Configuring deployment managers

Configure deployment managers for a single, central point of administrative control for all elements in a WebSphere® Application Server distributed cell.

Before you begin

If you plan to change the system clock, stop all the application servers, the node agent servers, the deployment manager server, the administrative agent server, and the job manager server first. After you stop the servers, change the system clock, and then restart the servers.

[z/OS]For z/OS, also stop and then restart the location service daemon.

If you change the system clock on one system, you must ensure the clocks on all systems that communicate with each other and have WebSphere Application Server installed are synchronized. Otherwise, you might experience errors, such as security tokens no longer being valid.

About this task

Deployment managers are administrative agents that provide a centralized management view for all nodes in a cell, as well as management of clusters and workload balancing of application servers across one or several nodes in some editions. Each cell contains one deployment manager.

[z/OS]WebSphere Application Server for z/OS® uses workload management (WLM) as the primary vehicle for workload balancing.

A deployment manager hosts the administrative console.

[z/OS]The Java™ virtual machine (JVM) for the deployment manager runs in 64-bit addressing mode by default. The maximum amount of virtual memory available to each JVM on the z/OS operating system in 31-bit addressing mode is 2 gigabytes (GB). However, because of product requirements, the amount of virtual memory that is available to each JVM is somewhat less. To obtain more virtual memory for the deployment manager server, or any other server, run the server in 64-bit addressing mode. If you have applications that require large amounts of virtual memory, the applications might need to run on servers configured for 64-bit addressing mode.

[z/OS]Deprecated feature: You should eventually convert all of your servers to run in 64-bit addressing mode because support for running servers in 31-bit addressing mode is deprecated.

When you create a deployment manager profile, a deployment manager is created. You can run the deployment manager with its default settings. However, you can change the deployment manager configuration settings, such as the ports that the process uses, custom services, logging and tracing settings, and so on. To view information about managing a deployment manager, use the settings page for a deployment manager.

Procedure

  1. Click System administration > Deployment manager from the navigation tree of the administrative console to access the settings page for a deployment manager.
  2. Configure the deployment manager by clicking a property, such as Custom services, and specifying settings.
  3. [z/OS]If you specify the server short name as eight characters, follow the directions to convert the default seven-character short name to eight characters.
  4. Optionally register or unregister the deployment manager with the job manager.

    A job manager allows you to submit administrative jobs asynchronously for deployment managers and for application servers registered to administrative agents. Click System administration > Deployment manager. Under Additional Properties, click Job managers > Register/unregister with job manager.

Results

You configured a deployment manager with options that you selected.

What to do next

You can continue to administer your product by doing such tasks as configuring cells and managing nodes, node agents, and node groups.

You can use the deployment manager Diagnostic Provider to test connectivity between the deployment manager and the node agents. Click Troubleshooting > Diagnostic Provider > Tests > dmgr > DeploymentManagerDP > ping.-* from the navigation of the administrative console. After running the diagnostic provider, click on the message text to get to the detail page that shows the node agent status. If the value field of the node agent is j2ee.state.stopped, the value usually means that the node agent is stopped. However, it can also mean that the deployment manager has lost network connectivity with the node agent. The deployment manager cannot distinguish between these two cases.