Supported configurations Questions and Answers

In what cases is IHS use licensed/supported?

The answer depends on how you got IHS.

  1. If you acquire IHS bundled with an IBM product, then IHS is licensed only for use in support of that product, and supported only when used according to the recommendations/documentation of that product
  2. If you acquire IHS via the free web download, then IHS is licensed for any use, but is not supported for any use
  3. If you acquire IHS from the z/OS "ported tools" product, then IHS is licensed and supported for any use

Under some circumstances, your sales representative may be able to arrange for "standalone support" of IBM HTTP Server, which carries detailed terms and conditions.

When another vendor lists IBM HTTP Server as a "supported webserver", this is a statement of their own support position in terms of interoperability, and has no bearing on entitlement to support with IBM.

Can I use the IBM HTTP Server proxy feature?

Finally, customers using Proxy functionality are encouraged to move to IHS 7.0 if possible. This is partially due to the higher quality proxy support in Apache 2.2.x and partially due to IHS 7.0 being more recently "rebased" then previous releases.

What's a recommended HTTP proxy server?

IBM develops, tests, and supports IBM HTTP Server as webserver solution, with the WebSphere Plugin as a specialized form of proxy. There is no investment in the generic HTTP Proxy server (mod_proxy). Other dedicated HTTP proxy serves will often be a better fit when the proxy usage isn't some small amount of "glue" in an otherwise IHS+Plugin WAS topology.

Does IHS support my virtualization technology of choice?

IHS is supported on any virtualization technology that runs a supported, unmodified, operating system. We assume any usage question or defect report is virtualization-agnostic until evidence shows otherwise, and won't ask customers to recreate an issue natively unless we suspect the problem is unique to the virtualization environment.

Technote #1242532 formally covers the virtualization policy for WebSphere Application Server (including IHS).

We don't have any tips for the tuning the guest or hypervisor for IHS.