Setting up a WebSphere 6.1 cluster to restart automatically

Starting with WebSphere 6.1, the node manager and servers are no longer automatically installed as Windows services. This actually can resolve a lot of headaches caused if the services start in the wrong sequence. However, in many situations you do want everything to restart automatically, especially if your production server gets rebooted in the middle of the night!

Here are the instructions to get the servers in a WebSphere cluster to recover automatically. We set these up on a Lotus Connections cluster and now system restarts go much smoother.

Setting up the WebSphere Node Manager as a Windows service

First, you need to set up the Node Manager on each physical server to run as a service and restart after a reboot:

1. Open a Command Window and go to the ..\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\bin directory
2. Type in the following command (adjusted for your install paths):
   

WASService -add "IBM WebSphere Node Agent" -servername nodeagent -profilePath D:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\AppSrv01 -wasHome D:\IBM\Websphere\Appserver -logFile D:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\AppSrv01\logs\nodeagent\startNode.log -logRoot D:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\AppSrv01\logs\nodeagent -restart true -startType automatic

Setting up the member servers to automatically restart

Once the Node Manager is running as a service, you need to set the individual WebSphere servers to automatically restart using the following steps:

1. Log in to the Integrated Solutions Console
2. Navigate to Servers > Application servers > servername
3. Expand Java and Process Management and click on Monitoring Policy
4. Change the Node restart state to RUNNING
5. Click Apply
6. Click Save to save the master configuration
7. Repeat for each server in the cluster

Resources:

WebSphere InfoCenter: WASService Command
WebSphere InfoCenter: Monitoring Policy Settings
WebSphere World forum post on using WASService

Agile Atlanta on May 13th: Delivering Quality Software

May's Agile Atlanta meeting is coming up tomorrow night!

Delivering Quality Software Using Agile Development Practices

Speaker: Jann Thomas, a Development Manager for DataPath, Inc. in Duluth
Date: May 13th, 6:45 PM
Location: IBM-ISS (6303 Barfield Rd NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30328)

Delivering quality software on time is an art. Using development methods where weeks of testing follows weeks of development may have the following issues: The software team does not know when it is done, there is no list of what works only what does not, it is hard to determine what is in a build, the highest priority thing today may not be the highest priority thing tomorrow, there is tension between the software developers and software testers, the focus of team members can be on proving they are right instead of delivering software.

This presentation will give an Agile method for delivering software that is currently in practice in which, for every week of development there is a week of testing. Using this process, a team of developers and testing analyst have successfully delivered quarterly releases of management and control software for satellite communications with higher quality. By focusing on delivering our customer's highest priority features and fixes, this team has improved customer satisfaction.

One of the key elements to delivering software on time is to know when a unit of work is done. By integrating the software testers into the development team, the team can insure that each element delivered can be verified as complete. Furthermore, by creating a regression team that can test intermediate deliveries of software before the final release very focused functional testing can be per-formed and the quality of the product as a whole can be elevated.

Many methodologies describe the benefits of having the test team working on the software as early as possible. The goal of this presentation is to demonstrate an Agile method of delivering on that expectation.

Upcoming Meetings:
June 10th: Introduction to Domain Driven Design, presented by Barry Hawkins

Upcoming Training:
May 29th - 30th: Certified ScrumMaster, delivered by Innovel, LLC
June 19th: Agile Roadmapping , delivered by Peter Hodgkins with Agile University