Save and restore considerations for WebSphere Application Server
The WebSphere Application Server uses many iSeries resources that consider adding to your backup and recovery procedures. Save and restore of WebSphere Application Server resources uses the same iSeries commands used for other iSeries resources. For more detailed information on iSeries system save and restore facilities, see the Backup, Recovery, and Availability topic of the iSeries Information Center.
The following areas of the WebSphere Application Server should be considered for backup and recovery:
Save and restore: administrative configuration
Describes the backup and recovery of the configuration for a WebSphere Application Server instance.Save and restore: servlets
Describes the backup and recovery of the collections and files used by the servlet function of WebSphere.Save and restore: JavaServer Pages(TM) (JSP(TM)) files
Describes the backup and recovery of the resources needed to configure and run JavaServer Pages (JSP) files.Save and restore: enterprise beans
Describes the backup and recovery of enterprise beans within WebSphere Application Server.Save and restore: security
Describes considerations for saving and restoring security configuration and data.Save and restore: Java Message Service (JMS)
Describes considerations for saving and restoring JMS resources.Other external resources
If your applications are using other resources or services that are external to WebSphere Application Server remember to include those in your backup plan as well.WebSphere Application Server resources can be saved while the WebSphere Application Server 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 you 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. Use the following categories to determine how fit WebSphere resources into your backup plan:
WebSphere Application Server environment configuration
This category covers the resources that define your WebSphere Application Server operating environment. Once you have done initial setup, this information should change very infrequently. You might backup this information only when you change these settings, and not include these resources in regularly scheduled backups.
Items in this group are the administrative configuration, HTTP configuration, servlet configuration files, and security properties files.WebSphere Application Server applications
This category covers the applications you run using WebSphere Application Server. You should back these up the same way you back up other applications on your system. You could backup these resources every time you add or change an application, or include these resources in a regularly scheduled backup.
Items in this group are the administrative configuration, servlet source and class files, JSP source and generated class files, and deployed enterprise bean jar files.WebSphere Application Server application data
This category covers the data stores used by your WebSphere Application Server applications. Unless your 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 your system. These resources are suited for inclusion in a regularly scheduled backup.
Items in this group are servlet user profile data and enterprise bean database data.