WebSphere Virtual Enterprise Dynamic Clusters
You can create a IBMWebSphereVirtual Enterprise dynamic cluster to run IBM WebSphere Portal.
Important for IBM i only: Dynamic clusters are not supported because WebSphere Virtual Enterprise does not support installation on IBM i.For each node that will be part of the dynamic cluster, follow the instructions to install and configure WebSphere Portal in a production environment using WebSphere Virtual Enterprise as the dmgr. However, do not run the task to set up a static cluster. After installing and preparing all nodes, follow the instructions provided to set up a WebSphere Virtual Enterprise node group and dynamic cluster for WebSphere Portal.
The WebSphere Virtual Enterprise On Demand Router (ODR) component provides capabilities such as workload balancing, prioritization, health monitoring, and dynamic operations for dynamic clusters. An ODR can be configured to provide multi-cluster routing, including dynamic clusters located in remote cells, and routing to other servers that are not running WebSphere Virtual Enterprise. The ODR can serve as a replacement for the HTTP server plug-in, but in many configurations both components are used. The HTTP server could be located in the demilitarized zone to serve static content and to provide an entry point to the private network where the ODR resides.
Review the following considerations before configuring the On Demand Router (ODR) to route traffic to WebSphere Portal clusters:
- Internal users can send requests directly to the ODR instead of through a front-end web server. When sending direct requests, configure the ODR to append a via header to the HTTP requests. Set the value of the ODR custom property http.compliance.via to true; see the "On demand router settings" link below for information.
This step is not required when sending user traffic through the web server to the ODR because the web server appends the via header to the HTTP request.
- The ODR can selectively route traffic to clusters based on the incoming URL. You can configure IP alias values for the ODR and then define routing rules to associate user traffic for each IP alias to the appropriate WebSphere Portal cluster.
- You can use the ODR to load balance traffic among identical portal clusters. You can configure a Multicluster Routing Policy (MCRP) for the ODR to identify the destination clusters and the type of load balancing; see the "Configuring the on demand router for multi-cluster failover and load balancing routing" link below for information.
If you are configuring the ODR to route traffic to remote portal static clusters using Generic Server Cluster definitions, the cell_name value used by the MCRP policy needs to be the local cellname where the ODR resides and not the remote cell where the portal cluster resides.
- You can also use the ODR to route traffic to remote portal clusters, both static and dynamic, by defining a generic server cluster for each target portal cluster; see the "Defining generic server clusters for remote ODR cells" link below for information.
If you are routing to remote static clusters that use vertical cluster members, perform the optional step at the end to define a server custom property for each port in the generic server cluster.
When applying maintenance to upgrade the WebSphere Virtual Enterprise and WAS Network Deployment version level, it is important that the dmgr remain inactive until both upgrades are complete because if the dmgr is active before both upgrades are complete it may detect an incompatible version of WebSphere Virtual Enterprise and remove some required resources from the dynamic cluster. Keeping the dmgr inactive until both Network Deployment and WebSphere Virtual Enterprise updates have been completed will insure that this potential problem does not occur.
See Prepare WAS Network Deployment to install the product for information on the order of product installation to prepare for WebSphere Virtual Enterprise and ODR.
See Create ODRs for information on creating an ODR.
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Cluster considerations