How to do an EAR deployment through TIBCO Administrator GUI – Step by Step guide

In this tutorial, I am going to explain how to perform a deployment though TIBCO Administrator GUI. Nowadays we are not following these steps as we have automated jobs like Jenkins. But its always good to grasp what are the parameters we set and why we need to do that.

How to upload an EAR?

To start a deployment, go to Application Management > All Applications > New Application.

Now we need to upload the EAR file using the browse button and click OK.

How to change Application name and Deployment name in TIBCO Admin GUI?

In the new screen, we have to set a few options and values based on our need. Please see the image below. The first section (Application Archive) has the details like the Package version, when it created and who owned the package. Next section is Application Parameter where we can specify the application name and deployment name. The default value will be there which we specified while building the EAR. In the Services section, we have two options available.

1. Quick Configure: – If this option is checked we can select one BW from the dropdown list where we need to deploy the EAR. The drop-down has the list of Business Works servers which is configured in the domain. This option is handy when we need to deploy it in a single machine.
2. Deploy on Save:- If this option is checked the service gets deployed when we click on the Save button. We can go with this option if you are 100% sure about the global variables and other settings.

After configuring all these options click on the Save button.

How to configure Additional Servers in TIBCO Admin GUI?

We will get the below screen once we saved it. Now click on the .par(Process Archive) file if you want to deploy these services in additional machines and to configure flow control options.

Once we clicked on the par file, it will display the below options. In this screen, we need to make sure the Enable Service option is checked. If it’s unchecked even if the service is running it will be in disabled status and won’t process any data.

Click on Add to Additional Machines to select the Business Works servers where you need to deploy the service. This is completely based on your need and the volume of data its processing. Also, you can select the same Business Works servers multiple times if you want to run multiple instances of the service in a single server.

How to Configure Fault-Tolerant mode through TIBCO Administrator?

If we select multiple machines, it will show a few additional options to configure whether the service needs to be run on Fault-Tolerant mode or Load balancing mode.

What happens when we configure peer/peer in Fault-Tolerant?

By default, Run Fault Tolerant check box will be checked. Uncheck the same if you prefer to run the service in Load balancing mode. If it’s in FT mode we need to specify the FT Weight for each instance to configure once as primary and other as Secondary. Primary weight is 500 and for Secondary its 100. If we specify 200 (peer) for both instances there won’t be any priority on one server on other server. Instead, one of the servers will act as primary and another one will act as secondary till other one goes down. When the server came back online it remains as secondary. It won’t be able to take control like in 500/100 weight set up.

What are the FT group settings and why we need to use it?

The other three options in FT Group Settings are

1. Heartbeat Interval (ms) – How frequently the heartbeat message sent between Primary & Secondary
2. Activation Interval (ms) – How much time need to wait for Secondary before it becomes as Primary
3. Activation Delay (ms) – Addition Delay before activating the secondary node as primary.

Now Click on the Advanced button to configure the Max Job/Flow Limit for each started process. These options are for the performance tuning of the service. if Max Job/Flow Limit is set 0, it’s unlimited.

How to disable specific starter process through TIBCO Administrator?

We can disable specific starter process from here by unchecking Enable checkbox corresponding to the Starter process. If we configure a process to be disabled from here, to enable the same we need to enable it and deploy again to take effect.

Now click on each instance to configure additional setting specific for that instance.

In the General tab, we can specify the instance name based on our requirement. One thing to notice here is the Instance Names are unique even if it deployed in multiple servers.

In the Server Settings tab, we can configure the below settings. Please see the image. Main options are

1. Max Log File Size (KB) – Service will write the information in the logs files until the file reaches the limit we specified here. here we specified as 20 MB and it will get rotated automatically when it reaches.
2. Max Log File Count – This option is to specify how many logs we need to keep before deleting the old ones. For the below specification, service will keep 5 logs file with Max of 20 MB each.
3. Maximum Heap Size (MB) – The value is based on the code logic and volume of data it’s going to process. When we specify a higher value for we need to make sure we have enough resources are available for the same.

Now Click on the Application name, here its QueueReceiver at the top and then Advance tab to configure the Global variables based on the environment. Design time value will be there by default and we need to change it manually if we are moving it to PROD or other environments. After configuring this variables click on Save.

Now click on the Deploy button and it will show few additional options. These options are straight forward and need to decide based on your domain and configurations. Once done, click on OK and the service will get deployed.

If it’s deployed successfully, we can see like below for each server.

Now click on service instances.

Hope this tutorial helps you guys.

In Next session, I will explain different options available for a Deployed service.