Portal Express, Version 6.0
Operating systems: i5/OS, Linux, Windows
Software and hardware topologies
Use the information in this section to understand how the software components interact. For a description of how different servers might be set up to support the software topology, see the hardware topology section.
Software topology
WebSphere Portal Express installs and runs as an application server on the WebSphere Application Server platform.For each installation of portal, an installation of IBM® WebSphere® Application Server is required, and both the portal and WebSphere Application Server installations must reside on the same machine. Note that installing multiple portals on a single WebSphere Application Server profile is not supported.
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is used as the transport protocol for portal requests. By default, WebSphere Portal Express uses the internal HTTP transport within WebSphere Application Server to handle these requests. You can optionally configure an external Web server, such as IBM HTTP Server, to work with WebSphere Portal Express.
Because portal administration and configuration are dependent on WebSphere Application Server, you might have to use the administrative tools that are provided with WebSphere Application Server to monitor or control activities that are related to the portal. Additionally, if you configure an external Web server for use with the portal, you might need to use the Web server interface to administer portal-related activities.
A database subsystem is required for WebSphere Portal Express. DB2 is the default database provided with the product to store information about configuration, access control, user identities, credentials, and permissions for accessing portal resources and user data.
Additionally, WebSphere Portal Express and WebSphere Application Server require access to a user registry. The following list provides different sources that the portal can use to access a user registry:
- Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) directory, such as IBM Tivoli® Directory Server or Domino® Directory.
- Database user registry
- Customer supplied custom user registry
WebSphere Portal Express uses a database as the default user registry for authentication. You can configure WebSphere Portal Express to use an LDAP directory to store user information and to authenticate users.
Portlets are key to the portal experience, and WebSphere Portal Express has built-in portlets that interface with tooling that extends portal functionality. The Lotus Domino and Extended Products servers - IBM Lotus® Domino, IBM Lotus QuickPlace® and IBM Lotus Sametime® - are used with WebSphere Portal Express to support collaborative features in the provided Domino and Extended Products Portlets (formerly Lotus Collaboration Center portlets) and the Common Personal Information Management portlets. Portlets are also provided to integrate with extended search capabilities.
For each installation of Lotus QuickPlace, Lotus Sametime, or Lotus Domino Document Manager, an underlying installation of Lotus Domino is required on the same machine.
Hardware topology examples
WebSphere Application Server supports a wide variety of ways to deploy the portal in your computing environment. Commonly used topologies fall into one of the following broad categories.
- Single-machine topology. The components are installed on the same machine.
- Multimachine topologies. The components (the Web server, application server, databases, and so forth) are physically separated onto different machines.
- Multiple database topologies. The data is distributed between multiple databases. Can be used for Single-machine or Multimachine topologies.
- High availability topologies. WebSphere Portal Express is licensed for use in a single server configuration and may not be used in either a cloned configuration or a clustered configuration except when implementing Idle Standby for purposes of failover. In an Idle Standby configuration, a server is considered idle if it is used exclusively for administrative actions that assist in failover scenarios. Idle Standby servers have the Program installed; however, the Program is not operational to service user transactions or to query workloads
Implementing Idle Standby requires the purchase of a separate WebSphere Portal Express Idle Standby Part Number, in addition to licensing the primary server, regardless of whether your primary servers are currently licensed under the per User License Option or the per Processor Value Unit License Option.
Once you have an Idle Standby License Option, you can use WebSphere Portal Express in an Idle Standby configuration. To achieve failover, implement a primary node and a secondary node. The primary node can be configured to be active at all times; the secondary node becomes active only if the primary node fails.
- HTTP server separation topologies. The Web (HTTP) server is located on a different physical machine than WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere Portal Express.
- Demilitarized zone (DMZ) topologies. Firewalls can be used to create demilitarized zones -- machines that are isolated from both the public Internet and other machines in the configuration. This improves portal security, especially for sensitive back-end resources such as databases.
Note: It is important to remember that, in any topology, many resources and settings that are defined within WebSphere Application Server, like Global Security Settings, DataSources, and so on, are shared across all applications, including the portal installation.