Adding a Windows App Server to an AS400 Ent. Server Setup

[markdcci]

We are looking to add a Windows App Server to an existing AS400 Xe installation to handle certain business functions.

We are mostly terminal server but have some users, mostly employee self service, using the web client and have two load-balanced Windows 2003 servers running Websphere

My 2 questions are:

1. Is it common and/or advisable to run a Windows App server on the same box as one running Websphere? I know it’s not all that uncommon to run Websphere on an AS400 that is also the enterprise server, but I haven’t heard about a similar situation in Windows. I already have such a setup in dev and it appears to work OK, but that ain't prod.

2. Can I build a package on one Windows app server and “re-use” that build on another identical (or very similar) Windows app server?

Thanks for any input.

Xe Update 7+
AS400 Enterprise server, V5R3, SP23_K1
Citrix Terminal Server for most users
Windows 2003 running WAS50

 

[Sebastian Sajaroff]

Hi,

1. Not a good idea. WebSphere is quite RAM voracious,
while some JDE UBEs may take lots of CPU too. I suggest
you to run them on separate boxes.

2. Yes, provided they're on the same Windows release and
Service Pack, and on the same C++ release and service pack.
Of course, both should have the same architecture, either
32 or 64 bits.

Regards,

 

[markdcci]

Thanks for the input. That was my thinking. We are only planning on running some business functions on that box, nothing more. Nevertheless, my gut feel is also to put them on a separate box. Now my finance guy who has to buy the box, he's another story.

On the deployment, if I build for one server how do I deploy to the second? I thought (although I could be mistaken) that JDE only allowed me to deploy to the servers explicitly for which there was a build or else R98825 errs out.

 

[Sebastian Sajaroff]

Hi,

If you want to deploy it via JDE you have to build the
package via JDE. But, you can copy bin32/spec folders
from one server to another assuming that both are on the
same JDE release, same O/S, same DB Level, same C++, etc.

Regards,

 

[jjojde]

Hello markdcci, I believe if you simply add your new Windows app. server via the machine identification program P9654A (I think) you should then be able to build and deploy packages to your new server via JDE. As mentioned in another post you can copy the package over to the app. server, however you must have the exact same configuration and compiler versions.

Regards,

 

[markdcci]

Thanks, guys. The Windows boxes will all be on the same setup, so that should save some time. I have been able to configure it and get everything running, just had a question on the package builds.

I also have two AS400 partitions that I should be able to do the same thing on (one partition is less powerful than the other, which protracts my build times). I am assuming I can just copy over the IFS folders and the libraries and off I go.

Thanks again.