WebSphere® Virtual Enterprise Version 6.1 adds support for management of middleware servers, custom health conditions and actions, enhanced reporting and charting, a new centralized installation manager, and new administrative scripting interfaces.
Support for WebSphere Application Server Community Edition Version 2.1. | Support has been added for WebSphere Application Server Community Edition Version 2.1. If you are using the Java Management Extensions (JMX) security feature, you must perform additional steps to configure WebSphere Virtual Enterprise to use JMX security. See Configuring JMX security for WebSphere Application Server Community Edition Version 2.1 servers for more information. |
Server operation timeout behavior change | Servers are no longer automatically placed in maintenance mode when the servers fail to start before the server operation timeout. Instead, a runtime task is generated a when the server fails to start. However, you can set the maintenanceModeOnOperationFail custom property to change back to the original behavior. See Monitoring and tuning the application placement controller for more information. |
New parameters for the createDynamicCluster command | The clusterShortName and serverSpecificShortNames parameters were added to the createDynamicCluster command to support z/OS platforms. See Dynamic cluster administrative tasks for more information. |
Multiple applications can share the same validation cluster | You can have multiple applications in validation mode on the same deployment target. However, these applications must be different and cannot be different editions of the same application. See Validating an edition for more information. |
New administrative tasks to modify the ruleset.xml file | You can use the administrator scripting interface to add, remove, or modify rules and actions of the ruleset.xml file outside of the administrative console. See Ruleset administrative tasks for more information. |
New runtime operations custom properties | You can set custom properties to limit what cell information is displayed in the operations dashboard, specify how many data sets are displayed in summary charts, or specify how many milliseconds of statistics are used to calculate the top number of data sets to display in the summary charts. See Runtime operations custom properties for more information. |
Custom log configuration | Custom logs give you the flexibility as to what data is captured, the manner in which it is displayed, and the ability to have multiple conditional logs. See Configuring custom logs . |
Enabling cell affinity | The cell affinity function allows you to configure unbridged, on demand router (ODR) topologies which preserve sessions even in the event of an on demand router (ODR) outage. See Enabling cell affinity . |
Troubleshooting ODRs | On demand routers (ODRs) are servers that act as an intermediary for HTTP requests that are serviced by application servers or Web servers. There are many factors that affect ODR performance. If you discover that your ODRs are not working the way you want, then you might need to tune your ODRs. See Tuning the on demand router (ODR) . |
Support forVMware ESX | You can configure WebSphere Virtual Enterprise to communicate with VMware ESX Version 3.5 and later by using Web services. See Configuring VMware Infrastructure 3 platforms and WebSphere Virtual Enterprise for more information. |
Variable to set maximum heap size for assisted life cycle servers | You can use the SERVER_MAX_HEAP_SIZE variable to set the maximum heap size on an assisted life cycle server. See Middleware server custom properties variables for more information. |
Application placement for cells that share the same nodes | To support application placement on a set of nodes that are members of two different cells, you can configure the cells to communicate with each other. See Configuring application placement for cells that share the same nodes for more information. |
Application placement controller accounts for the deployment manager | As a best practice, the deployment manager runs on a separate node from the rest of the nodes in the environment. With a virtualized environment, the deployment manager node might be running on the same physical computer as other server nodes. The application placement controller has been updated to make decisions with the knowledge that the deployment manager might be running on the same physical computer as other nodes in the environment. |
Memory overload protection | You can configure memory overload protection (MOP) to limit the rate at which the on demand router (ODR) forwards traffic to prevent an OutOfMemoryException exception from occurring in an application server. See Memory overload protection for more information. |
Multi-cluster routing policy rules | See Routing and service policies for HTTP multi-cluster routing policy rules information. |
Extended support for WebSphere Application Server Community Edition servers | Complete lifecycle management
is supported for WebSphere Application
Server Community Edition Version 2 (all releases) servers. With complete
lifecycle management, the environment can create new WebSphere Application Server Community
Edition servers. You can also create dynamic clusters of WebSphere Application Server
Community Edition servers with expression-based membership. WebSphere Application Server Community Edition Version 1 and Version 2 servers can also be represented in the administrative console as assisted lifecycle servers. See Configuring assisted life-cycle WebSphere Application Server Community Edition servers for more information. |
Add representations of external WebSphere Application Server Version 5.1 and Version 6 (all releases) application servers | You can create representations of external WebSphere application servers to your WebSphere Virtual Enterprise cell. As a result, these servers have assisted lifecycle management support. See Configuring external WebSphere application servers for more information. |
Optional dialog-oriented admission control for CPU overload protection | Use the dialog-oriented admission control for CPU overload protection when it is important to make deliberate refusals of some offered load. See Configuring the autonomic request flow manager . |
Optional dialog-orientation for the queuing for CPU overload protection. | The queuing for CPU overload protection is normally dialog-oriented for HTTP. As well, the dialog orientation for the queuing for HTTP can be disabled. See Autonomic request flow manager custom properties . |
SIP support. | Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is supported. |
Create custom health conditions in the administrative console | Use a custom condition when the predefined health conditions do not fit your needs. You define custom conditions as a subexpression that is tested against metrics in your environment. You can create custom health conditions when you create a health policy. See Creating health policies for more information. |
Predefined health conditions are expanded for WebSphere Application Server Community Edition servers | The excessive memory usage policy was expanded to support WebSphere Application Server Community Edition servers. For more information about support for the predefined health conditions, see Health management . |
Define custom health conditions for Web application level statistics | You can define a health condition on the application level by editing the subexpression that you can generate in the administrative console. See Creating health policies for more information. |
Move charts into a new window | You can move charts to a new window to continue viewing the chart while performing other tasks in the administrative console. You can also move the chart back to the original chart group. See Creating and managing reports for more information. |
New deployment target, application, service policy, and dashboard operational summary views | See Runtime operations overview for more information. |
Improve the performance of operational alerts | You can use custom properties to tune how and when operational alerts load in the administrative console. See Operational alerts custom properties for more information. |
New administrative tasks to manage user preferences for runtime operations | You can use the Jython scripting language to clone, set, and get preferences with the wsadmin tool. See Runtime operations user preferences administrative tasks for more information. |
Following is a list of new features for WebSphere Virtual Enterprise Version 6.1:
Support for assisted lifecycle middleware servers | With middleware servers, you can manage all of the servers in your environment, including servers that are not created with WebSphere Virtual Enterprise, through the WebSphere Virtual Enterprise administrative domain. You can create representations of servers that were created outside of the WebSphere Virtual Enterprise administrative domain in the administrative console. The middleware agent provides the information that WebSphere Virtual Enterprise needs to manage these servers. See Adding middleware servers to configurations for more information. |
Support for externally installed middleware applications | Create representations of unmanaged Web applications so that the on demand router (ODR) can route requests to applications that are installed outside of the WebSphere Virtual Enterprise environment to servers that are also configured externally. See Deploying unmanaged Web applications for more information. |
Manage PHP servers, dynamic clusters, and applications | By creating PHP servers or dynamic clusters, you can deploy PHP applications, and these applications become managed by WebSphere Virtual Enterprise. See Creating PHP servers and PHP dynamic clusters and Deploying PHP applications for more information. |
Dynamic clusters are no longer dependent on node groups | Instead of creating a static node group to define the nodes on which dynamic cluster instances run, you can create a dynamic cluster with a membership policy that specifies node properties to evaluate against all of the nodes in the cell. See Creating dynamic clusters for more information. |
Dynamic cluster isolation | Use dynamic cluster isolation to isolate applications from other applications that are deployed in the cell. See Dynamic cluster isolation for more information. |
Server maintenance mode | In addition to setting maintenance mode on a node, you can now set maintenance mode on individual servers. Use maintenance mode to perform diagnostic tasks, maintenance, or tuning on a node or server without fear of disrupting incoming traffic to that node or server in a production environment. See Setting maintenance mode for more information. |
Custom health conditions | Use a custom condition when the predefined health conditions do not fit your needs. You define custom conditions as a subexpression that is tested against metrics in your environment. Create a custom health condition by using the createHealthPolicy AdminTask command to create your health policy. See Health policy administrative tasks for more information. |
Health actions | The following health actions
are new for Version 6.1:
|
Custom health actions | If the provided health actions do not meet your needs, you can create a custom health action. With a custom action, you define an executable file to run when the health condition breaches. You must define custom actions before you create the health policy that contains the custom actions. See Creating health policy custom actions for more information. |
Runtime topology and runtime maps have been replaced with new reporting and operational summary features |
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Configure the timestamp format in the visualization data service | You can configure the
timestamp format that is saved in the log data by the visualization
data service. See Configuring the visualization data service for more information. |
Simplify the tasks of deploying product packages to your WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment Version 6.1 cell or other server environments | You can shorten the number
of steps that are required to create and manage your environments.
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