Understanding tags

This is the main tag in the configuration file. The attributes of this tag are as follows:

appserver: This is the name of the application server. For example, JBoss.

appversion: This is the version of the application server.

This is a mandatory tag for WebLogic as this will hold the WebLogic domain name with which BusinessManager is installed.

Along with the domain-name, you must specify the absolute path of the WebLogic domain used by BusinessManager.

<domain-name location="C:\bea\user_projects\domains\oebps75sp2">oebps75sp2

A <cluster-configuration> has a <protocol> tag that is required to communicate to the application server and create the URLs for lookup.

For example, t3:// for WebLogic.

The protocol can be overridden for an individual <cluster> by defining it within the cluster. For example, in the case of a Web cluster which uses HTTPS connection, can be defined as follows:

<protocol>https://</protocol>

This tag is optional.

A <cluster-configuration> has a <synchronize-time> tag that is required for synchronizing the time of all the nodes in the cluster. In this tag, the node attribute should have the name of the node, which is taken as the reference and all the other nodes’ time is synchronized with the reference node.

The cluster nodes are synchronized with the target node time only during the cluster setup. Any exception during the synchronization of node time is ignored and the cluster setup continues. You can also use third-party tools for synchronizing time.

A <cluster-configuration> has an <authentication> tag that provides the user name and password to connect to the application server for the cluster setup. The user name and password should have administration rights.

The <authentication> tag has the <user> and <password> tags.

IP multicast is a simple broadcast technology that enables multiple applications to "subscribe" to a given IP address and port number and listen for messages. A multicast address is an IP address in the range from 224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255.

The cluster requires a <multicast> tag for WebLogic and JBoss application servers that corresponds to the multicast address. It has a port attribute that has the multicast port number.

Note: The multicast address or port should be different for each application cluster. An Application cluster may include EJB cluster, JMS cluster and Web cluster types. This tag is important if more than one application clusters run in the same intranet.

A <cluster-configuration> can have multiple <cluster> tags corresponding to each cluster to be set up, for example, one for EJB cluster, one for JMS cluster and one for Web cluster. There could be only one cluster defined for a type. Each cluster will have more than one nodes defined under the <nodes> tag. The <nodes> tag has as many <node> tags as the number of nodes in the cluster.

name: This is the unique name of the cluster.

type: This defines the type of cluster. Valid types are ejb, jms and web.

Note: Cluster name must not contain spaces or special characters that are not allowed by the underlying operating system.

This represents a node in the cluster. It has a single attribute:

name: The unique name of the node.

A node is characterized by the following:

<jndi-port>: This is the JNDI port on which the node listens. Normally the naming service runs on this port. This tag is valid for EJB, JMS and WEB nodes.

<http-port>: This is the HTTP port on which the node listens. This tag is valid for EJB, WEB and PROXY server.

<oebps-home>: This is the location where BusinessManager is installed in the cluster nodes.

The cluster utility creates a server instance for each node with the server name as the node name.

Understanding tags

Tags in cluster configuration file