WebSphere Extended Deployment, Version 6.0.x
             Operating Systems: AIX, HP-UX, Linux, Solaris, Windows, z/OS


Configuring an application to use the ObjectGrid HTTP session manager

Use this task to configure the ObjectGrid-based HTTP session manager to replace the default HTTP session manager that ships with the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) server that you are using.

Before you begin

Configure your application to use the ObjectGrid HTTP session manager after you develop your application, but before deploying the application. The application must contain web modules that use HTTP sessions as governed by the J2EE specification. When you switch to using session management over the ObjectGrid topology, the sessions for this application are served by the ObjectGrid HTTP session manager and are persisted in the underlying ObjectGrid server topology.

About this task

Consider using the ObjectGrid session manager in the following scenarios:
  • Your environment is in a classic migration scenario that consists of application servers that are at different versions of WebSphere Application Server or WebSphere Extended Deployment.
  • Your environment has deployments using application servers that are from different vendors. For example, you might be developing applications on an open source application server, but hosting the applications on WebSphere Application Server. Consider this scenario also when you are moving applications from staging phase to production phase. You can seamlessly migrate the application while all HTTP sessions are active and serviced.
  • Your environment requires session persistence with higher quality of service (QoS) levels and better session availability during server failover than the default session manager.
  • Your environment cannot guarantee session affinity, or affinity in your environment is controlled by a third-party load balancer that needs a customized affinity mechanism.
  • You need to offload the overhead of session management and storage to an external Java virtual machine (JVM).
  • You want session failover in multiple cell environments.
For more information about the ObjectGrid session manager, see ObjectGrid HTTP session manager .

Procedure

  1. Copy the sessionobjectgrid.jar and ogclient.jar files from the WebSphere Extended Deployment product into the application servers that are hosting the new ObjectGrid-based HTTP session management enabled application.
    • If you are using a WebSphere Application Server Version 6.x installation: Copy the sessionobjectgrid.jar and ogclient.jar files into the /classes folder. Restart the server.
    • If you are using WebSphere Application Server Version 5.x or a third-party application server: Copy the sessionobjectgrid.jar and ogclient.jar files into the WEB-INF/lib folder of the deployed application on the application server file system. You might need to restart the server and application.
  2. Modify your application to use the new HTTP session manager over ObjectGrid. See Modifying an application to use the ObjectGrid HTTP session manager for more information.
  3. Deploy your application to the application servers.
  4. Verify that the objectgrid.cluster.xml file has been customized according to the details of the ObjectGrid server cluster and is available at the application Web deployment description location.
  5. If you are running a remote ObjectGrid server or cluster topology, start up the ObjectGrid server or cluster.
  6. Start the application and the application server.
  7. Start accessing the application with a browser or any other HTTP client.

Results

The HTTP sessions in your environment are managed by the ObjectGrid HTTP session manager. The sessions are persisted in ObjectGrid. If an application server that is serving HTTP requests fails, the on demand router (ODR) routes those requests to an alternate server.



Related concepts
ObjectGrid HTTP session manager
Related tasks
Modifying an application to use the ObjectGrid HTTP session manager
Related reference
Servlet context initialization parameters
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Last updated: Nov 30, 2007 4:06:03 PM EST
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