is no limit to the number of entities a single FileNet P8 domain can contain, there are practical and performance issues to be considered. These issues, if applicable, are discussed in the help topics related to each entity.

Inheritance

You configure the domain in the context of a server hierarchy. The server hierarchy consists of the following levels (shown in order from highest to lowest level):

domain > site > virtual server > server

The order of the objects indicates ownership. Specifically, a server belongs to a virtual server, a virtual server belongs to a site, and a site belongs to a domain. An owned object can inherit a configuration from the owner object. Consequently, the configuration that you define at the domain level can optionally cascade down to all levels. Alternatively, you can selectively override inheritance and define the configuration for an owned object. For example, you can define the configuration for site A to be independent of the configuration for the domain while still allowing the configuration for site B to be inherited from the domain. Your configuration for site A can optionally cascade down to all objects that directly or indirectly belong to site A.

Creating and adding a server instance to a FileNet P8 domain

You can add a J2EE application server instance to an existing FileNet P8 domain if the server instance is a member of the J2EE application server farm in which the FileNet P8 domain resides. See Installing and configuring Content Engine for instructions for installing and deploying Content Engine on additional servers.

You must ensure that the J2EE application cluster (that is, the virtual server) names and server instance names are unique within the topology in which the FileNet P8 domain is configured. Content Engine virtual server and server instance objects are dynamically created in the GCD during system initialization; the object names are derived from the names assigned to the J2EE application cluster and server instances. Non-unique names can occur under the following conditions:

If you have non-unique J2EE application cluster (that is, virtual server) names or server instance names, you can add the appropriate Java™ Virtual Machine (JVM) property to the command line that starts the J2EE application server instance that has the duplicate name:
com.filenet.gcd.VirtualServerName=myUniquelyNamedVirtualServer
com.filenet.gcd.ServerInstanceName=myUniquelyNamedServerInstance

where myUniquelyNamedVirtualServer is the name you assigned to the J2EE application cluster (that is, virtual server) and myUniquelyNamedServerInstance is the name you assign to the application server instance.

Backup and recovery considerations

If the database server hosting the GCD is lost, the FileNet P8 domain can no longer be accessed; therefore, it is important to back up the GCD. See Back up Content Engine for more information about backing up the GCD.