When planning your batch environment, consider certain factors that can help you design your environment to best suit your needs.
Before you build your environment, carefully consider the goals that you want to accomplish. For example, you can install the product in an existing cell or build a new cell. Also, you must decide what relational database to use, the security you need, and what your availability requirements are. The following sections contain information about each of these considerations.
You can choose to install Feature Pack for Modern Batch in an existing WebSphere® Application Server cell or you can build a new cell entirely. Your choice depends on whether you want a new environment isolated from any existing WebSphere Application Server environment, or whether you want to add the capabilities of batch to an existing environment.
Install Feature Pack for Modern Batch onWebSphere Application Server nodes where you want to activate the job scheduler or batch container functions. Also install Feature Pack for Modern Batch on the deployment manager node.
For all batch environments, you must deploy the job scheduler on a WebSphere Application Server server or cluster. To set up an environment to host transactional batch or compute-intensive job types, you must deploy the batch container to at least one WebSphere Application Server server or cluster. The transactional batch, compute-intensive applications, or both are installed on the same WebSphere Application Server server or cluster.
The job scheduler and batch container both require access to a relational database. The relational database used is JDBC connected. Access to the relational database is through the underlying WebSphere Application Server connection management facilities. The relational databases supported are the same as those relational databases supported by WebSphere Application Server, including DB2®, Oracle, and others.
The simple file-based Apache Derby database is automatically configured for you by default so that you can quickly get a functioning environment up and running. However, do not use the Derby database for production use. Moreover, the default Derby database does not support a clustered job scheduler, nor a clustered batch container.
A highly available environment includes both a clustered job scheduler, and one or more clustered batch containers. Clustering requires a network database. Use production grade databases such as DB2for this purpose. Network Derby works also, but lacks the robustness necessary for production purposes. Do not use the network version in production.
Limitation: All batch containers in the same cell must use the same relational database type.
Use clustering for high availability of batch components. Deploy and operate on clusters using the job scheduler and batch container.
Use typical application clustering techniques with the job scheduler to ensure that it is highly available. The job scheduler supports multiple methods of access to its APIs: Web application, command line, web service, and Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB). Ensuring that highly available network access to a clustered job scheduler depends on which job scheduler API access method. The batch container is made highly available by deploying it to a cluster. The job scheduler automatically recognizes the batch container is clustered and takes advantage of it to ensure a highly available execution environment for the batch jobs that run there.