Network Deployment (Distributed operating systems), v8.0 > Set up the application serving environment > Administer nodes and resources > Administer stand-alone nodes using the admin agent
Administrative agent
An admin agent provides a single interface to administer multiple unfederated application server nodes in environments such as development, unit test or that portion of a server farm that resides on a single machine.
The admin agent and application servers must be on the same machine, but you can connect to the machine from a browser or wsadmin.sh on another machine.
Multiple customers administer application servers in their development, test, and production environments by federating the application server nodes into a cell and administering the application servers from the dmgr. However, if we have development and unit test environments, then you might prefer to run application servers whose nodes have not been federated. These application servers have some administrative disadvantages. The application servers lack a common administrative interface. Remote administration is limited to installing applications and changing application server configurations. As an alternative, you can register these application servers with an admin agent to administer application servers from a single interface and to more fully administer application servers remotely.
We can register an application server node with the admin agent or federate the node with a dmgr, but not both. Registered nodes must have the same products as the admin agent, and the products must be at the same version levels on the registered node and the admin agent. This requirement is enforced because the admin agent must have a matching environment in order to handle all of the administrative capabilities of the registered node. A node is not allowed to register with an admin agent unless that node has an identical set of products and versions.
For transitioning users: If you were previously running on v7.0.0.11 or earlier, and have an admin agent with a managed node that has mismatched products or versions, when you when you migrate to v8.0, that admin agent will not be able to start the subsystem for any mismatched nodes. We must update these nodes to have the same products and versions as the admin agents, restart the servers on the node and then restart the admin agent, before the admin agent can resume managing these registered nodestrns
An admin agent can monitor and control multiple application servers on one or more nodes. Use the application servers only to run the applications. By using a single interface to administer the application servers, you reduce the overhead of running administrative services in every application server.
We can use the admin agent to install applications on application servers, change application server configurations, stop and restart application servers, and create additional application servers.
Example topology of multiple application servers managed by an admin agent
The following example topology shows machine A with an admin agent and two application servers, Profile01 and Profile02, that are registered with the admin agent. The application servers on machine A each communicate with a remote web server on machine B through the web server plug-in. Firewalls provide additional security for the machines. Read the topic on planning to install WAS for further information on the topology.
Administrative jobs for application servers registered to an admin agent and for dmgrs
We can use a job manager to submit administrative jobs asynchronously for application servers registered to an admin agent and for dmgrs.
To make application servers registered to an admin agent and dmgrs known to the job manager, register them with the job manager. Many of the management tasks that you can perform with the job manager are tasks that you can already perform with the product, such as application management, server management, and node management. However, with the job manager, you can aggregate tasks and perform those tasks across multiple application servers or dmgrs.
Job manager
Administer nodes and resources
Create management profiles with admin agents
Administer stand-alone nodes using the admin agent
Related
registerNode command
deregisterNode command