WebMethods Integration Server(s) may need to be restarted for various reasons like the deployment of application/configuration items, applying fixes & patches, troubleshooting environment related issues, or as part of scheduled maintenance. WebMethods Integration Server (IS) has a dedicated component named webMethods IS Administrator which is a GUI portal that helps to perform server start/stop/restart operations. However IS Administrator Portal requires a user to log in with specific access. Automation helps to reduce manual intervention and enforce specific procedures for Stop and Start operations. For example, there are situations where webMethods IS Administrator portal may not respond to stop/start the server instance. In such cases the server must be started from the command prompt. The FlexDeploy webMethods plugin provides operations to enable such automation.
- If you are deploying Integration Server packages with server properties/Models/Portal objects/JDBC Pools etc., or updating Server configurations which require server restart, you can include Stop, Start or Restart in your deployment workflow or pipeline.
- If you want to implement on-demand server operations, you can include Stop, Start or Restart in your FlexDeploy utility workflow.
Here are some of the operations available in FlexDeploy’s webMethods plugin.
- Start Integration Server instances when the server is down or as part of maintenance activity using startISInstance operation.
- Stop Integration Server instances on specific machine for some maintenance using stopISInstance operation.
- Stop and Start of the server instance in one go using restartISInstance operation.
Starting or Stopping of IS on the webMethods Administrator Portal requires user to log in with specific access and privileges, but with FlexDeploy you can just use Start or Stop operation in workflow without using server credentials and it will automatically perform Start or Stop operations on the specified IS instance available on the Endpoints in your environment.
If you are using FlexDeploy to deploy integration packages, then it is already configured to indicate webMethods Server Endpoint, so these operations do not require any additional configurations other than the Resource type must be marked as ‘WM Integration Server’ to differentiate the servers from webMethods Deployer endpoints.
Workflow
Here is the screenshot of Start Integration Server Workflow configuration. Similar configuration is needed for Stop and Restart workflows as well. Target Integration Server installation and instance details are the inputs required to execute the start/stop/restart operations. Inputs can be defined in the workflow itself or while submitting the request for project execution (which is preferable) because server instances can be varied for each execution.
Projects
To implement Server Management with on demand server operations , the workflow operations must be used with utility project in FlexDeploy. Refer the below screen for StartIS_Instance project which starts the specified webMethods IS instance.
Target server instance details must be supplied in the workflow inputs while executing the project request.
Execution Details
The Start/Stop/Restart operation will select all available endpoints associated to the environment instance which have a Resource type of ‘WM Integration Server’ but will execute only the specific webMethods instance mentioned in the input values.
In a nutshell, you can use FlexDeploy webMethods plugin to automate various types of Stop, Start, Restart operations during deployments/patching or you can perform such restart at weekly/monthly schedule. This automation helps reduce manual errors and save time for operations team.