Administering application servers

An application server configuration provides settings that control how an application server provides services for running applications and their components.

About this task

After you install the product, you might have to perform one or more of the following tasks. Unless the task you want to perform is dependent on the existence of an application server, you can perform these tasks in any order.

Best practice: IBM® recommends starting processes that run on the same profile with user IDs that have mutually compatible file permissions, meaning that each process can read or update files that the other processes create. This ensures that the processes can access the same files without encountering a permission-denied error. For example, if you run the deployment manager as user wasuser and then also run the command line tool to generate plug-ins on that same profile, you should run the tool as user wasuser.

Establish the proper permissions to the directory to which you plan to use the command.

Procedure

  • Create an application server.

    During the installation process the product creates a default application server, named server1. You must issue either the createApplicationServer or createGenericServer wsadmin command from a command line to create an additional application server or generic server.

    You cannot use the administrative console that is associated with the original base server to manage any additional servers that you create. You must either use command-line tools to perform these tasks for the additional servers, set up an administrative console for each server, or configure an administrative agent to provide a single interface to all of your servers, including the original base server.

    Avoid trouble: If you create additional application servers, only use one server to modify and save configurations. There is no coordination of configuration setting between the different servers and if you modify and save configurations on multiple servers, your data might become corrupted.
  • Configure the server startup process such that only server components that are initially needed are started.

    When the server is configured such that only the components that are initially needed are started during the startup process, the remaining components are dynamically started as they are needed.

    Avoid trouble: If you are running other WebSphere® products on top of this product, make sure that those other products support this functionality before you select this property.
  • Configure transport chains to handle client requests.
  • Develop custom services.
  • Define processes for the application server.
  • Configure the Java™ virtual machine.

Results

Any new application servers you create are displayed in the list of servers on the administrative console Application servers page.

What to do next

  • Manage your application servers. Any newly created application servers are configured with many default settings that do not display when you run the Create New Application Server wizard. You might need to change some of these settings to better fit the needs of your environment.
  • Deploy an application or component on the application server.
  • View the status of the applications running on the application server.