Multiple profile support
IBM WebSphere Portal creates a profile to represent its application server configuration, such as...
- data source definitions
- web application and portlet deployments
- Java virtual machine configuration
The profile represents a full configuration of a single portal instance. Multiple profiles represent multiple, independently configured portal instances that run from the same installation.
Before WebSphere Portal v7, there was only one configuration profile per installation, typically named wp_profile.
We can create extra profiles in addition to the default profile to...
- Reuse a single installation for multiple independent portal instances, such as for various test or development efforts.
- Recover from a configuration problem by deleting the current profile and re-creating it without having to reinstall the product.
- Update a dmgr profile to handle portal servers and thus avoid all the manual preparation steps.
- portal.default
- Stand-alone portal server. Used as a stand-alone server or, after federation, as a base for a portal cluster.
- managed.portal
- Enhanced with the portal run time environment. Does not contain any servers. Used as a run time environment for extra cluster members. After federating, the standard portal tasks can be used to create a portal server cluster member from an existing cluster template.
- management.portal.augment
- Created by augmenting a standard dmgr profile. The resulting profile holds a deployment manager prepared for use with portal. It can be used to federate the other portal profiles immediately without the need for the additional manual steps. Because the deployment manager is often on different hardware, we can move this augmentation template to another installation and run it there.
Search collections and multiple profiles
The enable-profiles and replace-profiles tasks capture existing search collections in the profile template. Because the Search function does not support sharing Search collections between multiple profiles, before running enable-profiles or replace-profiles, to avoid search errors when creating additional profiles, delete all search collections, including the default Search collection. Use the backup and restore procedures to preserve the search collections on the original profile
Alternatively, use the following export and import steps:
- Export the existing search collections.
- Remove the existing search collections.
- If we installed portal as non-root, modify perms using chmod -R g+rwx $PORTAL_HOME
- Run the enable-profiles or replace-profiles configuration task to capture the Portal configuration in the profile template.
- Import the saved search collections on the original profile.
- Create new profiles with the profile templates; default search collections are automatically created in the new profile.
- Restore perms using chmod -R g+rx $PORTAL_HOME task
To share search collections between multiple server instances, configure a remote search server that supports search collections sharing.
Important information for cluster configurations
Manage all maintenance at the cluster level. During maintenance, take the entire cluster out of service. Then, the cluster-wide changes can take effect without affecting user traffic or potentially causing synchronization conflicts. In a continuous availability environment, multiple clusters might be necessary to allow traffic to continue to one cluster while another is being serviced.
Maintaining a WebSphere Portal installation with multiple profiles involves applying maintenance to the product binary files and applying maintenance to each profile instance. All profile instances and the WebSphere Portal product binary files are updated at the same time to avoid conflicts. If a profile belongs to a cluster and the cluster is updated, the shared WebSphere Portal product binary files and all other profiles must be updated to maintain synchronization.
If multiple portal profiles with a set of product binary files are part of a cluster, all profiles that share the binary files must belong to the cluster. This approach provides consistency when we apply maintenance at the cluster boundary.
Parent Plan to install WebSphere Portal
More information
Manage profiles