IBM Business Process Manager Operations Guide

IBM Business Process Manager Operations Guide

by Bryan Brown, Karri S Carlson-Neumann, Mark Filley, Weiming Gu, Chris Richardson, Dave Spriet, Shuo Zhang
Released December 2016
Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
ISBN: 9780738442297

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Book description

This IBM® Redbooks® publication provides operations teams with architectural design patterns and guidelines for the day-to-day challenges that they face when managing their IBM IBM Business Process Manager (BPM) infrastructure. Today, IBM BPM L2 and L3 Support and SWAT teams are constantly advising customers how to deal with the following common challenges:

  • Deployment options (on-premises, patterns, cloud, and so on)

  • Administration

  • DevOps

  • Automation

  • Performance monitoring and tuning

  • Infrastructure management

  • Scalability

  • High Availability and Data Recovery

  • Federation


    • This publication enables customers to become self-sufficient, promote consistency and accelerate IBM BPM Support engagements.

    This IBM Redbooks publication is targeted toward technical professionals (technical support staff, IT Architects, and IT Specialists) who are responsible for meeting day-to-day challenges that they face when they are managing an IBM BPM infrastructure.

    Table of contents

    1. Front cover
    2. Notices
      1. Trademarks
    3. Preface
      1. Authors
      2. Now you can become a published author, too!
      3. Comments welcome
      4. Stay connected to IBM Redbooks
    4. Chapter 1. Introduction and basic concepts
      1. 1.1 Why use IBM BPM operations
        1. 1.1.1 What is covered in this book
        2. 1.1.2 Roles and responsibilities
      2. 1.2 Basic topology and nomenclature
        1. 1.2.1 Topology recommendations
        2. 1.2.2 IBM BPM environments (dev, test, stage, and prod)
      3. 1.3 Special case for IBM BPM Operations: IBM BPM on Cloud
      4. 1.4 Helpful resources
    5. Chapter 2. Application lifecycle maintenance
      1. 2.1 Application development versus operations roles
      2. 2.2 Application lifecycle: Operation’s point of view
        1. 2.2.1 Versioning and continuing testing
        2. 2.2.2 Reviewing and planning
      3. 2.3 Types of tests and their usage
        1. 2.3.1 IBM BPM application tests
        2. 2.3.2 Functional and non-functional tests
        3. 2.3.3 Performance and stress tests
        4. 2.3.4 Black-box and white-box testing
      4. 2.4 Performance testing methodology
        1. 2.4.1 Defining objectives
        2. 2.4.2 Develop testing scripts
        3. 2.4.3 Think and pacing times
        4. 2.4.4 Testing data considerations
        5. 2.4.5 Drain down and steady state testing
        6. 2.4.6 Performance metrics
      5. 2.5 Tuning the system and caches
      6. 2.6 Application versioning
        1. 2.6.1 Naming conventions and exports
        2. 2.6.2 Toolkit dependencies
        3. 2.6.3 Dependent assets
      7. 2.7 Instance migration and application deployment
        1. 2.7.1 General checklist
        2. 2.7.2 Offline and online deployments
        3. 2.7.3 Closed and in-flight instances
        4. 2.7.4 Multiple active versions of snapshots
      8. 2.8 Capacity planning
      9. 2.9 Anti-patterns
        1. 2.9.1 Run testing on the Process Center
        2. 2.9.2 Run performance testing on inadequately provisioned environment
        3. 2.9.3 Run performance testing before application code is debugged
        4. 2.9.4 No or low think times between activities
        5. 2.9.5 Use unrealistic data
        6. 2.9.6 Common mistakes for IBM BPM testing
        7. 2.9.7 Application goes into production without load testing
    6. Chapter 3. Maintaining the IBM BPM system
      1. 3.1 Production migration and upgrade overview
        1. 3.1.1 Terminology
        2. 3.1.2 Migration and upgrade paths overview
        3. 3.1.3 Migration approaches
      2. 3.2 Readiness and planning for migration or upgrade
        1. 3.2.1 Verifying your target environment
        2. 3.2.2 Migration self-evaluation
        3. 3.2.3 Quiescing IBM BPM system
      3. 3.3 Upgrading IBM BPM
        1. 3.3.1 Rolling upgrade
        2. 3.3.2 Estimating the upgrade time
      4. 3.4 Topology refactoring
        1. 3.4.1 Changing the number of clusters
        2. 3.4.2 Adding a node in a cluster
        3. 3.4.3 Managing node location
        4. 3.4.4 Changing the IBM BPM database type
        5. 3.4.5 Changing the IBM BPM database location
        6. 3.4.6 Changing IBM BPM edition
        7. 3.4.7 Changing cell location
    7. Chapter 4. Purging and archiving in IBM BPM systems
      1. 4.1 Data retention policies
        1. 4.1.1 Snapshot and instance data deletion considerations
      2. 4.2 Process Center
        1. 4.2.1 Disabling auto-tracking in a BPD
        2. 4.2.2 Marking system tasks for deletion when created
        3. 4.2.3 Process applications and toolkits
        4. 4.2.4 Snapshots in Process Center
        5. 4.2.5 Unnamed snapshots in Process Center
        6. 4.2.6 Advanced content in Process Center
        7. 4.2.7 Administering the Process Center index
      3. 4.3 Process Server
        1. 4.3.1 Snapshots in Process Server
        2. 4.3.2 Instances in Process Server
        3. 4.3.3 Durable subscription events in Process Server
      4. 4.4 Performance Data Warehouse
      5. 4.5 Process Portal index
      6. 4.6 Process Federation Server
        1. 4.6.1 Modifying configuration properties
        2. 4.6.2 Removing a federated IBM BPM system
        3. 4.6.3 Rebuilding an index
        4. 4.6.4 Monitoring and administering an index
      7. 4.7 Other data
        1. 4.7.1 Document attachments
        2. 4.7.2 Temp directory
      8. 4.8 IBM Business Monitor
      9. 4.9 IBM BPM and IBM Business Monitor Purging summary
    8. Chapter 5. Maintaining IBM BPM-dependent systems
      1. 5.1 Lower stack level products, Java, WebSphere Application Server, and web servers
        1. 5.1.1 WebSphere Application Server and IBM Java upgrades
        2. 5.1.2 Thread pools and sizings
        3. 5.1.3 HTTP sessions
        4. 5.1.4 Operating system maintenance
        5. 5.1.5 Virtualization
      2. 5.2 Security and LDAP connections
        1. 5.2.1 Default configuration
        2. 5.2.2 Default users and groups
        3. 5.2.3 LDAP
        4. 5.2.4 User and group synchronization
        5. 5.2.5 IBM BPM database and custom data sources
      3. 5.3 External integrations
    9. Chapter 6. Problem determination and remediation
      1. 6.1 Problem determination
        1. 6.1.1 Resources for finding solutions to problems
        2. 6.1.2 Problem determination example
        3. 6.1.3 Working with IBM BPM Support
      2. 6.2 Data collection methods and analysis tools
        1. 6.2.1 Data gathering
        2. 6.2.2 Reading a log file
        3. 6.2.3 Thread dump
        4. 6.2.4 WAIT tool
        5. 6.2.5 Web browser trace
        6. 6.2.6 SystemOut.log files
        7. 6.2.7 Trace files
        8. 6.2.8 Operating system diagnostics tools
        9. 6.2.9 Heap dump
        10. 6.2.10 Core dump
        11. 6.2.11 Verbose garbage collection
        12. 6.2.12 Instrumentation within BPMN
        13. 6.2.13 TWXUsage tool
        14. 6.2.14 Wombat application analysis
      3. 6.3 BPMN component problem determination
        1. 6.3.1 Managed asset class loader
        2. 6.3.2 Repository assets, snapshot, and branch size
        3. 6.3.3 Event manager
        4. 6.3.4 Instance and tasks
        5. 6.3.5 Under Cover Agents
      4. 6.4 Operations with Process Admin console
        1. 6.4.1 Process monitor
        2. 6.4.2 Event Manager
        3. 6.4.3 Instrumentation
        4. 6.4.4 Creating alerts
      5. 6.5 Recovery modes and transactions
        1. 6.5.1 Starting the server in recovery mode
        2. 6.5.2 Resolving in-doubt transactions
      6. 6.6 BPEL problem determination
        1. 6.6.1 Failed events
        2. 6.6.2 Security considerations for the recovery subsystem
        3. 6.6.3 Hold and retention queue
        4. 6.6.4 Event sequencing
      7. 6.7 Preparing for fire drills
        1. 6.7.1 Key contacts
        2. 6.7.2 Emergency actions
    10. Related publications
      1. IBM Redbooks
      2. Online resources
      3. Help from IBM
    11. Back cover

    Product information

    • Title: IBM Business Process Manager Operations Guide
    • Author(s): Bryan Brown, Karri S Carlson-Neumann, Mark Filley, Weiming Gu, Chris Richardson, Dave Spriet, Shuo Zhang
    • Release date: December 2016
    • Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
    • ISBN: 9780738442297