Administering nodes remotely using the job manager (deprecated)

In a flexible management environment, you can asynchronously submit and administer jobs for large numbers of stand-alone application servers, deployment managers, and host computers over a geographically dispersed area. At the remote machines, you can use jobs to manage applications, modify the product configuration, or do general purpose tasks such as run a script.

Before you begin

Deprecated feature: The job manager is deprecated. Instead of the 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.

Install the WebSphere Application Server product.

About this task

A job manager is a single management server from which you can remotely manage multiple administrative agents, deployment managers, stand-alone (unfederated) application servers, and host computers.

In a flexible management environment, the job manager enables you to asynchronously submit and administer jobs for large numbers of stand-alone application servers, deployment managers, and host computers over a geographically dispersed area. Many of the management tasks that you can perform with the job manager are tasks that you can already perform with the product, such as application management, server management, and node management. However, with the job manager, you can aggregate the tasks and perform the tasks across multiple application servers, deployment managers, or host computers.

In contrast to a deployment manager, the job manager does not exclusively inherit the administrative functions of its registered targets. Targets that register with a job manager maintain their own administrative capabilities. Additionally, the targets periodically poll the job managers to determine whether there are jobs posted there that require action. You can administer all registered targets separately from the job manager. The advantage to a job manager is that you can administer targets in multiple varied environments.

To administer targets, you submit jobs using the job manager. You can submit jobs for individual targets or for groups of targets that you define. After you submit a job, you can check the job status, check the status of targets, and check the status of target resources. The status of managed resources is not necessarily up-to-date. Status in the job manager administrative console is updated only when a status job or an inventory job for the target containing the resource completes successfully. You can view target resources for targets and groups of targets that you administer. You can configure the job manager and view its properties.

Procedure

Set up the job manager environment.

Create a job manager profile and any other profiles that are needed for the environment, synchronizing the clocks on all environment computers, and then registering the target profiles with the job manager. You can register stand-alone application servers that are already registered with an administrative agent or deployment manager profiles. You can also add remote host computers as targets.
Start and stop the job manager as needed.

The job manager must be running to submit jobs and to enable targets to poll the job manager for jobs.
Configure job managers.

You can specify settings such as the default job expiration, the job manager web address, and the mail provider Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) name for the job manager. You can view job manager properties such as the process ID and the state of the job manager.
View information on targets using a job manager.

You can view targets with their version numbers based on the results of the Find option and view target resources for targets that you select. You can also view the properties and property values for a particular target.
View information on target resources.

You can view server, application, node, and cluster resources that are associated with targets and groups of targets registered to the job manager. You can also view the status of specific resources at each target and view properties for a particular target resource as a name-value pair.
Submit jobs to administer servers, files, and applications.

You can submit jobs to remote targets to manage applications, modify the product configuration on remote machines, or do general purpose tasks such as run a script. You can specify when the jobs start, whether they are recurring, and when they are no longer available for submission.
Check the status of jobs.

You can check the status of jobs, the status of jobs at their targets, and the job history of targets. You can suspend, resume, or delete jobs on the Job status collection page.
Administer groups of targets using a job manager.

You can create, modify, delete, and view groups of targets. Groups of targets make job submission simpler because you can submit a job for a group of targets instead of entering multiple target names for a job submission.
Change the polling interval.

You can increase or decrease the polling interval that a target uses to poll the job manager for jobs. The default polling interval is 30 seconds.

Results

Depending on the tasks that you completed, you might have submitted jobs, checked the status of jobs, viewed targets and target resources, or administered groups of targets.

What to do next

If you no longer need a target, unregister the target. You can unregister targets from a job manager in the following ways:

To deregister application servers or deployment managers, run the wsadmin unregisterWithJobManager command in the ManagedNodeAgent command group or click Unregister from a Job Manager on the Register or unregister with job manager settings page of a deployment manager or administrative agent console.
To deregister hosts, run the wsadmin unregisterHost command in the JobManagerNode command group or click Delete Host on the Targets page of a job manager or deployment manager console.

Use a deployment manager to unregister the deployment manager from a job manager. Use an administrative agent to unregister a stand-alone application server. To fully remove a stand-alone application server from the flexible management environment, you must first unregister the stand-alone application server from a job manager and then unregister it from an administrative agent.

Avoid trouble: Unregister a node before deleting its profile. For example, AppSrv02 is a stand-alone application server that is registered as nodeB. Use the administrative agent to unregister nodeB before deleting profile AppSrv02. For more information, see the topic on unregistering nodes of the administrative agent.

If the system fails when unregistering a target from a job manager, run the cleanupTarget command in the JobManagerNode group to clean up job manager registration information. The command does not remove the job history of the node that you are unregistering. Jobs in progress continue to run, but new jobs do not start for the node. See the topic on the JobManagerNode command group for the AdminTask object.