Guidelines for setting up a cluster

In WebSphere Application Server, a cluster is composed of multiple identical copies of an application server. A cluster member is a single application server in the cluster. HCL WebSphere Portal is installed as an enterprise application server within the WebSphere Application Server infrastructure. All of the clustering features available within the WebSphere Application Server infrastructure are also available and apply to HCL WebSphere Portal. Thus, an HCL WebSphere Portal cluster is a collection of multiple HCL WebSphere Portal servers that are identically configured.

Guidelines

• Before creating the cluster, transfer the HCL WebSphere Portal databases to a supported external database. For example: DB2, Oracle, or SQL Server

• Install the deployment manager node.

• Set up the web server plug-ins

• WebSphere Application Server provides database session persistence and memory-to-memory replication as techniques for HTTP session failover in a clustered environment. Note that memory-to-memory session application can lead to low memory conditions if failures cause replication to fail. This condition can occur because the local and backup sessions are stored in the JVM memory. Therefore, failures with replicating the session data can prevent freeing the memory that is allocated for the backup session.
  Task overview: Managing HTTP sessions

• We can create a dynamic cluster to run HCL WebSphere Portal.

• The WasRemoteHostName and WasSoapPort properties, which are in the wkplc.properties file, must always be accurate because many ConfigEngine scripts depend on them. If we are in a stand-alone environment, these parameters point to the host name and soap port for the HCL WebSphere Portal application server. If we are in a clustered environment, these parameters point to the Deployment manager host name and soap port. Modify these properties when instructed to during the installation instructions.

• If you add a node to a cell or change a node's configuration after it is federated to the deployment manager, synchronize the node's configuration.

• To configure an external security manager for authentication or authorization, install and configure the HCL WebSphere Portal cluster first. Verify that the cluster is working properly before configuring the external security manager.

Parent topic: Cluster considerations