Ruth Willenborg

The WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment version 5.0 (WAS ND) provides an infrastructure for you to centrally administer multiple WAS servers, resources, and other elements of your topology. Your managed topology can include support for clustered servers with workload management and failover. WAS ND's support for centrally administering topologies provides significant benefits for both large-scale and small-scale topologies. This article provides tips to help you better exploit the administrative capabilities of WAS ND. We discuss options for deciding on the scope of your topology, and advice on administering the topology. If you are planning or administering a topology based on WAS ND (or WAS Enterprise), these tips, which are based on lab experiences with large ND deployments, should be helpful. Tips for Planning CellsApplications and the resources the... (more)

Top Cluster Considerations

One of the greatest strengths of Java Platform 2, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) application servers is the ability to scale solutions to meet increased performance and availability demands. The inherent clustering and failover capabilities built into products such as the IBM WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment Edition take care of most of the dirty work; however, there are important application considerations that can't be overlooked. If an application isn't designed for cluster awareness, functional or performance issues can surface when deploying your application to a c... (more)

WebSphere 5.0: What's New on the Performance Front

IBM WebSphere Application Server (WAS) version 5.0 continues the tradition of improved performance from release to release. These improvements come from several key areas, which include: WAS's implementation of new J2EE 1.3 APIs, notably EJB 2.0 Web services using SOAP Dynamic caching and edge componentry HTTP session management Extensions for the enterprise WAS 5.0 complements these performance enhancements with an enhanced collection of runtime tools for performance, including Java Management Extension (JMX) interfaces for performance monitoring and performance advice. This art... (more)

WebSphere Performance Diagnostics - Going Beyond the Metrics

J2EE has arrived, and is gaining strength and popularity every day. J2EE does an excellent job of solving enterprise computing problems. It supports legacy applications and interfaces, multiple operating systems, distributed and clustered environments and high-volume mission-critical applications with support for security and managed operations. Regardless of the type of Web application model being adopted, there are some issues that need careful consideration during the design and implementation of an e-business site. These include the reliability, security, capacity, scalabili... (more)

Performance Analysis for Java Web Sites

A good stress test uncovers any problem areas before deploying the web site to production. The time and expense of performance tests pays off in the gains realized in customer satisfaction and overall site reliability. So far, we've discussed building good performance tests for your web site. Now let's cover building a realistic environment in which to run these tests. In short, you cannot go cheap in building your test environment. Poor infrastructure impacts performance and stress tests more than any other type of tests you'll run against your web site. Don't expect to meet your... (more)