Profile Types

Cell Profile

Cell profiles are actually two profiles in one. You get a deployment manager profile and a federated application server profile. You have a choice whether to install Samples and the default application. The default application provides an application server called server1 and an enterprise application called Default Application. Both the Samples and the default application provide servlets that you can run in a Web browser to test your installation.

Deployment Manager Profile

The deployment manager is special type of application server that hosts administrative console and has functionality to administer the application servers that are federated into cell. All the cell level configuration is stored in the deployment manager profile. It also has the master copy of the application servers, node agents. The Deployment manager profile will have master copy of all the installed applications.

Important Note Applications are installed at the the cell level.

Application Server profile

Application server profile contains configuration information for one managed server. It will has information about server level resources and configuration. It will also have copy of the installed application

Custom Profile

Custom profiles are empty nodes that are made operational by adding a deployment manager cell. After adding the node, use the administrative console for the deployment manager to customize the node. For example, create application servers on the node or clusters. A custom node does not include a server1 process as an application server node does. Nor does it include the default application or any Sample applications. It is truly an empty node that you must customize.

Default Profile

Profiles use concept of default profile when more than one profile exists. The default profile is set to be the default target for scripts that do not specify a profile.

Lets say you have a DMGR and Application Server profile installed on your machine. Now if you want to start the Application Server you have two options either you can go to <APPSERVER_PROFILE_HOME>/bin and execute startServer command or you can go to <APPSERVER_HOME>/bin directory and execute startServer command and specify -pforileName <APPSERVER_PROFILE_NAME> command line parameter.

You can find out the default profile for the installation by executing
manageProfile.bat -getDefaultName command

You can set the default profile for an installation in multiple ways

• Using the manage profile command line tool by executing manageProfile.bat -setDefaultName AppSrv01 command
  
• At the time of creating new profile using Profile Management tool you can check the checkbox for Make this profile the default

What is profile

A profile defines the runtime environment. The profile includes all the files that the server processes in the runtime environment and that you can change. You can create profile using manageprofiles command or the Profile Management tool graphical user interface.

When you create a new profile, a new folder for the profile will get created in profiles folder but all the profiles for given application server installation share same binary. So if you update the application server version it will affect all the profiles. This makes administration little easier because you can update multiple servers by updating the binaries but disadvantage of using profiles is that you cant have different versions of the application server.

Each profile has its own administrative console and administrative scripting interface. The installation program for WebSphere Application Server uses the manageprofiles command to create a profile named default.

This how the directory structure of typical profile looks like

Profiles Types

The profiles are created based on templates supplied with the product. These templates are located in <was_home>/profileTemplates. Each template consists of a set of files that provide the initial settings for the profile and a list of actions to perform after the profile is created. Currently, there is no provision for modifying these templates for your use, or for creating new templates. When you create a profile using manageprofiles, you will need to specify one of the following templates:


• default (for application server profiles)


•  dmgr (for deployment manager profiles)


•  managed (for custom profiles)


•  cell (for cell profiles)

Profiles Notes

The WAS installation process simply lays down a set of core product files required for the run time process. After installation, you need to create one or more profiles that define the run time to have functional system.

With Base and Express, you can only have stand-alone application servers. Each application server is defined within a single cell and node. The administration console is hosted within the application server and can only connect to that application server. No central management of multiple application servers is possible. An application server profile defines this environment. You can also create stand-alone application servers with the Network Deployment package, though you would most likely do so with the intentof federating that server into a cell for central management.


With the Network Deployment package, you have the option of defining multiple application servers with central management capabilities. The administration domain is the cell, consisting of one or more nodes. Each node contains one or more application servers and a node agent that provides an administration point management by the deployment manager. The deployment manager can be located on the same machine as one or more of the application servers

The basis for this run time environment starts with the deployment manager that provides the administration interface for the cell. As you would expect, thedeployment manager is defined by a deployment manager profile.

If there are any errors at the time of creating profile you can check the logs at

<was_home>/logs/managedprofiles/<profile_home>_create.log

You can find the detailed logs for each of the action executed during profile creation in <was_home>/logs/managedprofiles/<profile_home> folder