Adding, managing, and removing nodes

You can add a node, select the discovery protocol for a node, define a custom property for a node, stop servers on a node, and remove a node.

Before you begin

A node is a grouping of managed or unmanaged servers. You can add both managed and unmanaged nodes to the WebSphere® Application Server topology. If you add a new node for an existing WebSphere Application Server to the network deployment cell, you add a managed node. If you create a new node in the topology for managing web servers or servers other than WebSphere Application Server, you add an unmanaged node.

You can recover an existing managed node of a deployment manager cell. One of the options to add a managed node enables you to quickly recover a damaged node. The option is similar to the -asExistingNode parameter of the addNode command.

To view information about nodes and managed nodes, use the Nodes page. To access the Nodes page, click System administration > Nodes in the administrative console navigation tree.

About this task

You can manage nodes on an application server through the wsadmin scripting tool, through the Java™ application programming interfaces (APIs), or through the administrative console. Perform the following tasks to manage nodes on an application server through the administrative console.

[Windows]Restriction: The addNode function in the administrative console might fail on non-English, single-byte Windows operating systems when there are non-ASCII characters in the profile name, cell name, or node name. This problem is caused by a code page issue on Windows operating systems. To work around this problem, run the addNode command from the command line rather than from the administrative console on non-English, single-byte Windows operating systems if there are non-ASCII characters in the profile name, cell name, or node name.

Procedure

  • Add a node.
    1. Go to the Nodes page and click Add Node.
    2. On the Add Node page, choose whether you want to add a managed or unmanaged node, and click Next.
    3. For a managed node, complete the following actions.
      1. [z/OS][AIX Solaris HP-UX Linux Windows]Verify that an application server is running on the remote host for the node that you are adding.
      2. [IBM i]Verify that an application server is running on the host for the node that you are adding.
      3. Specify a host name, connector type, and port for the application server at the node you are adding. Perform one of the following sets of actions listed in the table:
        Table 1. Managed node actions . Perform the set of actions appropriate for your product environment.
        If the deployment manager is on And the node that you add to the cell is on Complete the appropriate set of actions:
        [AIX Solaris HP-UX Linux Windows][IBM i]The distributed platform or the IBM® i platform [AIX Solaris HP-UX Linux Windows][IBM i]The distributed platform or the IBM i platform [AIX Solaris HP-UX Linux Windows][IBM i]Optionally specify a node group and a core group. Click OK.
        [z/OS]A z/OS® system [z/OS]A z/OS system and is in the same sysplex as the deployment manager [z/OS]Optionally specify a node group and a core group. Click OK.
        [z/OS]A z/OS system [z/OS]A z/OS system, but is on a different sysplex than the deployment manager [z/OS]Specify a node group that contains nodes from the same sysplex as the node you are adding. If no such node group exists, create a node group and then specify that node group. Optionally specify a core group. Click OK.
        The distributed platform or the IBM i platform A z/OS system Specify a node group that contains nodes from the same sysplex as the node you are now adding. If no such node group exists, create a node group and then specify that node group. Optionally specify a core group. Click OK.
        A z/OS system The distributed platform or the IBM i platform Specify a node group that contains distributed nodes. If no such node group exists, create a node group and then specify that node group. Optionally specify a core group. Click OK.

        For the node group option to display, a group other than the default node group must first be created. Likewise, for the core group option to display, a group other than the default core group must first be created.

      4. [z/OS][AIX Solaris HP-UX Linux Windows]For managed nodes, another administrative console page is displayed on a Windows operating system. Specify on the page whether you want to register the node agent to run as a Windows service.

        If security is enabled, you can optionally enter the local operating system user name and password under which you will run the service. If you do not specify a user name and password, the service runs under the local system identity. When you run remove the node, the node agent is de-registered as a Window service.

    4. For an unmanaged node, on the Nodes > New page, specify a node name, a host name, and a platform for the new node. Click OK.
    The node is added to the WebSphere Application Server environment and the name of the node is displayed in the collection on the Nodes page.

    [z/OS]Join subsequent WebSphere Application Server for z/OS nodes from the same sysplex to the same sysplex node group. If you add WebSphere Application Server for z/OS nodes from different sysplexes to the same cell, establish a separate sysplex node group for the nodes of each sysplex.

    [AIX Solaris HP-UX Linux Windows][IBM i]Both Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) and Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) are now supported by WebSphere Application Server, but restrictions do apply when using both IPv4 and IPv6 in the same cell. When you add a node to a cell, the format in which you specify the name is based on the version of IP that the node is using. For details, see IP version considerations for cells.

    On completing this step, you will have added one or more nodes.
    Avoid trouble: When nodes are added while LDAP security is enabled, the following exception is generated in the deployment manager System.out log under certain circumstances. If this happens, restart the deployment manager to resolve the problem.
    0000004d ORBRas E com.ibm.ws.security.orbssl.WSSSLClientSocketFactoryImpl 
    createSSLSocket ProcessDiscovery : 0 JSSL0080E: javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException - 
    The client and server could not negotiate the desired level of security. 
    Reason?com.ibm.jsse2.util.h: No trusted certificate found 
    
  • Select the discovery protocol.

    If the discovery protocol that a node uses is not appropriate for the node, select the appropriate protocol.

    1. On the Nodes page, click the node to access the node setting page.
    2. Select a value for Discovery protocol.
    3. Click OK.

    User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is faster than Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). However, TCP is more reliable than UDP because UDP does not guarantee the delivery of datagrams to the destination. The default of TCP is the recommended value.

    For a node agent or deployment manager, use TCP or UDP.

    A managed process uses multicast as its discovery protocol. The discovery protocol is fixed for a managed process. The main benefit of using multicast on managed processes is efficiency for the node agent. Suppose you have forty servers in a node. A node agent that uses multicast sends one broadcast to all forty servers. If a node agent did not use multicast, it would send discovery queries to all managed processes one at a time, totaling forty sends. Additional benefits of using multicast are that you do not have to configure the discovery port for each server or prevent port conflicts because all servers in one node listen to one port instead of to one port for each server.

    [AIX Solaris HP-UX Linux Windows]On the Windows operating system, multicast requires a router. If you run the product on a Windows operating system, but the machine the Application Server is on is not connected to the network, the multicast address is not shared with the application servers.

  • Define a custom property for a node.
    1. On the Nodes page, click the node for which you want to define a custom property.
    2. On the node settings page, click Custom Properties.
    3. On the Property collection page, click New.
    4. On the Custom property settings page, specify a name-value pair and a description for the property, and click OK.
  • Specify a default software development kit for a node.

    You can select the default software development kit (SDK) for a node on the Java SDKs page of the administrative console. The page lists all software development kits that are installed on the node. A node can have one default SDK. Servers on the node use the default SDK unless a server overrides the SDK selection and specifies a different SDK.

    1. Go to the Java SDKs page. Click System administration > Nodes > node_name > Java SDKs.
    2. On the Java SDKs page, select the check box for the SDK that you want servers on the node to use and click Make Default.
  • Synchronize the node configuration.

    After you add a managed node or change a managed node configuration, synchronize the node configuration. On the Node agents page, ensure that the node agent for the node is running. Then, on the Nodes page, select the check box for the node whose configuration files you want to synchronize and click Synchronize or Full Resynchronize.

    Clicking either option sends a request to the node agent for that node to perform a configuration synchronization immediately, instead of waiting for the periodic synchronization to occur. This action is important if automatic configuration synchronization is disabled, or if the synchronization interval is set to a long time, and a configuration change is made to the cell repository that needs to replicate to that node. Settings for automatic synchronization are on the File synchronization service page.

    Synchronize requests that a node synchronization operation be performed using the normal synchronization optimization algorithm. This operation is fast, but might not fix problems from manual file edits that occur on the node. It is still possible for the node and cell configuration to be out of synchronization after this operation is performed.

    Full Resynchronize clears all synchronization optimization settings and performs configuration synchronization anew, so there is no mismatch between node and cell configuration after this operation is performed. This operation can take longer than the Synchronize operation.

    Unmanaged nodes cannot be synchronized.

  • Stop servers on a node.

    On the Nodes page, select the check box for the managed node whose servers that you want to stop running, and click Stop.

  • Recover an existing managed node of a deployment manager cell.

    You can recover an existing damaged node using one of the options to add a managed node. The node must be at the deployment manager level.

    1. Ensure that the existing damaged node is not running. Stop the node agent and any application servers residing on the node.
    2. Create a profile to replace the damaged node and give it the same profile and node names.

      For example, suppose the myNode01 node that has the profile name AppSrv01 stops functioning. To replace it with a new node, create an application server profile named AppSrv01 for node myNode01.

    3. Start the new node, or application server, that you want to use to replace the damaged node.
    4. Use the Recover managed node page to replace the damaged node in the cell with the new node.
      1. In the deployment manager administrative console, click System administration > Nodes > Add Node > Recover an existing node > Next.
      2. For Host, specify the host name or IP address of the node to add to the cell. The host value can be an IP address, a domain name system (DNS) server name that resolves to an IP address, or the word localhost if the application server is running on the same machine as the deployment manager.
      3. For JMX connector type, select the type of Java Management Extensions (JMX) connectors that communicate with the product when you run a script.
      4. For JMX connector port, specify the port number of the JMX connector of the new node.

        You can find the port number in the console of the new application server node. Click Servers > Server Types > WebSphere application servers > server_name > Ports. For example, for a SOAP connector port type, specify the SOAP_CONNECTOR_ADDRESS value for the JMX connector port number.

        [Windows]Also, you can find the port number in the serverindex.xml file of the new profile that is replacing the damaged one. The serverindex.xml file is in the profiles/new_profile_name/config/cells/cell_name/nodes/node_name directory. For example, for a SOAP connector port type, specify the port value that is associated with endPointName="SOAP_CONNECTOR_ADDRESS" in the serverindex.xml file.

      5. Specify values for the remaining fields as needed and click OK.

    Instead of using the Recover managed node console page to recover a node, you can run the addNode command with the -asExistingNode option from a command line at the bin directory of the damaged application server profile. The name of the new node must match the name of the node where you run addNode with the -asExistingNode option.

    You can also use the -asExistingNode option of the addNode command to move a node to a product installation on a different computer but at the same path, to move a node to a product installation on a different operating system or with a different path, or to create new cells from a template cell. See the topic on recovering or moving nodes with the addNode -asExistingNode command.

  • Remove a node.

    On the Nodes page, select the check box for the node that you want to delete and click Remove Node. If you cannot remove the node by clicking Remove Node, remove the node from the configuration by clicking Force Delete.

  • View node capabilities.

    Review the node capabilities, such as the product version through the administrative console. You can also query them through the Application Server application programming interface (API) or the wsadmin tool.

    The product versions for WebSphere Application Server are as follows: The base edition of WebSphere Application Server is listed in the version column as Base. The WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment product is listed in the version column as ND.

What to do next

If you changed a node configuration, examine the configuration changes.