What is called a Node in a WebSpere Network Deployment

Question

In a installation of WebSphere Application Server with Network Deployment, a node is:

1. a physical machine
2. an instance of operative system
3. a logical set of WAS instances that is independent of physical machine or OS instance

Answer 1

My bet goes to "a logical set of WAS instances that's independent of physical machine or OS instance" but I've seen articles and books using the other two. And I don't know why.

Answer 2

@ggasp Here is what I got off IBM's Information Center

A node is a logical grouping of managed servers.

A node usually corresponds to a logical or physical computer system with a distinct IP host address. Nodes cannot span multiple computers.

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/v6r1/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.websphere.nd.multiplatform.doc/info/ae/ae/cagt_node.html

Answer 3

Keep in mind that usually <> always.

Since WAS 6.0 and up you usually want to setup more than one node in each physical computer, given the usual power of the server you use the node to separate logical business entities.

Like for example have 6 nodes, 3 in each of 2 machines and have 1 pair of nodes you could define 3 different clusters one for each stage (dev, qa, staging) and making each cluster be invisible to the other.

Answer 4

Basically,

A server is a runtime environment, a process of execution.
A node is a grouping of servers that share common configuration. It is a physical machine.
A cell is a grouping of nodes into a sigle administrative domain. For websphere, it mean that if you group several servers within a cell, then you can administer them with one Websphere admin console

Hope this helps!