Managing application servers

You can use either the administrative console or command-line tools to manage your application servers.

Before you begin

[AIX Solaris HP-UX Linux Windows][IBM i]If you plan to change the system clock, stop all the application servers, the node agent servers, the deployment manager server, the administrative agent server, and the job manager server first. After you stop the servers, change the system clock, and then restart the servers. If you change the system clock on one system, you must ensure the clocks on all systems that communicate with each other and have WebSphere® Application Server installed are synchronized. Otherwise, you might experience errors, such as security tokens no longer being valid.

[z/OS]If you plan to change the system clock, stop all the application servers, the node agent servers, the deployment manager server, the administrative agent server, the job manager server, and the location service daemon first. After you stop the servers and location service daemon, change the system clock, and then restart the servers and location service daemon. If you change the system clock on one system, you must ensure the clocks on all systems that communicate with each other and have WebSphere Application Server installed are synchronized. Otherwise, you might experience errors, such as security tokens no longer being valid.

[IBM i]If an application server is running on an operating system when the time zone setting for the operating system is updated, the application server updates its internal time stamp. Because of a delay between the change for the time zone and the change to the application server internal time stamp, an incorrect time stamp could be posted for a file if the file is touched during this delay. The delay could be several seconds. If the file is part of an application, this incorrect time stamp would cause the application to stop and then restart because the application server thinks that the application has been updated.

About this task

For transitioning users: If you are migrating from a previous version of the product, you can upgrade a portion of the nodes in a cell, while leaving others at the previous release level. This means that, for a period of time, you might be managing servers that are running at different release levels in the same cell. In this mixed environment, some restrictions exist for what you can do with servers that are running at a previous release level. No restrictions exist for what you can do with the servers that are running on the newest release level.

You can perform the following steps to view and manage an application server from the administrative console.

Procedure

  1. In the administrative console click Servers > Server Types > WebSphere application servers.
    The Application servers page lists the application servers in your environment and the status of each of these servers. You can use this page to complete the following actions:
    • Create additional servers.
    • Monitor running servers.
    • Control the status of a server.
    • Create a server template
    • Delete a server. When you select a server for deletion, you must click Delete and OK before the server is deleted.
      Tip: If the server you are deleting has applications or modules mapped to it and is not part of a cluster, remap the modules to another server, or create a new server and remap the modules to the new server, before you delete this server. After a server to which modules are mapped is deleted, you cannot remap these modules to another server. Therefore, if you do not remap the modules to another server before you delete this server, you must uninstall all of the modules that were mapped to this server, and then reinstall them on a different server.

      If the server you are deleting is part of a cluster, any application that is installed on this server is automatically installed on all of the other servers in the cluster. Therefore, deleting one cluster member does not affect the other cluster members, and the application remains installed in the cluster. Similarly when a new member is added to an existing cluster, any applications that are installed on the servers in that cluster are automatically installed on the new cluster member.

  2. Click the name of a listed server to view or change the configuration settings for that server.
    You can use this administrative console page to:
    • Change the configuration settings for the selected server.

      For example, if you do not need to have all of the sever components start during the server startup process, you might want to select Start components as needed, which is not automatically selected when a new server is created. When this property is selected, server components are dynamically started as they are needed. When this property is not selected, all of the server components are started during the startup process. Therefore, selecting this property usually results in improved startup time because fewer components are started during the startup process.

    • View the status of applications running on the selected server. To view the status of applications running on this server, under Applications, click Installed Applications.
  3. [z/OS]Click Custom properties to add new custom properties, update existing custom properties, or modify the timer settings if the current settings are causing timeout problems.
  4. Click Review, select Synchronize changes with Nodes.
  5. Click Save to save any configuration changes that you made.
  6. If you made any configuration or custom property changes, start the application server, or stop and restart the application server if it is already running.

Results

When you click Servers > Server Types > WebSphere application servers, you can view the state of each server.

When you click Servers > Server Types > WebSphere application servers > server_name, you can view any configuration changes you made.

What to do next

You can deploy applications or components to your application servers.