Backup and recover the application serving environment

The product uses many operating system and application resources that you should consider adding to the backup and recovery procedures.

(iseries) Save and restore of WAS resources uses the same IBM i commands used for other IBM i resources.

WebSphere Application Server resources can be saved while the product environment is active. When backing up database data, you may have to shut down some or all services if a snapshot cannot be obtained. This would occur if there are requests which obtain locks or have open transactions against the database being saved. In a distributed environment, you may need to consider how to get a consistent backup across several systems. If the data on systems is not closely related to data on other systems, you may be able to backup each system in isolation. If we need a snapshot across systems simultaneously, you may need to stop activity on all systems while the snapshot is taken.

How often you back up resources depends largely on when or how often you expect them to change.

• Back up the product environment configuration.

  This category covers the resources that define the WAS operating environment. Once we have done initial setup, this information should change very infrequently. We might backup this information only when you change these settings, and not include these resources in regularly scheduled backups.

  • Administrative configuration files

  • (iseries) Administrative configuration

  • (iseries) Servlet configuration files

  • (iseries) Security properties files

  • HTTP configuration (see the documentation for the web server)

  Avoid trouble: For the IBM Installation Manager to manage product installations, IBM recommends that you backup the Installation Manager IMShared, and DataAgent directories at the same date and time, especially before and after applying fix packs, ifixes or any installation that is being done using the Installation Manager. Similarly if you do a restore of the product environment configuration, IBM recommends that you restore the Installation Manager IMShared, and DataAgent directories at the same time such that the time frame of the two restores matches.gotcha

• Back up the applications.

  This category covers the applications you run using the product. You should back these up the same way you back up other applications on the system. You could backup these resources every time we add or change an application, or include these resources in a regularly scheduled backup.

  • Application deployment configuration files

  • (iseries) Administrative configuration

  • (iseries) Servlet source and class files

  • (iseries) JSP source and generated class files

  • (iseries) Deployed enterprise bean jar files

• Back up the application data.

  This category covers the data stores used by the WAS applications. Unless the applications serve only static information, these resources are usually quite dynamic. You should back these up the same way you back up other business data on the system. These resources are suited for inclusion in a regularly scheduled backup.

  • Servlet session data

  • (iseries) Enterprise bean data in a database

What to do next

If the applications are using other resources or services that are external to the product, remember to include those in our backup plan as well.

Related tasks

Back up and restoring administrative configuration files

(iseries) Backup and recover administrative configurations

(iseries) Backup and recover JSP files

(iseries) Back up security configuration files

Export enterprise applications

(iseries) Enterprise beans back up and recovery best practices

Restarting an application server in recovery mode

Configure transaction properties for peer recovery

Session recovery support