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Administration Environment

WebOTX provides a tool to unify management of resource settings and system operating status.

Integrated administration through the Java operation framework

Web computing systems use many types of hardware, including firewall servers, Web servers, Web application servers, business application servers, database servers, storage servers, and network devices, as well as related software. Because these devices use diverse technologies and features, it is important to effectively manage each server system to reduce the operation costs.

Java Management Extensions (JMX) represents one of the sets of Java EE 5 specifications. JMX was developed to use Java in order to collectively manage and monitor hardware and software on a network. WebOTX provides an administration framework based on these specifications.

Domain, the management unit of WebOTX

WebOTX manages business application systems in domain units.

 

A domain is the basic configuration unit of WebOTX. Each domain makes a logical group of resource and service suites which are managed using WebOTX. Because domains are separately operated, and their settings such as configuration information are managed in separate directories, it is possible to set up domains according to the requirements of individual business systems.

 

As an example, if the customer needs to set up a commercial environment and evaluation environment on a single machine, it is possible to set up a commercial domain and evaluation domain on that machine. Also if the customer needs to set up a cluster configuration made up of an active and standby system, the same domain can be effectively defined on multiple machines.

Web-browser-based integrated administration console

WebOTX provides a Web-browser-based integrated administration console which makes it easy to perform Web server operations. This console enables to use a Web browser to perform system administration tasks such as deploying, undeploying, starting, or stopping Web applications, as well as monitoring the system operating status. If you have an environment in which a Web browser can be used, remote operations can also be performed using the Internet.

Flash-based integrated administration console
Ajax-based integrated administration console

GUI-based integrated administration tool

In addition, WebOTX provides a greatly improved GUI-based administration tool compared to conventional tools.

GUI-based integrated administration tool
GUI-based integrated administration tool

The new tool enables to easily monitor the system operating status and mainly use a mouse to perform operations such as creating, changing, or adding system configuration information, as well as registering, changing, deleting, starting, or stopping applications with ease.

In addition, features related to managing users, monitoring the system operation status, reporting the performance status, and monitoring for failures have been improved. The tool can be used to graphically view relevant information, which helps improve operation efficiency.

System monitoring features
System monitoring features

Various administration commands

To enable automated operation, WebOTX provides operation commands that can be specified in scripts. And this makes easy to specify settings such as when to start or stop jobs, as well as settings for automating job operation recovery when a failure occurs. In addition, an API that complies with the JMX specifications is provided, which can be used to develop an independent administration environment.

Cooperation with integrated administration products

WebOTX can be mediated with integrated administration software such as MasterScope product suite including MasterScope MISSION CRITICAL OPERATIONS, as well as HP's OpenView and Workload Manager, to collectively monitor the system load (including the CPU load percentage, memory usage percentage, disk usage percentage, and LAN traffic) and quickly detect failures (including hardware, OS, network, and WebOTX system failures).

Cooperation with other integrated administration products
Cooperation with other integrated administration products

Deployment tool

For Java EE 5, application registration and deletion are referred to as "deployment" and "undeployment".

For WebOTX, a GUI-based deployment tool can be used to deploy applications to or undeploy them from Application servers and Web servers. This enables to easily deploy applications from a development environment server to an execution environment server. In addition, commands are provided for automatic deployment or undeployment without operator, and these commands can be specified in shell scripts or batch files.

Diagnostic information (log) collection

WebOTX provides various logs and traces which helps to check the system operation. In addition, an API can be used to output logs or traces, which can be used for failure or performance analysis.

Collective management of user account information for the entire system

An LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) server can now be used to manage users for each WebOTX edition, an Enterprise Service Bus, and the UDDI Registry.

This enables to collectively manage operation users and application users specified on a separate application server basis, and to set up a single sign-on environment.

Bundled with the EnterpriseDirectoryServer LDAP server software as standard
Bundled with the EnterpriseDirectoryServer LDAP server software as standard

Support for virtualization / cloud

Improved operability in virtual environment

In business system with virtual environment or cloud computing, load balancing environment is configured with dozens”undreds of servers. What’s more, in case of server enhancement by scale out, virtualization software such as VMware replicates existing server environment, and configures multiple execution environment.

In previous version, configuration/operation requires lots of costs in case of application update / parameter change / system monitoring because operation needs to be done for individual environment against multiple server configuration.

Therefore, in WebOTX Application Server version 8.3, new operation platform is provided to group domain (job execution environment) on distributed server, and also to integrate application deployment on each domain or setting. In case of server addition in scale out, only single operation enables grouping target, then tremendously reduces configuration/operation cost.

E.g. when system with 10 same configuration server is configured, so far, following domain configuration for 10 each server is required.

  • Deploys application on domain
  • Updates execution parameter on domain
  • Sets up monitoring items on domain

In this version, WebOTX groups domain suite on distributed server as one virtual domain (domain group). By executing only one time to this domain, application deployment / parameter update are done simultaneously to all grouped domains.

As well, in order to grasp domain operation status on all the servers, connection from administration tool to each (on 10 servers) domain is required in previous product. This product version provides new administration platform and cuts down these complex procedures.

Moreover, you can figure out the abnormal event such as process failure in these domains, on this administration platform in the single window. This facilitates integration with monitoring software such as NEC MasterScope.

On the other hand, application update / execution parameter update occur in system maintenance, administrators update data to domains on all servers by one update operation from this operation platform.

Besides, in case of server enhancement of scale out, domain in copied server environment using virtualization s/w etc can be targeted as operation control easily.

In this way, operators can efficiently configure/manage domain on all the servers from single operation platform, and operation cost can be greatly decreased.

Automation of domain information registration process

As an operation platform in virtual/cloud environment configured with zillions of server suite, WebOTX Application Server provides integration function for application deployment to each physical domain and setting operation. However, to integrate and manage multiple application server, each physical domain is required to be registered to virtual domain group during configuration, and this operation cost expands. As well, manual registration operation of tremendous number of physical domain leads to human error.

Also, in virtual/cloud environment, it is general to do scale out according to system load situation. However, new domains of scale out target are required to be registered in virtual domain group manually, as a result, rapid system expansion is disturbed.

WebOTX Application Server version 8.4 can automate new domain registration operation by automatically pushing group information from target App server (physical domain) to distributed management server (virtual domain). Therefore, this enables to dissolve operational complication, largely reduce operational cost, and stop occurrence of human error. Also, with import function, if setting is imported to scale out target environment, registration to virtual domain group is automatically done during scale out, and rapid scale out operation is done.

Settings and app resource import

In cloud environment, system is configured with dozens”undreds of server suite which have same setting. In case of environment configuration, abundant parameter setting, App deployment, Java parts deployment such as JDBC driver are required to be repeated for all servers to replicate, and configuration effort becomes large.

WebOTX Application Server version 8.4 automates domain environment configuration by setup script generation function, which is new function of version 8.4.

This function is expanded from parameter extraction (export) function of version 8.3, and generates script for importing domain information extracted in parameter extraction function to new environment. Because script is generated in style that dependency and condition among parameters are solved, system programmers can easily replicate the original domain by only executing script one time.

For this, operator’s effort can be dramatically reduced during system configuration.

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