What are the consequences of one repository becoming unavailable in a federated environment?

If WebSphere Portal is configured for federated security with multiple repositories, what is the expected behavior if one of the repositories in the configuration becomes unavailable?

VMM component in WebSphere checks all repositories before allowing authentication to succeed.

The expected behavior would be for authentication to fail regardless of the fact that the user ID in question may reside in a repository that is still available. Thus, login to WebSphere Portal or the Integrated Solutions console could fail as well as attempts to start or stop WebSphere Portal and server1.

To change the default behavior, perform the following steps:

1. Open <wp_profile_root>/config/cells/<cellname>/wim/config/wimconfig.xml for editing.

2. Locate the realm configuration and add the parameter allowOperationIfReposDown="true" as follows:

<config:realmConfiguration defaultRealm="defaultWIMFileBasedRealm">
  <config:realms delimiter="/" name="defaultWIMFileBasedRealm" securityUse="active" allowOperationIfReposDown="true">

3. Save the file.

4. Restart server1 and WebSphere_Portal. If the system is clustered, update the wimconfig.xml on the dmgr, perform a full synchronization, and then restart the dmgr, nodeagents, and servers.

Now when a repository becomes unavailable, the authentication will still succeed as long as the user ID in question resides in a repository that is still available.