Adding non-admin application servers to a deployment (vertical cluster members)

You can add non-admin application servers to a IBM OpenPages® with Watson™ deployment by increasing the number of vertical cluster application servers.

Before you begin

Review the following checklist before you add servers to your installation:
  • Ensure that the installation server is updated to the latest version. For more information, see the IBM OpenPages with Watson Installation and Deployment Guide. The latest version is available in the OpenPages fix pack kit.
  • Ensure that the installation server can communicate with all of the servers in your deployment.

Procedure

  1. Decide which application server you want to modify. Ensure that the server has sufficient hardware resources to support vertical cluster members.

    Open the Software Product Compatibility Report report for OpenPages. Click the Hardware tab. Review the detailed system requirements for application servers.

  2. Verify the status of the servers in your deployment. All servers must be running, except for the search server, which must be stopped.
    See Starting and stopping servers.
  3. Start the installation app and log in.
  4. Open your deployment.
  5. Click the Application Server card of the server you want to modify.
  6. Add vertical cluster members by increasing the value in the OP Vertical Cluster Number field.
    Note: Do not decrease the number of vertical cluster members. A decrease in the value can cause validation errors.
  7. Click Validate to save and validate the deployment.

    You can download a validation report. Click the link at the top of the page.

    Figure 1. Click to download a validation report
    A message is displayed, Error: Please view log here. The word here is a link that you can click to download a validation report in PDF format.

    The validation reports are also stored in the <installation_server_home>/src/deployment/<deployment-name>/validation directory.

    Fix any errors and review the warnings. Click Save, and then click Validate. When the Install button is available, you can continue. If fixing issues requires an update to the environment variables on any servers, you must restart the installation server/agent on that server before re-validating.

  8. Click Install.
    The installation server stages the assets onto the new servers in your deployment.
    Tip: You can log out and close the browser window. The Install process continues to run. When you log in to the installation app again, the app shows the status of your deployment. You can also close the browser window during the Configure process.
  9. Click Configure.
    The installation server sets up and configures the IBM OpenPages with Watson components.
  10. Start the search server.
    The installation server restarts the other servers in your deployment automatically.

Results

When the installation is complete, ensure that you can log in to OpenPages and complete tasks such as creating or updating objects, and running reports.

What to do next

Update the load balancer with information for the new non-admin application server. See Configuring IBM HTTP Server to balance the load on application servers.