Configuring the HTTP server

You can configure the HTTP server to make it highly available and you can set system properties to alleviate the symptoms that result from failover of the HTTP server.

Before you begin

When the HTTP server fails, the user can experience one of the symptoms of failover. To alleviate these failover symptoms for the HTTP server, you can opt to show a warning message when the server connection is lost. In the System Properties application, set the mxe.webclient.lostconnectionwarningonly property to true to enable the system message. To set the intervals for showing system failure and reconnection messages, modify the mxe.webclient.lostconnectionrecheckinterval and mxe.webclient.lostconnectionwarninginterval properties.

About this task

Users access the product application through the HTTP Service IP or load balancer. This solution masks an HTTP server failover from the user, and causes only a moment of inaccessibility while the Service IP switches to the standby node.

Procedure

  1. Install IBM® HTTP Server on two or more nodes. The first node is the active node and the subsequent nodes are available to support failover. HTTP server installation files can be installed locally or on a highly available shared disk and mounted on the active node. You can use cluster management software to configure and control mounting on a shared disk.
  2. Install cluster manager software , such as System Automation for Multiplatforms, on all nodes.
  3. To automate the monitoring of the HTTP service status and startup and failover to standby nodes, create resources and policies on the cluster manager. For information about creating resources and policies, see the documentation for your cluster management software product.
  4. If you do not have an external load balancer, apply a Service IP to the active node by creating a resource and policy on your cluster manager. Users can access the same product URL independent of which system is active. If there is an external load balancer to serve the client requests, then you can have multiple HTTP nodes active at one time. No Service IP is required, because the external load balancer distributes the requests across the HTTP servers.


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