Overview of server clustering

Before you begin to set up a PPM Server cluster, review the information provided in System Overview, particularly Server Cluster Configurations (Recommended). The concepts described in that section are key to understanding configuring server clusters.

A PPM Server consists of the common code located in the <PPM_Home> directory, as well as the directory of files that make up the actual PPM Server. These are separate directories in the <PPM_Home>/server directory.

Nodes are the individual PPM Servers that comprise a server cluster. Each node in a cluster requires a separate directory in the <PPM_Home>/server directory. The directory names are the server names, and you configure these in the server.conf file with the KINTANA_SERVER_NAME parameter. Each server directory in <PPM_Home>/server must have a corresponding KINTANA_SERVER_NAME defined in server.conf, all with the same assigned value.

Note: Server directories cannot contain spaces, commas, or other non-alphanumeric characters, except for hyphens (-) or underscores (_). For example, server1_1 is a valid name, but server 1,1 is not.

The @node directive in the server.conf file (that is, @node alone on a line) tells the PPM Server that the server configuration parameters listed after an @node are specific to one node in the cluster. You must specify one @node directive for each server in your cluster. Parameters displayed before the first @node are common to all servers in the cluster.

Caution: If you plan to deploy multiple nodes as a cluster on a single host machine, make sure that each node has its own dedicated ports (HTTP, RMI, RMIS, and so on) that do not conflict.

The KNTA_SERVER_PARAM_DEF_NLS table contains all of the server configuration parameters and their default values. Server parameters provides descriptions of all of the parameters in the KNTA_SERVER_PARAM_DEF_NLS table.

The server.conf file contains a subset of the server configuration parameters in the KNTA_SERVER_PARAM_DEF_NLS table. If a configuration parameter exists in the server.conf file, the value specified for it there supersedes the default value for the parameter in the KNTA_SERVER_PARAM_DEF_NLS table.

If a server configuration parameter exists in the KNTA_SERVER_PARAM_DEF_NLS table but not in the server.conf file, and you want to change the value of that parameter, you must add it to the server.conf file.

To change the value of a server configuration parameter that exists in the KNTA_SERVER_PARAM_DEF_NLS table, but is not in the server.conf file:

  1. Stop all the nodes in the cluster.

  2. Navigate to the shared folder that contains the server.conf file, and open the file in a text editor.

  3. Do one of the following:

    • To add a parameter that is to be common to all nodes in the server cluster, type the parameter name and value before the first @node directive.

    • To add a parameter that is to be specific to one node, type the parameter name and value under the @node directive for that node.

    Use the parameter name as it is listed in Server parameters. Make sure that you include the prefix "com.kintana.core.server" in the parameter name. For example, com.kintana.core.server.CLIENT_TIMEOUT.

  4. Save and close the server.conf file.

  5. Run the kUpdateHtml.sh script on each machine.

Note: If the servers in a cluster are running on multiple machines, then each @node section requires the SERVER_NAME=<>Host_Name> server.conf directive.