You can use IBM® WebSphere® DataPower® XC10 Appliance to
store data for a WebSphere Application Server dynamic
cache instance. By setting up this capability, you can enable applications,
that are written to use a WebSphere Application Server dynamic
cache instance, to take advantage of the features and performance
capabilities of the appliance.
About this task
When you configure the dynamic cache provider in
WebSphere Application Server to use
DataPower XC10 Appliance, the cache data
is stored outside of the
WebSphere Application Server topology.
All the cache data is stored in the appliance. The memory that was
being used for caching in your application servers can be used for
other purposes.
For information about using
WebSphere eXtreme Scale Client and
DataPower XC10 Appliance dynamic cache data
grids with IBM WebSphere Commerce, see the following topics
in the IBM WebSphere Commerce documentation:
Procedure
- Create a cache instance that you want to configure with
your DataPower XC10 Appliance. For more information, see Configuring dynamic cache instances..
- Configure the catalog service. The catalog
service enables the WebSphere Application Server dynamic
cache configuration to communicate with the DataPower XC10 Appliance. You can configure
the catalog service in the WebSphere Application Server administrative
console by creating a catalog service domain. See Creating catalog service domains in WebSphere Application Server for more information.
- Create the data grid on the DataPower XC10 Appliance and configure the
required security settings. You can either run the dynaCfgToAppliance script
or create the configuration manually.
- Creating the data grid configuration with the dynaCfgToAppliance script:
- This script gets installed in the bin directory
of the deployment manager profile when you install the WebSphere eXtreme Scale Client. Before you run this
script, verify that both the appliance and the deployment manager
are running:
dynaCfgToAppliance <IP_address> <cache_jndi_name> <appliance_admin> <admin_pw> <SOAP_port> <soap.client.props>
- IP_address
- Specifies the IP address of the DataPower XC10 Appliance on which you want
to store your dynamic cache data.
- cache_jndi_name
- Specifies the JNDI name of the dynamic cache. If there are any
slashes (/) in the JNDI name of the dynamic cache, the slashes
are converted to a dash for the name of the data grid in the DataPower XC10 Appliance. For example, if
the dynamic cache name is services/cache1, the data grid
that is created on the appliance is named services-cache1.
The following characters cannot be used in the name of the data grid
in the DataPower XC10 Appliance: ^ . \\ / , # $ @ : ; \ * ? <
> | = + & % [ ] " ".
- appliance_admin
- Specifies the administrator ID for logging in to the DataPower XC10 Appliance user interface.
- admin_pw
- Specifies the administrator password for logging in to the DataPower XC10 Appliance user interface.
- SOAP_port
- (Optional) Specifies the SOAP port for the deployment manager
if you are using a port number other than the default of 8879.
- soap.client.props
- (Optional) Specifies the path to the soap.client.props file.
You must specify this file if you have enabled security in WebSphere Application Server. This file enables SOAP security
and specifies the user name and password to administer the WebSphere Application Server deployment manager:
com.ibm.SOAP.securityEnabled=true
com.ibm.SOAP.loginUserid=
com.ibm.SOAP.loginPassword=
See SOAP connector and Inter-Process Communications connector
properties files for more information about the soap.client.props file.
This script creates the data grid on the appliance.
The script also sets the DataPower XC10 Appliance specific
ID and password credentials that you specified with the appliance_admin and admin_pw parameters
with the following custom properties: - xc10.<data_grid_name>.userid
- xc10.<data_grid_name>.password
These property names are not case sensitive. The password value
is encoded. If you run the script again after the initial configuration,
the custom properties are updated.
- Manually creating the data grid configuration:
- Create the dynamic cache data grid in the DataPower XC10 Appliance user interface.
Click . The name of the cache must match
the JNDI name of the dynamic cache in the WebSphere Application Server configuration. When you enter
the JNDI name replace any slashes (/) with a dash for the
name of the data grid in the DataPower XC10 Appliance. For example, if
the dynamic cache name is services/cache1, enter the name
as services-cache1.
- Create the xc10.<data_grid_name>.userid
and xc10.<data_grid_name>.password custom properties
on the WebSphere Application Server cell. The value
of the <data_grid_name> in each custom property
is the JNDI name of the data grid, replacing any slashes (/)
with dashes. For example, with the previous example, the custom property
names are xc10.services-cache1.userid and xc10.services-cache1.password.
The values should be set to a user ID and password that can access
the data grid in the DataPower XC10 Appliance configuration.
You can encode the password by using the encodePassword script,
which is in the bin directory of the deployment
manager.
Optional: You can choose
to enable multi-master replication on the DataPower XC10 Appliance dynamic cache provider.
For more information, see Configuring multi-master replication between collectives. Note: Dynamic cache grid users of WebSphere Portal Server or
WebSphere Commerce Server may have defined multiple cache instances
within their WebSphere Application Server configuration.
If you decide to enable multi-master replication for the DataPower XC10 Appliance, then this configuration
will only affect those cache instances that are defined to use the DataPower XC10 Appliance as the dynamic
cache provider, and will not affect the cache instances defined to
use the default WebSphere Application Server dynamic
cache provider.
Results
By configuring the dynamic cache service to use the appliance
as the cache provider, less memory is used by your application servers.
All the cache data is off-loaded to the appliance and is no longer
stored in application server memory.
What to do next
- Configure security before you begin to send data to the data grid.
See Enabling security for data grids for more information.
- Configure replicas. Replicas ensure that your data grid data is
available if the primary copy fails. To configure replicas, click . Replicas
are created only when the appliance is in a collective. If the number
of appliances in the collective is n, the maximum
number of replicas is n-1. Therefore if you configure
three replicas, but you only have two appliances in the collective,
only one replica is created. Additional replicas are created if you
add appliances to the collective. Set the number of replicas to the
ideal amount that you want to have, so that as appliances join the
collective, new replicas can be created. The data grid content is
cleared when you edit the number of replicas.
- The grid capacity limit for a dynamic cache instance is configured
when the WebSphere Application Server dynamic
cache instance is created. If this size is exceeded, a least recently
used (LRU) eviction strategy is used to keep the number of entries
within the configured limit.
- You can monitor your dynamic cache data grid in the DataPower XC10 Appliance user interface. See Monitoring data grids in the user interface for more information.