System configuration options

The component-based structure of Partner Gateway means that it can be configured in a variety of ways--from a single-server configuration to a redundant configuration for high performance or failover support--to meet the needs of your business.

For example, you can install the Partner Gateway components on one server and the prerequisite programs on another, with a firewall in front of each server. Or, you can divide the components and programs among three servers.

To achieve scalability and high performance, you might divide the components and programs among six servers. The following illustration shows such a configuration. Two servers contain instances of the Receiver and the Console, two servers contain the Document Manager, one server contains WebSphere MQ, and one server contains the DB2 database. Firewalls are set up between servers as illustrated. Note that network-attached storage, while recommended, is not required.

Figure 7. A sample WebSphere Partner Gateway configuration.
A sample WebSphere Partner Gateway configuration with six serversA sa

All of the components in Partner Gateway are designed to scale both horizontally and vertically, where horizontal scaling is characterized as running multiple instances across multiple servers, and vertical scaling is characterized as adding processing power to a single server.

Having the ability to run any of the components on any server allows for greater flexibility with regard to scaling the system. I/O or compute-intensive components can be deployed on servers optimized for their needs. Also, the shared work queue mechanism allows each component to scale independently of other components.

Copyright IBM Corp. 2003, 2005