In a multiple cell environment you might want to use the
same HTTP server to send and receive HTTP and HTTPS requests for multiple
cells. To accomplish this setup, you must merge the web server plug-in
configuration files that are being used by the application servers
in those cells into a single web server plug-in configuration file.
About this task
You can use the following different configurations of
the application server to combine the plug-in configuration files
of multiple WebSphere® Application Server, Network Deployment cells
into a single configuration file.
This technique can also be
employed to merge all of the web server plug-in configuration files
into a single configuration file when you are migrating to a new release
of the product and need to route traffic to multiple cells running
an older version of WebSphere Application Server, Network Deployment as
well as the new version.
To create a single plug-in configuration
file for all of your cells, you must first create a separate plug-in
configuration file for each of the cells, and then combine these files
into a single configuration file. The web server plug-in for each
cell then uses the same web server plug-in configuration file.
Complete
the following steps to merge multiple web server plug-in configuration
files into a single configuration file.
- Use either the GenPluginCfg script, the administrative
console, or wsadmin scripting to generate the plugin-cfg.xml file
for each cell.
See the topic GenPluginCfg command for
a description of how to use the GenPluginCfg script to generate the plugin-cfg.xml file.
See
the topic Implementing a web server plug-in for a description
of how to use the administrative console to generate the plugin-cfg.xml file.
See
the topic Regenerating the node plug-in configuration using
scripting for a description of how to use wsadmin scripting
to generate the plugin-cfg.xml file.
- Merge the plugin-cfg.xml files from
multiple application server cells.
You can either manually
merge the plugin-cfg.xml files or use the pluginMerge
tool to automatically merge the plugin-cfg.xml file
from multiple application server profiles into a single output file.
The pluginMerge.bat and pluginMerge.sh files
are located in the install_root/bin directory.
Avoid trouble:
- The pluginMerge tool is provided in Fix Pack 7.0.0.13 for the
z/OS and distributed platforms, and in Fix Pack 7.0.0.17 for the IBM
i platform.
- newfeatStarting with Version 7.0.0.17, the name
of this tool has changed to pluginCfgMerge
gotcha
To use the pluginMerge
tool, complete the following steps:
- Rename the plugin-cfg.xml files to a unique
name across your application server cells.
- Copy the plugin-cfg.xml file for all application
server cell profiles into a common directory.
- Use the pluginMerge tool to combine the plugin-cfg.xml files
from each of the application server cells into a single output file.
For example:
install_root/bin/pluginMerge.sh plugin_configuration_file1 plugin_configuration_file2 resulting_plugin_configuration_file
newfeatinstall_root/bin/pluginCfgMerge.sh plugin_configuration_file1 plugin_configuration_file2 resulting_plugin_configuration_file
install_root\bin\pluginMerge.bat plugin_configuration_file1 plugin_configuration_file2 resulting_plugin_configuration_file
newfeatinstall_root\bin\pluginCfgMerge.bat plugin_configuration_file1 plugin_configuration_file2 resulting_plugin_configuration_file
The resulting_plugin_configuration_file variable
value is normally plugin-cfg.xml
For more information about manually merging the plugin-cfg.xml files,
see the technote on merging plugin-cfg.xml files
from multiple application server profiles.
- Ensure that the cloneID value for each application server
is unique.
Examine the cloneID value for each application
server in the merged file to ensure that this value is unique for
each application server. If the cloneID values in the merged file
are not all unique, or if you are running with memory to memory session
replication in peer to peer mode, use wsadmin scripting or the administrative
console to configure unique HTTP session cloneIDs.
To use wsadmin
commands for the Jython or Jacl programming language, see the documentation
on configuring a unique HTTP session clone ID for each application
server using scripting.
To configure a unique HTTP session
clone ID using the administrative console, complete the following
steps:
- Click Servers > Server Types > WebSphere
application servers > server_name.
- Under Container Settings, click Web Container
Settings > Web container.
- Under Additional Properties, click Custom
properties > New.
- Enter HttpSessionCloneId in the Name field,
and a unique value for the server in the Value field.
The unique value must be 8 - 9 alphanumeric characters in
length. For example, test1234 is a valid cloneID value.
- Click Apply or OK.
- Click Save to save the configuration
changes to the master configuration.
- Copy the merged plugin-cfg.xml file
to the plugin_installation_root/config/web_server_name/ directory
on the web server host.
- Ensure that you have
defined the correct operating system file access permissions for the
merged plugin-cfg.xml file. These
file access permissions allow the HTTP server plug-in process to read
the file.
Results
When you complete this process, you have one plug-in configuration
file for multiple application server cells, and can use the same HTTP
server to handle HTTP and HTTPS requests for multiple cells.