To design a robust deployment environment, you need to
understand the functionality each cluster can provide in a particular
IBM-supplied deployment environment pattern or a custom deployment
environment. This knowledge can help you make the correct decisions
as to which deployment environment pattern best meets your needs.
For network deployment, clusters can collaborate to provide specific
functionality to the environment. Depending on your requirements,
you assign specific functions to each cluster within the deployment
environment, to provide performance, failover, and capacity.
IBM-supplied deployment environment patterns
The
clusters configured in a deployment environment pattern provide these
functions:
- Application deployment target
- Consists of a cluster to which you install applications. Depending
on which deployment environment pattern you choose, the application
deployment target may also provide messaging infrastructure and supporting
infrastructure functions.
In a single cluster pattern, the application deployment target
provides the entire functionality of the deployment environment.
- Supporting infrastructure
- Consists of a cluster that hosts the Common Event Infrastructure
(CEI) server and other infrastructure services used to manage your
system.
Important: You must use a custom profile with the
same product functionality for this node as you did for the application
deployment target cluster.
- Messaging infrastructure
- Consists of a cluster where the messaging engines are located.
The messaging engines enable communication amongst the nodes in the
deployment environment. Your cluster can consist of members on nodes
created with WebSphere® Application Server instead
of WebSphere ESB if
the cluster solely provides the messaging function.
Custom deployment environments
Custom deployment
environments allow for more varying topologies. If you need more processing
capabilities for applications, if you need to spread the supporting
infrastructure functions over more clusters, or if you need to consolidate
supporting infrastructure for several servers or clusters onto one
cluster, you can achieve this with custom deployment environments.
You
divide the function amongst clusters using collaborative units.
Collaborative units allow functions to be spread depending on your
needs onto different clusters and servers that work together as a
unit to further increase isolation, function consolidation, throughput
capabilities and failover.
The administrative console groups
collaborative units as follows:
- Messaging
- Messaging units provide the same support as the messaging infrastructure
for an IBM-supplied deployment environment pattern. There is a server
within the cluster that contains a local messaging engine and the
other servers and clusters within the unit use that messaging engine
as a destination for messages.
- Common Event Infrastructure
- Common Event Infrastructure units consist of the server hosting
the CEI server and other clusters and servers that support the CEI
functions. Common base events received at each cluster or server in
the unit are routed to the server hosting the CEI server. Use as many
collaborative units as your deployment environment needs to host more
CEI servers to isolate events from different event sources
- Application support
- Application support units are similar to the supporting infrastructure
for an IBM-supplied deployment environment pattern. They group clusters
and servers onto which you are deploying your applications. They
differ in that they allow for more than one Service Component Architecture
(SCA) support cluster to be defined in a deployment environment by
defining more collaborative units. One unit defines one or more SCA
support clusters and support applications to be defined on the same
or different clusters in that unit.