Node agents are administrative agents that represent a node to
your system and manage the servers on that node. Node agents monitor application
servers on a host system and route administrative requests to servers.
Before you begin
Before you can manage a node agent, you must install the Network Deployment
product.
If
you plan to change the system clock, stop all the application servers,
the node agent servers, and the deployment manager server first. Once
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 issues, such as security tokens no longer being
valid.
About this task
A node agent is a server that is created automatically when a
node is added to a cell. A node agent runs on every host computer system that
participates in the Network Deployment product. You can view information about
a node agent, stop and start the processing of a node agent, stop and restart
application servers on the node that is managed by the node agent, and so
on.
A node agent is purely an administrative agent and is not involved
in application serving functions. A node agent also hosts other important
administrative functions, such as file transfer services, configuration synchronization,
and performance monitoring.
You can manage nodes through the wsadmin
scripting tool, through the Java application programming interfaces (APIs),
or through the administrative console. Perform the following tasks to manage
nodes on an application server through the administrative console.
Procedure
- View information about a node agent. Click System Administration
> Node Agents in the console navigation tree. To view additional information
about a particular node agent or to further configure a node agent, click
the node agent name under Name.
IP
verions: WebSphere Application Server on other platforms has support for
Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) and Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6).
However, the i5/OS platform supports only IPv4. When you add a node to a cell,
the format in which you specify the host name is based on the version of IP
the node will be using. See IP version considerations for cells.
-
Stop and then restart the processing of a node agent. On the Node Agents page, select the check box beside the
node agent that you want to restart; then click Restart. It is important
to keep a node agent running because a node agent must be running for application
servers on the node managed by the node agent to run.
- Stop and then restart all of the application servers on the node
that are managed by the node agent. On the Node Agents page, select the check box beside the
node agent that manages the node with servers that you want to restart, and
click Restart all Servers on Node.
Clicking Restart
all Servers on Node also stops and then restarts the node agent. Servers
that were stopped when you clicked Restart all Servers on Node remain
stopped.
Tip: The node agent for the node must be processing to restart
application servers on the node.
- Stop the processing of a node agent. On the Node Agents page, select the check box beside the
node agent that you want to stop processing; click Stop.
Results
Depending on the steps that you completed, you have viewed information
about a node agent, stopped and started the processing of a node agent, and
stopped and restarted application servers on the node that is managed by the
node agent.
What to do next
You can administer other aspects of the Network Deployment environment,
such as the deployment manager, nodes, and cells.