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6.1: Quick reference for administration

6.1: Quick reference for administration

The administrative model for Advanced Edition (non-Single Server) is summarized graphically below. Click the name of a resource to view the entry point to the documentation for the administering the resource.

See below for further discussion of the administrative model depicted here.

Advanced Edition administrative topology

As shown above, and in the tree views of the administrative console and other graphical administrative tools, the WebSphere administrative domain is comprised of several resource types, arranged in a hierarchy of containment relationships.

Discussion

The administrative nodes contain one or more application servers, plus several resources that transcend application servers (such as those related to JDBC support) or are separate from application servers (such as generic servers). The WebSphere plug-ins for the supported Web servers also require administration. Finally, logical server groups can be established for distributing workload among multiple, cloned application servers.

One way to classify resources in the administrative model is by whether they can have a meaningful status, such as running or stopped. Few resource types have a status; most are static entities.

An enterprise application consists EJB modules, Web modules, and application clients. It can reside on any application server. An application installed into multiple application servers can be running in some servers, but stopped in others. Because of the possible mix of states of its instances, it is not meaningful to say whether an application (as the collection of all of its instances) is running or stopped. Therefore, an enterprise application is a static entity.

In contrast, the EJB, Web, and application client modules comprising each enterprise application are truly active objects, each of which has a valid status.

A server group is a static entity that consists of one or more clones. Usually, some clones are running while others are not. Therefore, it is not meaningful to assign a status to the overall server group.

Want to learn more about a specific resource in the administrative model? ...

Documentation for each resource type

The documentation entry point for each resource type includes:

  • An overview of administering the resource type
  • Links to instructions for using the relevant administrative tools to administer the resource
  • Links to field descriptions for configuring the properties of the resource
  • Links to conceptual information answering "What is this resource type?"

Again, access the entry points by clicking a text label in the administrative model shown above. You can also access the list of available entry points under section 6.6 in the table of contents on the left side of the InfoCenter.

What are "resources"?

In this documentation, the term resource is used loosely to describe a logical set of properties that can be administered, such as settings for session support using the Session Manager service. Resources range from being complex objects that can be started and stopped, such as application servers, to simple groups of related settings, such as the properties for configuring transaction support. The latter "resource" can be administered using a certain tabbed page in the application server properties dialog. However, to aid retrieval of information about transaction support specifically, it has a separate focus in the documentation.

The set of resources outlined in the documentation varies somewhat in granularity from the administrative model portrayed in the administrative tools, geared towards helping you map activities (to administer transaction support, to administer HTTP session support, to administer Java messaging support, and so on) onto the specific resources and hierarchy of the WebSphere administrative model.

  • For example, as shown above, an application server contains several services. The application server is represented in the tree view of the administrative console, but the individual services are not. Each service has a set of properties that you can configure, with its own entry point in the documentation for quicker, more targeted entry to the information about the service.
  • In other cases, resources in the administrative model are grouped together in the documentation because of their close relationship. For example, JMS providers, JMS connection factories, and JMS destinations are grouped under the heading "JMS support" because you might know that you want to configure Java messaging (JMS), without knowing the specific names of these JMS resources yet.

Administrative domain administration Administrative node administration Administrative domain administration Resource provider administration JDBC support administration URL support administration JavaMail support administration J2C administration Messaging (JMS) administration Web module administration EJB module administration Enterprise application administration Performance monitoring and tuning OLT and Debugger administration ORB service administration Transaction support administration Trace, message, and log administration Custom service administration Session Manager administration Application server administration Application server administration HTTP transport administration Web module administration Web container service administration EJB container service administration EJB module administration Resource Analyzer administration Virtual host administration Security administration Generic server administration Web server administration Web server administration Application server administration Server group administration
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