Creating a clustered environment

Creating a clustered environment enhances the failover and scaling characteristics of WebSphere Process Server applications. To establish a clustered environment, you and your team will perform the described steps.

Before you begin

There are a number of things you should do before creating a clustered environment:

Why and when to perform this task

Create a clustered environment when your application requires more capacity and availability than a single server provides. The clustered environment provides these additional benefits:
Workload balancing
By running application images on multiple servers, a cluster balances an application workload across the servers in the cluster.
Processing power for the application
You can add processing power to your application by configuring additional server hardware as cluster members supporting the application.
Application availability
When a server fails the application continues to process work on the other servers in the cluster thereby allowing recovery efforts to proceed without impacting application users.
Maintainability
You can stop a server for planned maintenance without stopping application processing.
Flexibility
You can add or remove capacity as needed by using the administrative console.
Note: A list of related tasks is included at the bottom of this page. The title of any related tasks for a particular step is contained as a parenthetical comment for that step. If you are unfamiliar with the task, see the related topic for additional information.

Steps for this task

  1. Design the cell.
    1. Lay out the topology of the cell. Determine what physical and logical resources are needed for the cell.
    2. Decide whether to use databases or schemas for the various components of the cell.
    3. Decide if there is a need for monitored events and which servers should host the monitored events.
  2. Create other databases needed by the cell, such as:
    1. The database (and schemas) to be used by the messaging engines of WebSphere Platform Messaging when you use the default messaging provider.
    2. Optional: The databases (or schema) to be used as the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) repositories. (Configuring Business Process Choreographer)
    3. Optional: The database (or schema) to be used for the event database. (Configuring the Common Event Infrastructure)
  3. Optional: Create the cluster that handles monitored events, if you need monitored events.
    1. Create the cluster with cluster members using the default WebSphere Process Server template.
    2. Using the cluster you are configuring as the target and the Common Event Infrastructure (CEI) database created in 2.c, install the CEI application, and install the message-driven bean (MDB) application. (Configuring the Common Event Infrastructure)
  4. Optional: Create the cluster that handles administration applications, if the application contains business rules or selectors and the application requires modification to the rules or selectors after you deploy the application.
    Note: If you have determined that administration of business rules and selectors will be deployed to clusters that handle other WebSphere Process Server components, you can combine this step with either step 3 or step 6.
    1. Create the cluster with cluster members using the default WebSphere Process Server Template.
    2. Use the Advanced Configuration panel to deploy the business rules manager server.
  5. Configure messaging for the cluster.
    Note: If you have determined that administration messaging will be handled by clusters that handle other WebSphere Process Server components, you can combine this step with either step 3, step 4, or step 6.
    Important: This step must be completed before installing the first service application in the cluster.
    1. Create the cluster using the default WebSphere Process Server template.
    2. Select Default Destination Location on the Advanced Configuration panel.
    3. Add the cluster as a member of the Event bus.

      Use the data source you created in step 2.c. If in step 1.b you decided to use multiple schemas in a single database, select the correct schema when configuring the messaging engine data source.

    4. Add the cluster as a bus member of the Business Process Choreographer bus.

      Use the data source you created in step 2.b. If in step 1.b you decided to use multiple schemas in a single database, select the correct schema when configuring the messaging engine data source.

  6. Create the cluster for service applications.
    1. Create the cluster with cluster members using the default WebSphere Process Server template
    2. Use the Advanced Configuration panel to select the messaging cluster.

      When combining this step with step 5, select the default messaging cluster as stated in that step. Otherwise, select the correct option and choose the cluster you created in 5.

    3. Optional: Configure Business Process Choreographer support using the databases or schemas created in step 2.b. (Configuring Business Process Choreographer)

      Perform this step when an application contains Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) or business state machine components.

    4. Optional: Use the Advanced Configuration panel to select the Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) name of the emitter factory profile to associate the cluster with the emitter factory profile you created in step 2.c.

Result

When you start the servers and any installed applications, they will start normally.

What to do next

You can now install applications on the cluster.

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Last updated: Thu Apr 27 14:35:54 2006

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