How to maintain a single property file for multiple web server instances running on different node on WAS Cell NW deployment

0
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I am maintaining/developing a web application which is deployed in multiple nodes of a websphere cell. There are two nodes in a WAS cell. Each node has a web server in which my web application is deployed. So there are two instances of web application.

I can use the URL provider to read the property file from the web application. (Reference)

But I have to maintain an identical property file on each server. When I need to change I have to change it on both servers.

Is there anyway I can maintain a single property file and access it from web application deployed on different places? Or any other better way to do this?

2
javajakarta-eewebsphere
Is it not an option to use a shared filesystem? - dbreaux
There are other servers running on the same machine. Those will use individual config files. Also for sime other factors it was not decided to go with shared filesystem. Thanks. - Ram C

2 Answers

2
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If you read your property files using a URL resource (a good practice), then you can host your property file on a single internal web server. The URL resource reference in each of your web containers would point to this internal web server. Then you would only have to change the property file in your internal web server document root.

This practice has several drawbacks.

  1. Security - By externalizing your configuration, you now have another attack vector. You could apply mutual-auth SSL to this scenario, but that gets more complicated than simply maintaining two property files.
  2. Availability - Now your internal web server is a single point of failure. You could cluster it; but then you have more servers to manage, precisely what you were trying to avoid.
  3. Latency - Reading configuration off box involves more latency than the file system.

I believe the property file per node is going to work best. If copying a file twice is so much more onerous than copying it once, just script it. That will scale to however many nodes you opt to deploy.

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CAVEAT: This is a bit outside my experience, but if I'm understanding your question correctly...

If you have federated the servers as a single cluster, I believe the Intelligent Management tools can take care of copying an equivalent configuration out to all of them. Each would then read the configuration information from their own local copy.