Submitting jobs to deploy and manage Liberty installations (deprecated)

You can use the job manager to submit jobs to deploy and manage Liberty installations on target hosts.

Before you begin

Deprecated feature: The job manager is deprecated. Instead of job manager, use Urban Code Deploy to install the product, to deploy applications, and to manage remote hosts. To manage WebSphere® Application Server installations, you also can use swinging profiles. See Swinging profiles between product installations.

Liberty provides the following features:

• Central administration through job manager jobs
  • You can use the job manager to submit jobs that support the full life cycle of Liberty resource deployment from initial install, to updates, to uninstall.
  • A deployment manager is not required, although you can use the job manager function available on a deployment manager to administer Liberty servers and their resources.
• Quick installation
  • Store the Liberty resources in one or more compressed (.zip) files and run the Install Liberty profile resources job to transfer and extract the files.
  • Installation of Liberty resources requires no formal installation tool such as IBM Installation Manager.
• To simplify deployment and maintenance, you can share a software development kit (SDK), runtime binary files, server configuration files, and application binary files among many isolated Liberty server instances.
• No agent is required on target hosts, reducing administration overhead.
• Non-destructive update enables easy installation of new versions of Liberty resources of any type. You can switch easily between old and new versions of resources, or run concurrent versions of resources.

Your ID at the job manager must be authorized for the administrator or operator role to submit jobs.

Before submitting a job, start the job manager. One of the job manager targets must be an unmanaged host to run Liberty jobs. If no target is an unmanaged host, register a host. See Registering host computers with job managers.

When registering a target host with the job manager on an administrative console New targets page (Jobs > Targets > New Host), you specify an operating system user name for Administrative user with installation authority and a password or public-private key information for user authentication. If you specify a user name and security credentials during job submission and select more than one target host, the user name and security credentials is used for all target hosts. The console user ID and password is not used to authenticate at the target hosts.

Best practice: When registering a target host, if you selected Save security information on the console or set saveSecurity to true in the registerHost command, then you do not need to specify an operating system user name and security credentials when submitting jobs.

Best practice: To easily select the targets on which to run a job, use the administrative console or wsadmin to define appropriate target groups. Then, when submitting a job, select the appropriate target group instead of entering or selecting the individual targets.

If you use an OpenSSH environment, set environment variables for the ssh exec channel:

1. In the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file, set PermitUserEnvironment to yes.
2. Change directory to the .ssh directory under the user home. Create a property file called environment and, in the file, set JAVA_HOME=absolute_path_to_the_java_home.
3. Restart sshd. Run stopsrc -s ssh and then startsrc -s ssh.

1. Before installing Liberty resources, create one or more compressed (.zip) files that contain the required Liberty resources in a directory structure which satisfies job manager rules.

   You can obtain the Liberty in either of the following ways:

   • During installation of WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment, select the WebSphere Application Server Liberty optional feature. If you did not include this feature during the initial installation, you can add this feature using the Modify function in the Installation Manager. Liberty server is installed into the app_server_root/wlp directory.

   Packaging Liberty resources (deprecated) describes how to create properly structured compressed (.zip) files for several different deployment topologies. For additional overview information and examples, see the IBM Education Assistant modules and labs.

   A software development kit (SDK) or Java runtime environment (JRE) is not included with the Liberty but is needed to run the servers and server management jobs. You must use the job manager to deploy an SDK or JRE to the target hosts or use an SDK or JRE installed previously on the target hosts.

2. Set variables for Liberty installations.

   Specify an absolute path for the WLP_WORKING_DIR WebSphere variable. Depending your deployment topology, you might need to define the WLP_SHARED_DIR and WLP_ADDITIONAL_DIRS WebSphere variables. Do not specify relative paths for any of these variables.

3. Optional: If Liberty servers use the serverStatus-1.0 feature, status from the servers is automatically sent to the STATUS_LISTENER_ADDRESS port. To change the STATUS_LISTENER_ADDRESS port number, use the Ports page of a deployment manager console (System administration > Deployment manager > Ports) or job manager console (System administration > Job manager > Ports).

   If you change the STATUS_LISTENER_ADDRESS port number after installing Liberty resources, you will no longer receive automatic status from the previously installed Liberty resources.

4. Run the Install Liberty profile resources job.
5. Run the Inventory job if you need to register preexisting Liberty resources with the job manager. Setting variables for Liberty servers (deprecated) explains how to configure the directories that are searched when the Inventory job is run.
6. Run jobs that administer Liberty servers and resources:
   • Run the Uninstall Liberty profile resources job.
   • Run the Start Liberty profile server job.
   • Run the Stop Liberty profile server job.
   • Run the Generate merged plugin configuration for Liberty profile servers job.