IBM HTTP Server Plug-in | Maintenance involving planned outages

Deploy new static content

Deploying new versions of your WebSphere Commerce application mostly includes updating the static content on the Web servers. Remember that with WebSphere Commerce, the Web servers are used only to serve static content and to forward requests for dynamic pages to the application servers.

Deploying new static content does not require a server outage or restart if the following prerequisites are met:

• Old and new versions of the static content must work with both old or new versions of the application. If both old and new static content files work with the old version of the application, the Web servers should be updated first. If both old and new static content files work with the new version of the application, the application servers should be updated first.

  If the new static content is incompatible with the old application and the old static content is incompatible with the new application, or if the two versions of the application must not be used in the same user session, but site downtime is not desired, then Web servers and application servers should be updated in separate groups, using Web server to application server affinity, as described in 27.2.3, Incompatible upgrades.

• No change of content expiration times is required (see Chapter 18, Monitor and tune Web servers).

If a change is required here, but otherwise the first prerequisite is met, you may use the graceful restart option to restart the server and apply the new expiration times after changing the httpd.conf file.