Stopping an application server

Stopping an application server ends a server process based on the process definition settings in the current application server configuration.

Before you begin

Make sure you understand the impact of stopping a particular server has on your ability to handle work requests, especially if you need to maintain a highly available environment.

About this task

There are times you need to stop an application server. For example, you might have to apply service to an application running on that server, or you might want to change one of the application server's configuration setting. Use one of the following options when you need to stop an application server.

Avoid trouble: During the Application Server shutdown procecess, com.ibm.ejs.util.am._Alarm might launch new threads that cause unnecessary exceptions from varied components. For example, you might receive the following Connection Pool Manager exception: 
J2CA0020E: Connection Pool Manager could not allocate a Managed Connection: 
java.lang.IllegalStateException: Internal     
Error: cannot find the PoolManager Reference.
These exceptions might occur because an application server must shut down all of the components under that application server’s control before the stop process can complete. You can ignore these exceptions. After the application server stops, all running threads from the application server automatically end.

Procedure

  • [z/OS]You can issue a stopServer command to stop a single server or the stopManager command to stop the deployment manager.

    Read the stopServer and stopManager topics for information about the commands, including such information as running the commands and defining the log file names.

    Read the topic on using command-line tools for information such as determining from what directory to run the stopServer and stopManager commands.

    You can check that the server or deployment manager has successfully stopped by checking the appropriate log file.

    [z/OS]You should not use the CANCEL appserver_proc_name command to stop a server. Every time a server is started, a new temp directory is created off of the servant process token, such as profile_root/default/temp/node_name/server_name. When the server is cleanly stopped, these temp directories are normally removed. However, if the server is frequently not stopped cleanly, which happens if you cancel rather than stop the server, these temp directories are not removed and the HFS used for these temp directories eventually becomes full. You can also prevent this storage problem from occurring if you precompile your JavaServer pages when you install an application or if you use the JspBatchCompiler function to precompile them before they are invoked.

  • You can use the administrative console to stop an application server:
    1. In the administrative console, click Servers > Server Types > WebSphere application servers.
    2. Select the application server that you want stopped and click Stop.
    3. Confirm that you want to stop the application server.
    4. View the Status value and any messages or logs to see whether the application server stops.

Results

The specified server stops as soon as requests assigned to that server finish processing. To verify that the server is in stop state, in the administrative console, click Servers > Server Types > WebSphere application servers.

What to do next

If you experience any problems shutting down a server, see Troubleshooting administration.