Migrate, coexist, and interoperate

Migrate application servers

The goal of migrating application servers to WAS v9.0 is for the migrated servers to behave as closely as possible to how they behaved in the previous release. After migrating the servers, we can further configure them to use new v9.0 features.

Applications installed in the old environment are redeployed to the new application server without any changes. To use new technologies available in v9.0, we must update the applications.

WAS v9 provides a set of tools we can use to migrate profiles. These tools also support various migration strategies, including:

• Local or remote: Migrating within the same host or machine, or migrating to new ones
• Standard or clone: Disable the old profile after migration, or keep the old profile functional

Regardless of the type of migration, we can use the command-line or GUI tools to migrate our product configuration.

Migrate applications

Use the Migration Toolkit for Application Binaries and the WAS Migration Toolkit to...

1. Migration Toolkit for Application Binaries...

   Application evaluation report	Evaluate the technologies in the application to find the best-fit application platform.
   Inventory report	Identify the contents of the applications, such as entity beans, session beans, and servlets.
   Migration analysis report	Details type and scope of changes that the applications might require.

   This tool does not require Eclipse or the application source code.

2. WAS Migration Toolkit....

   Eclipse-based toolkit that scans application source...

   • Identifies deprecations, removals, and behavior changes that affect the application
   • Provides quick fixes to automatically make updates when possible
   • Provides detailed help for each migration issue

To help estimate the effort required to migrate the applications to WAS traditional, Liberty, or a cloud environment, use the Migration Discovery Tool. By answering a few brief questions, we can identify items to be migrated and the degree to which the migration can be automated. To help collect data for the migration discovery tool, use the command-line inventory report.

Coexisting product installations

Coexisting is running multiple installations of WAS on the same machine at the same time. The installations can be the same version or different versions.

Interoperating product installations

Interoperating is exchanging data between two different product installations on the same machine or different machines that are at the same or different version. For example, an application can invoke a process supported by another application on a different machine. Another example is a v9.0 deployment manager that is managing a v8.5 federated node.

Subtopics

• Migrate the product on distributed operating systems
  
• Migrate the product on IBM i
  
• Migrate the product on z/OS
  
• Migrate product technologies
  
• Set up applications

Technote (troubleshooting): Overview of IBM WebSphere Application Server Migration strategies
Troubleshooting: WebSphere Application Server Migration Issues
WebSphere product lifecycle dates