IBM Websphere Application Server

concepts: Fitting pieces together

Table of Contents
Introduction............................................................................................................. 1
Server...................................................................................................................... 1
Node........................................................................................................................ 2
Node group.............................................................................................................. 3
Cell.......................................................................................................................... 3
Deployment manager.............................................................................................. 4
Node Agent............................................................................................................. 4
Cluster..................................................................................................................... 5
Profile...................................................................................................................... 6

Introduction
This document provides information about various Websphere Application Server
(referred as WAS from now on) concepts. I personally feel when people start using
WAS; initially they dont feel comfortable due to various concepts and terminology
used by WAS. In this document, I am trying to fit these concepts one by one to the
big picture. Current document covers Sever, Node, Node group, Cell, Node agent,
Deployment Manager, Profile and Cluster.

Server
Server is the program which handles application operations, user requests and
performs various actions either as response to some user request, or any internal
event within the server. WAS is available in various flavors providing different
functionality as per organization requirement. Here we are not digging into various
WAS product available, also most of the discussion in this document uses WAS ND
(Network Deployment) as reference. WAS ND is the high end application server in
WAS family of products, it provides near-continuous availability, centralized
deployment and centralized management.

1 | Page
Following image shows a WAS server.

Although, This image does not add any such benefit as of now, but in this document we are
going to extend this image as we add more concepts of WAS.

Any application server description cannot be completed with covering container. A

container is by which application server provides or exposes underlying services. A
server has various containers providing different services. IBM WAS has various
containers such as Web, EJB, SIP, OSGi to name a few. Following figure shows
containers within a server.

For the purpose of brevity, we will not include these containers in subsequent
figures.

2 | Page
Node
Node is not a running entity in WAS. Node is a repository of configuration files
(product files, template to create server etc.) using which various servers can be
created. You can create different servers using different template provided in the
node configuration repository. In below figure we added Node -

As you can see in above figure, you can have multiple nodes within an OS by
creating different profiles but a node has its boundary which is OS.

Node group
A node group is a grouping of similar type of nodes. By similar type of node I mean
having similar functionality in terms of resources such as type of OS. Below is an
updated figure which shows node groups. As you can see node group can spans
over OS boundary and normally is the case.

3 | Page
As you can see in above figure 2 different OS nodes cant belong to same node
group.

Cell
A cell is a grouping of node groups, nodes and servers. It is not a running entity.
Normally a cell is what your complete deployment is. It can contain any number of
nodes, clusters, servers etc. But, in large deployment you can have more than one
cell. Normally you create more than one cell when you have applications which
require all together a separate management, security and independent of other
cells deployment.

Below figure shows a single cell containing different OS, and servers.

Deployment manager
It is a special server used to manage a complete cell. You use it when your
deployment spans multiple nodes, servers and you need a single place to manage
all components and apply various features to all components or selective
components of your deployment.

4 | Page
Node Agent
If you remember, node dont cross OS boundary so as server. They need some
communication mechanism to interact with each other in bigger deployment. A
node agent provides that functionality, it works with deployment manager to
perform various actions as per commanded by deployment manager. You dont
need to create node agent independently, it is automatically created when you add
a node to the deployment manager. There is a one-to-one mapping between node
and node agent, if a node is added to deployment manager it will have one node
agent associated with it. Node agent works behind the scene and performs various
actions such as start/stop server from deployment manager, synchronize node
configuration with central repository i.e. deployment manager repository.

5 | Page
Cluster
A cluster is a grouping of application servers. A Cluster provides high availability as
requests are routed to another server if other server is not available. Normally you
create a cell with multiple nodes when you want to use cluster feature. A cluster
also provides management of servers and applications easily, as you can apply
same security and other features to all the servers and applications running on it. If
you remember node group, it is used here, a cluster cant contain nodes (and in turn
inherited servers of nodes) if they belong to different node group. Following figure
represents a simple cluster with 3 servers.

6 | Page
Profile
You create WAS environment by creating profiles. Some people use Node and Profile
interchangeable, and the reason behind it, it also create configuration files. It will
prepare configuration files using which servers can be created. Although, it can
create servers and cells for deployment on basis of user selection, but it, always at
least creates a node. Product installation of WAS provides you product files which
can be used to create different deployment topologies and profile is the way to do
that. There is a one to one mapping between node and profile, if you create a profile
a node is always get created.

7 | Page