TIBCO ActiveMatrix® BPM Administration

Table of Contents

• Administration Topics
• General
• Helpful standard documents
• TIBCO recommendations
• High Availability (HA)
• Environment Description
• Database Configuration
• Ports
• Debug Log
• enable JConsole
• enable OSGI Console
• Change Admin root password
• Content topic backlog list

Administration Topics

General

• Installation Hints, here ...
• Running TIBCO Configuration Tool in Silent Mode
• TIBCO Universal Installer Hints

Helpful standard documents

• Standard Trouble Shouting Guide, here ...
• Standard Performance Tuning Guide, here ...
• Creation of a Distributed System (Cluster with multiple nodes)

TIBCO recommendations

In a production environment, TIBCO recommends that the ActiveMatrix Administrator server is hosted independently from ActiveMatrix BPM, using its own set of TIBCO Host instances. If a high availability, the fault-tolerant configuration is required, the ActiveMatrix Administrator server should also be replicated. In a production environment, TIBCO recommends the use of a distributed configuration for ActiveMatrix BPM (along with a suitable underlying architecture).

This configuration can provide the following advantages

• Scalability:: ActiveMatrix BPM software provides the specialization and horizontal scalability capabilities. A BPM logical node can be added to boost the capacity of the BPM system in the required areas - web tier, process management, or work management. Distribute BPM logical nodes to different TIBCO Host instances and physical machines as required. See "IM Enterprise Architecture - Concepts?  for more information about the different types of BPM logical node and their uses.
• High availability and fault tolerance:: ActiveMatrix BPM software provides active/active clustering capabilities. Adding a second BPM logical node (of type BPM ) provides high availability and fault tolerance. In the event of a system-affecting failure on one node, the load is automatically switched to the remaining node.

Each discrete BPM system is hosted on its own set of TIBCO Host instances so they can be independently lifecycle or upgraded at the host level.

TIBCO recommends a minimum specification for any server used to host a BPM system.

• Processor Two 3 GHz dual-core processors.
• System Memory 8 GB of virtual memory is available for user applications.

Constraints

Each instance of the TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM application must have a unique name within a TIBCO ActiveMatrix environment. This name identifies the TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM system within that TIBCO ActiveMatrix environment. (The combination of the environment name and application name uniquely identifies the TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM system within the TIBCO ActiveMatrix enterprise.) A TIBCO ActiveMatrix node can only host a single TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM system (or part of a distributed TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM system).

High Availability (HA)

HA Features

• Load balanced by EMS server or HTTP load balancer
• Fault tolerance on messages
• Applications are deployed across all nodes though applications can be split into different functional components.

HA Requirements

• HTTP Load Balancer (Optional)
• Highly available database
• Highly available LDAP
• A clustered file system that supports EMS file-locking requirements
• TCP connections between servers
• All components are co-located within the same data center for FT but nodes can be spread across data centers for HA
• A shared file system is required for AMX Administration and must be accessible by all boxes.  Typically this can be provided by an NFS mount to an NFS server.
• tiny Network Share, for some global BPM Configuration Files that can be changed by Administrators at runtime. 

Environment Description

execute the following commands on your machines, change to the path: 

[amx bpm root]\tibcohost\Admin-AMX BPM-AMX BPM Server\host\bin

• tibcohost describeHost
• tibcohost describeNodes

Sample result for i.e. AMX BPM 1.2.0 HF2 on AMX Plattform 3.1.3 HF2 (Windows Server 2008)

Invoking describeHost, Host description follows:

    Host name: SystemHost

    Enterprise name: AMX BPM

    HPA instance name: Admin-AMX BPM-AMX BPM Server

    Bind status: bound

    Internet host name: 10.33.xx.xx

    HPA type: TibcoHost

    HPA version: 2.0.0

    Host platform version: 3.1.3.HF2

    Connect URL: service:jmx:jmxmp://WSDEMO:6051

    O/S name: Windows Server 2008

    O/S version: 6.0

    O/S process ID: 3152

    System architecture: x86

    Secure connection: false

Invoking describeNodes

Description of node "BPMNode" follows:

    Node Description: TIBCO BPM Node

    Current status: RUNNING

    Node type: com.tibco.amf.hpa.tibcohost.node.hibernate.feature

    Node type version: 3.1.302

    Start mode: auto

Description of node "SystemNode" follows:

    Node description: Admin Default Node

    Current status: RUNNING

    Node type: com.tibco.amf.hpa.tibcohost.node.hibernate.feature

    Node type version: 3.1.302

    Start mode: auto

Database Configuration

TIBCO ActiveMatrix® BPM is heavily dependent on underneath Database and it must be monitored very carefully. e.g. MS SQL / Oracle "Auto Extend" ON can be used to limit out-of-space errors.

Ports

List of used AMX BPM default Ports:

25     : SMTP email

8080 : Workspace / Openspace / AppDev / API?s  

8120 : AMX Administrator

6021 : Admin Management Port

6031 : Node Management Port

6041 : Credential Server Details

6051 : TIBCO host

7222 : EMS - AMX

8777 : Policyagent

10801: LDAP

19767: internal http Cx

Database Connections i.e. (defaults)

1521 : ORACLE

1433 : MS SQL

... plus any Web Service called or made available, using a non-default httpConnector Resource Template. (non-default Resource Templates in general)

Debug Log

Check-in administrator that the application is started.

Look in your <Node Directory>/nodes/BPMNode/logs directory, and look to see if any of the log files change. If yes - see what messages have been logged at that time

Turn debug on in administrator and reproduce the issue, to turn to debug on in applications:

1. select 'amx.bpm.app',
2. Look at the Configuration tab, select 'Logging Configurations',
3. Pick the first  item (com.tibco.bx) click the '+' icon next to the name,
4. A line will appear - notice the 'Level' column will now be populated with the word 'WARN',
5. Click on the 'WARN' word and a drop-down pick list will appear,
6. Select 'DEBUG' from the list, the save button will now be highlighted,
7. Press save, once saved the 'Apply' button will be highlighted, press Apply,  
8. Repeat this procedure for the other two - remember to save and then apply

Now you will see more information being written to the BPMNode/logs files, once you have reproduced the issue switch logging from debug to warning.

enable JConsole

Add the following lines to ?tibamx_BPMNode.tra?

#=============================================================== # Adjust the version of the classpath here. # =============================================================== tibco.include.tra=C:/Tibco/amx-bpm1.0.2/tibcohost/1.2/scripts/node_classpath_3.0.1.HF1.tra java.property.com.sun.management.jmxremote=true java.property.com.sun.management.jmxremote.port=9091 java.property.com.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false java.property.com.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false

JConsole Screenshot

Details Link: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/guide/management/jconsole.html

enable OSGI Console

The following procedure to activate the OSGi procedure

• ./tibcohost sncp -nodeName BPMNode_01 -properties osgi.console=1112

Invoking setNodeConfigurationProperties

•    -nodeName BPMNode_01
•    -properties osgi.console=1112

Setting node ""BPMNode_01"" properties, previous node property values follow:

• osgi.console = null

New node property values follow:

• osgi.console = 1112

Restart the node,

• then telnet on port 1112

The following command will disable it again:

• ./tibcohost sncp -nodeName BPMNode_01 -properties osgi.console=null

Change Admin root password

Password is located in this folder:

%TIBCO_CONFIG%\tibco\data\admin\%EnterpriseName%\private\%ServerName%\temp\admin_bootstrap.properties.

The UserID is plain text (root) but the password is obfuscated.

You can generate the obfuscated password by running the ANT Task.

You need to use ? The ?obfuscate_build.xml? which is located at : TibcoConfig\tibco\data\admin\AMX BPM\samples\

Sample Output

D:\AMXBPM210\TCTGA\tibco\data\admin\AMX BPM\samples>ant -f obfuscate_build.xml -Dpassword=staff123

Buildfile: D:\AMXBPM210\TCTGA\tibco\data\admin\AMX BPM\samples\obfuscate_build.xml

-input-password:

encrypt:

[AMXObfuscateTask]  INFO - Initializing JSSE's crypto provider class com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.Provider in default mode

[AMXObfuscateTask] Obfuscated value:[#!Rmo6DytBbEU2GMRW4oN+9bpbrtZUSc8uEt0f1MMlrWQ=]

BUILD SUCCESSFUL

Total time: 16 seconds

Content topic backlog list

in Example things like

• Underlying Platform
• Security
• Failover and DR
• Sizing
• Hotfix dependencies
• Tips & Tricks

Any contribution is welcome!

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