You can create middleware server representations of WebSphere® application servers that are in other cells.
External WebSphere application servers are application servers that reside outside of your Intelligent Management cell. For example, you might have two cells: one cell that is running WebSphere Application Server application servers, and another cell that is running Intelligent Management. In this scenario, you can install the node agent on the WebSphere nodes in the other cell, federate these nodes into your Intelligent Management cell, and create representations of your external WebSphere application servers. Using external WebSphere application servers can be useful in a migration scenario because you can continue to route traffic to servers that are running an older version with the ODR while you work on migrating your servers and applications to the latest version. However, external WebSphere application servers are assisted life-cycle servers and therefore do not receive the full life-cycle management that is provided when you create application servers directly in your Intelligent Management cell.
When you configure the external WebSphere application servers, if you installed WebSphere Application Server in a location other than the default directory, update the WebSphere variables so that the installation directory is correct. To perform server operations on your server, you must configure the server operations for the WebSphere Application Server middleware server representation.