WebSphere guidelines

Preparing the data sources

The data source chapter instructs you to create a database for Marketing Operations and then configure a JDBC data source for it in your application server. When you complete these tasks for a cluster on WebSphere, note the following extra instructions:

• The Marketing Operations database must be on a machine that is accessible to all machines in the cluster, but it does not need to be on a machine in the cluster.
• When you configure the JDBC provider, specify the cluster as the scope.

Installing the products

When you follow the instructions for running the installer, be sure that you install Marketing Platform and Marketing Operations only once, on a machine that is accessible to all machines in the Marketing Operations cluster.

You do not need to install the software on each cluster member. Instead, you install it only once, create the EAR, and then deploy the EAR file on each cluster member.

Extra pre-deployment steps

Before you deploy Marketing Operations, complete the following tasks in addition to the ones specified in the pre-deployment configuration chapter:

• Share the top-level directory in which Marketing Operations is installed. For example, say that Marketing Operations is installed in C:\MktOpsCluster\IBM_IMS\MarketingOperations. In this case, you would share the entire MktOpsCluster directory.
• Create and share a folder on the administration server to contain the upload files for Marketing Operations. This folder is known as the Shared_UMO_Artifacts folder. All cluster members must have full control (read, write, change, and delete) of this folder. Placing this folder below the HCL® home directory in the local file system hierarchy is optional.

Extra deployment steps

In addition to the instructions in the deployment chapter, note the following additions:

1. Map modules to servers

When you set the options in the Select Installation Options wizard for WebSphere, select the cluster and the web server when mapping modules to servers.

2. Extra instructions for the Generic JVM property

Remember to configure the Generic JVM property on each machine in the cluster.

The path that you specify in the plan.home and other properties must point to the shared installation directory.

You set the following extra parameters for clusters:

• -DPLAN_CONFIG_GUID=Plan
• -Dplan.log.config=\\umoMachine\SharedUnicaHome\MarketingOperations\conf\plan_log4j_client.xml
• -Dplan.local.log.dir=local_log_dir (where local_log_dir is the writeable folder on the physical machine where Marketing Operations creates logs)
• On the machines that must not send notifications, set the "suppress notifications" parameter as follows:

  -Dplan.suppressNotifications=true

  Set this property on every node except one: the one you want to send notifications.

• To use a different plan_ehcache.xml file in place of the default file that is defined in the CONF directory for a node, set the -plan_ehcache parameter for that node to specify the location of the file.

Configure session management cookie

You must define the name of the session management cookie that is used by servers in the cluster. To configure the session management cookie:

1. In the WebSphere console, access the properties for a server in the cluster. Go to the web container settings and open the session management configuration.
2. Enable cookies and specify UMOSESSIONID as the cookie name.
3. Save the settings and repeat this procedure for all servers in the cluster.

Extra post-deployment steps

If you are using a plug-in for load balancing, you must complete the following configuration steps:

• For HCL Marketing Operations to work effectively in a clustered environment, users must remain on a single node for their entire session. This option for session management and load balancing is known as session affinity. For more information about configuring your installation to use session affinity, refer to the documentation for your application server.
  Note: When a node fails on a system that uses this configuration option, every user session on that node also fails. The load balancer does not, and must not, switch users to another available node, as user authentication applies only to a single node in Marketing Operations. Users are prompted to log in again, and in some cases an unexpected error and corresponding data loss can occur.
• Log in to Marketing Operations. Select Settings > Configuration, and configure the following URL parameters so that all references to the Marketing Operations server use the proxy host and port.
  • Marketing Operations | navigation | serverURL
  • Marketing Operations | umoConfiguration | markup | markupServerURL
  • Marketing Operations | umoConfiguration | notifications | notifyPlanBaseURL