WebSphere Commerce federation

Federating your WebSphere Commerce environment requires WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment. After you federate, you can configure clustering.

Federating WebSphere Commerce involves adding your WebSphere Commerce node to a cell managed by a WebSphere Application Server deployment manager. Federating has the following advantages:

• Manage multiple WebSphere Commerce instances from a single WebSphere Application Server administrative console.
• Can cluster WebSphere Commerce. See the section on Clustering WebSphere Commerce.

After you federate your stand-alone WebSphere Commerce profile, the WebSphere Application Server administrative console for that profile is no longer accessible, and all administrative tasks are completed through the WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment administrative console. The WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment administrative console is a browser-based application, so it can be accessed from any machine.

For information about WebSphere Application Server clustering, see the WebSphere Application Server documentation.

• Clusters and workload management
• Clusters and workload management

Before you federate WebSphere Commerce

• It is recommended that you back up the WebSphere Application Server administrative configuration. Backing up the administrative configuration ensures that you can restore the original configuration if federation fails during the federation process.
  • Back up the WebSphere Application Server administrative configuration files
  • Backing up and restoring administrative configuration files
• Also, back up the entire profile.
  • Backing up and recovering the application server environment
  • Backing up and recovering the application server environment
• Open the httpd.config file and look at the WebSpherePluginConfig directive. Make sure the cell_name variable in the following path points to the managed cell.

  WAS_userdir/profiles/instance_name/config/cells/cell_name/nodes/WC_instance_name_node/servers/webserver1/plugin-cfg.xml 

After you federate WebSphere Commerce

• You must create the virtual hosts in the managed cell. Log in to the WebSphere Application Server administrative console and look at the VH_instance_name virtual hosts. Then, log in to the WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment administrative console in the managed cell and create the same virtual hosts there. Virtual hosts are Cell-level documents and are not merged during federation. For more information, see the addNode command best practices in the WebSphere Application Server documentation.
• All updates, such as a store publish action, go through the WebSphere Application Server Deployment Manager. For these functions to work properly your WebSphere Application Server Deployment Manager must be configured to accept the updated files for the application. By default WebSphere Application Server nodes are configured to automatically synchronize the applications when a change is made.
  • Adding, managing, and removing nodes
  • Managing nodes
• If you get a com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.exception.WebAppHostNotFoundException when you start the newly federated server, it is most likely because you did not copy over the VH_instance_name virtual hosts.