Deploying in a clustered WebSphere Application Server environment

You can deploy the Analytics Platform in a clustered WebSphere® Application Server environment.

Before you begin

Note: In previous topics, the term node is used as a general term to define a separate machine that runs an instance of the Analytics Platform. The term node is used here to identify a node in a WebSphere Application Server cluster.

About this task

All clustering is handled by the Analytics Platform regardless of the topology that is configured in WebSphere Application Server. You must determine which machines in the cluster you want to be the master nodes and define them through a JNDI property. The list of master nodes are passed down to the WAR file, where the distribution of analytics data within the cluster is handled.

To use the Analytics Platform in a clustered environment on WebSphere Application Server, follow these steps.

Procedure

Identify the machines in the cluster that you want to be the master nodes and record their IP addresses or host names.
Deploy the analytics WAR file to the WebSphere Application Server cluster. Do not start the web application yet.
Set the JNDI property for masternodes to a comma-separated list of the nodes in the cluster that you want to be the host name. The following example shows possible values for the JNDI property:
```
<hostname>:<port>,<hostname>:<port>,<hostname>:<port>

192.168.1.32:9600,192.168.1.8:9600

clusterhost1:9600,clusterhost2:9600,clusterhost3:9600
```
Note: The port value is the transport port, which by default is 9600. You can change this port through the JNDI property. For more information, see Ports that are used by the IBM MobileFirst Platform Operational Analytics.
The following image shows the environment entries for web modules:
Set the remaining JNDI properties. For more information about the JNDI properties, see Properties and configurations.
Open the analytics console page on each cluster. When the console is accessed, each node in the cluster establishes a connection with each node listed in the masternodes list.

Results

You deployed the Analytics Platform in a clustered WebSphere Application Server environment.

Note: When you install analytics on WebSphere Application Server, a profile can contain multiple servers. Each server can have multiple analytics WAR files. By default, each of these WAR files points to the same directory to store analytics data. Normally, a JNDI property is used to change the location of the directory that is used to store analytics data. However, in this case, each server shares the same JNDI property. Because of this scenario, you must use WebSphere Application Server variables to define the location of the data directory when you set the JNDI property for the analytics data folder. The following example shows how you can set the JNDI property with the variables:

${USER_INSTALL_ROOT}/MFPAnalyticsDir/${WAS_SERVER_NAME}/AnalyticsData