WebSphere Portal v6 on iSeries Plan considerations

 

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  1. Overview
  2. Planning for security
  3. Plan for backup and recovery
  4. Clustering considerations
  5. Verify software levels
  6. Software that can be installed on the portal machine
  7. Related information

 

Overview

Developers should have access to their own portal environment for unit testing and to minimize contention over resources.

The integration and staging environment should mimic the intended production environment, including the platform, database, and operating system levels. The staging environment should imitate the type of traffic and load that are expected against the production environment. Promotion of applications from development to integration to staging and from staging to production needs to be tightly managed for quality assurance and version control.

The production environment should be designed for redundancy and failover and workload distribution.

We can transfer data from any supported database type to any supported database type. This means that the source database does not have to be IBM Cloudscape. To transfer data between supported databases, edit the wpconfig_sourceDb.properties file and update it with the source databases information. This file is a copy of wpconfig_dbdomain.properties that is created automatically during install. We can choose to transfer a single domain or multiple domains.

In a setup that consists of multiple lines of production, community data is kept in a database that is shared across the lines of production. Therefore the data is automatically in sync across the lines of production.

The list of supported database domains includes:

DB domain Sharable Storage method
Configuration no file system
Release no database
Customization yes database
Community yes database
JCR yes database
Feedback yes database
LikeMinds yes database
WMM yes database

The separation of the domains will be used to support customer production setups, where the production nodes are split into separate clusters. They can run independently, but share the same JCR, Community, and Customization database domains. Each of these clusters is called a line of production.

For maintenance and staging purposes you may take a single line of production out of service while the other line is still serving requests with the old data. Once the first production line is updated it is taken into service again, and the second line is now updated using the same approach. Updates of data in the shared domain are critical because they will influence the other production line.

The capacity of the entire environment should be greater than the intended use so that individual servers can be taken out of production without affecting application availability.

Consult the WebSphere Portal Performance Tuning Guide when scaling a system for optimum performance.

To ensure that all of the system resources are available for the portal, production systems should be dedicated to the portal and should not run any other server software that is not related to the portal.

decision chart

 

Planning for security

When you are ready to configure security, decide which authentication scheme to use...

We cannot use Cloudscape as a custom user registry or a database user registry for authentication. Use other supported database software, such as, but not limited to, IBM DB2 Universal Database Enterprise Server Edition.

If you plan to use external manager security software, use an LDAP server or an LDAP + Lookaside database for authentication.

 

Plan for backup and recovery

As with any production-critical programs, you should plan for backup and recovery in the event of a system crash. As it becomes available, additional information about backup and recovery will be posted on the Web. Refer to http://www.ibm.com/websphere/portal/library for the latest documentation.

 

Clustering considerations

Use both vertical and horizontal clustering in a production environment

The production environment should use vertical clustering to take full advantage of the resources of a multiprocessor system. In addition, it should make use of horizontal cloning to allow for upward scalability.

To maximize security, horizontal clones should reside in different geographic locations to guard against natural disaster or site outages.

For redundancy, failover, and simpler maintenance, WebSphere Portal may be installed in several clusters, or lines of production, sharing some common data through the database

 

Verify software levels

Here are three commands we can issue to determine if the system's software is at the recommended level:

GO LICPGM Display all the installed licensed programs
wrkptfgrp Display and allow you to work with all installed PTF groups
dspptf Display PTF status; for example, temporarily or permanently applied

 

Software that can be installed on the portal machine

Software Required, optional, or not recommended on the portal machine? Recommendation
Operating system Required. i5/OS V5R3, or i5/OS V5R4 with 64 bit JVM is required to install and use WebSphere Portal - Enable for iSeries. The iSeries server must be in an unrestricted state, and the user profile should be user type (user class) *SECOFR. 5722SS1 i5/OS V5R3 with cumulative PTF group SF99530level 5298 or later
5722999 i5/OS V5R4 with 64 bit JVM with cumulative PTF group SF99540 level 6024
JVM 64 bit Required. i5/OS V5R4 Copy of JVM will be installed with Portal software
JDKit 1.4 Required. Necessary for Java development. 5722JV1
Host servers Required. Required for remote installation. 5733SS1 (Option 12) Host Servers
QShell interpreter Required. Required to use scripts in WAS, prior to local installation of WebSphere Portal . 5722SS1 (Option 30) QShell Interpreter
Application environment Required. Required before configuring WebSphere Portal 5722SS1 (Option 33) Portable Application Solution Environment (PASE)
5722SS1 (Option 43) OS/400 Additional Fonts (supports Xserver Virtual Frame Buffer)

These options are available on the iSeries product CD.

HTTP server Required. Not needed for installation, but required to support requests for servlets and JSP resources that you want to be handled by an HTTP server residing natively on iSeries. If you plan to deploy only enterprise beans, it is not needed. 5722DG1 HTTP Server for iSeries IBM HTTP Web server versions 2.0.47.1, 6.0, 6.01 and 6.02 support OS/400 Lotus Domino Enterprise Server versions 6.0.3, 6.0.5, 6.5.1, or 6.5.4 support OS/400
TCP/IP Required. Required if you plan to use TCP/IP as the network protocol. 5722TC1 TCP/IP Utilities
Application server Required. WAS must be installed before installing WebSphere Portal.WAS and WebSphere Portal must be installed on the same machine.

5724-J08 WAS V6.0.2.9 or later
5724-H88 WAS Network Deployment V6.0.2.9 or later
5724-i63 WAS V6.0.2.9 or later Express

Application server - Client Required. Necessary for client development and run time. 5733W51 (Option 1) WAS Client development and run time
Application server - Run time Required. Necessary for application server run time. 5733W51 (Option 2) WAS run time
Application server - Samples Required. Necessary for application server samples. 5733W51 (Option 3) WAS samples
iSeries tools Required. Necessary for iSeries 5799PTL iSeries Tools for Developers PRPQ (or OS/400 - Additional Fonts (5722SS1, Option 43) equivalent)
Database Required. After installing WebSphere Portal. The type of database is the choice.

Cloudscape is installed with WebSphere Portal, and DB2 configuration tasks are provided after the initial portal install. But use any database that can run on iSeries.

OS/400 DB/2 comes natively with iSeries
Network deployment Optional: Not required for installation. 5724-H88 WAS Network Deployment V6.0.2.9 or later
Digital Certificate Manager Optional: Not required for installation, but required if you plan to use SSL protocol. 5722SS1 (Option 34) Digital Certificate Manager (Refer to WAS, using SSL)
Cryptographic Access Provider Optional: Not required for installation, but required if you plan to use SSL.

This is provided in WAS Base V6.0.2.5 or later.

5722AC2 or 5722AC3 Crypto (Refer to WAS)
Query Manager and SQL development kits Optional: Can be helpful in developing client applications. 5722ST1 DB2 Query Manager and SQL Development Kit

 

Related information