Configure a "No operation" policy for service integration

After you create a new "No operation" core group policy for a messaging engine, we can continue the configuration for a messaging engine to be managed by an external high availability (HA) framework. We can also configure the frequency of messaging engine monitoring. A core group policy with the policy type of "No operation" must exist and have first completed the steps in Configure a core group policy for messaging engines. A "No operation" policy allows an external HA cluster to control when and where a messaging engine runs.

 

1. Associate the messaging engine with an externally managed resource group by creating an HA cluster resource for it. Refer to the documentation for the external HA product.

2. Write scripts for the external HA framework to enable it to use the HAManager to start or stop the messaging engine. The scripts invoke operations on the HAManager MBean on the server that is taking ownership of the resource that represents the messaging engine.

3. Ensure that the messaging engine can always reach its data store. If the messaging engine is configured to fail over, its data store must be accessible from any server in the cluster on which it might run. The set of possible servers depends on how you have configured the external HA resource group. A typical configuration is to include the data store as an additional resource in the resource group managed by the external HA cluster. The HA cluster will then verify the data store and the messaging engine failover together and remain collocated after the failover. Whether this is the case, or whether a network server is used to make the data store available, the data store must be accessible from any server that might run the messaging engine.

4. If the messaging engine must always be accessible through the same IP address, for example because it is the receiving end of a WebSphere MQ link, arrange for that IP address to remain collocated with the messaging engine. You can do this by creating an IP address resource in the same external HA resource group as the resource that represents the messaging engine.

5. If required, enter a value in the Is alive timer field. This value specifies the interval of time, in seconds, at which the high availability manager (HAManager) checks that a messaging engine is running properly. When this value is 0 (zero), the default value of 120 seconds is used.

   The "No operation" policy is intended primarily for when you use an external high availability framework such as IBM HACMP. In this situation, we might create a monitoring script that the external framework calls periodically. If you set the value of Is alive timer greater than or equal to 0, the HAManager performs health monitoring and the external monitoring script can retrieve the state from the HAManager MBean. Alternatively, if you set the value of Is alive timer to -1, monitoring by the HAManager is disabled, and the external monitoring script can retrieve the state from the messaging engine MBean.

6. Click OK.

7. Save the changes to the master configuration.