Additional System Requirements for a Distributed BPM System

A distributed ActiveMatrix BPM system has additional architectural requirements.

An example of a distributed BPM system is shown in Example configuration for a distributed ActiveMatrix BPM system. The requirements are shown in the following table.

Requirement Description
Load Balancer Manages HTTP requests from ActiveMatrix BPM clients across the machines hosting BPM nodes.
Shared File System Holds shared configuration data used by ActiveMatrix BPM and/or ActiveMatrix Administrator.
LDAP Server Must be external. Do not use the internal LDAP server supplied with ActiveMatrix BPM.
Note: The load balancer, shared file system, database server, LDAP server, SMTP server (if used) and TIBCO Enterprise Message Service server must each be available to each machine that is part of the BPM system.

For a high availability configuration, they must also each be configured to provide high availability and fault tolerance.

Load Balancer

The load balancer must be configured as follows:

  • The following ports must be configured for load balancing across the relevant machines:
    • ActiveMatrix Administrator external HTTP port (default 8120) - used for communication between ActiveMatrix Administrator and external web/CLI clients and Business Studio.
    • ActiveMatrix BPM HTTP port (default 8080) - used for communication between ActiveMatrix BPM and external clients (Openspace, Workspace and custom clients).
    Note: If you are upgrading a distributed ActiveMatrix BPM system, configuration of the ActiveMatrix Administrator internal HTTP port (default 19767) for load balancing is no longer necessary.
  • Sticky connections should be used so that client session context is maintained. (If the server hosting this session dies the client will be logged out and need to log back in again.)

Shared File System

The shared file system must:

  • be available to each machine that is part of the BPM system.
  • be mounted in an identical location on each machine. For example, if you create a network drive or folder on machine 1 and map it to x:\shared on the primary machine , the shared drive or folder must be mapped to x:\shared on each remote machine as well.
  • contain the folders shown in the following table (where SHARED_DIR is the root folder of the shared file system).
Folder Notes
SHARED_DIR\admin\enterpriseName\shared Shared staging area folder used by ActiveMatrix Administrator.
Note: This folder is only required for a high availability configuration, where the Administrator server is replicated on two machines.

Use this folder when configuring the ActiveMatrix Administrator on the primary machine - see Primary Machine: Moving the ActiveMatrix Administrator Server Staging Area to the Shared File System.

SHARED_DIR\bpm_config Shared configuration folder in which ActiveMatrix BPM stores BPM properties files. (bpm_config is the suggested name for this folder, but you can use any name that you wish.)

Use this location when configuring ActiveMatrix BPM on:

SHARED_DIR\keystores Shared authentication folder in which ActiveMatrix BPM stores keystores (or trust stores) used for SSL and/or WSS authentication. This folder is created automatically if you select Override BPM Configuration Folder in the ActiveMatrix BPM: Configuration screen of the Create TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM Server Wizard.

To ensure that authentication operates correctly, you must:

  1. store any keystores needed for SSL or WSS authentication in this folder.
  2. reference this folder as the location of any keystores as required, either:
    • from TIBCO Configuration Tool dialogs (for example, when defining SSL connections)
    • when configuring a Keystore Provider resource template in TIBCO Administrator.

      See TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM - BPM Administration for more information about enabling SSL and configuring TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM to use SSO for authentication.

Note: The following user accounts must have at least read/write permissions to these folders:
  • the account used to install ActiveMatrix BPM.
  • any accounts that will be used to run ActiveMatrix BPM (specifically the tibcohost process).

Server Time Synchronization

The primary and remote machines must have their time/date synchronized with each other. If server times are offset (even by a few seconds), the ActiveMatrix BPM node log file:

CONFIG_HOME\tibcohost\Admin-enterpriseName-adminServerName\data_3.2.x\nodes\nodeName\logs\BPM.log

may show significant numbers of errors like the following: 

05 Jun 2011 14:12:02,465 [QuartzScheduler_PVM:Quartz Scheduler-LINAramis1307296618457_ClusterManager] [WARN ] com.tibco.pvm.persist.quartz.jdbcjobstore.IpmQuartzJobStoreTX - This scheduler instance (LINAramis1307296618457) is still active but was recovered by another instance in the cluster.  This may cause inconsistent behavior

25 Jan 2012 01:33:48,698 [QuartzScheduler_PVM:Quartz Scheduler-mjkmssqlbe1327088686491_ClusterManager] [INFO ] com.tibco.pvm.persist.quartz.jdbcjobstore.IpmQuartzJobStoreTX - ClusterManager: Scanning for instance "threemjkv121327089184017"'s failed in-progress jobs.

25 Jan 2012 01:33:56,200 [QuartzScheduler_PVM:Quartz Scheduler-mjkmssqlbe1327088686491_ClusterManager] [INFO ] com.tibco.pvm.persist.quartz.jdbcjobstore.IpmQuartzJobStoreTX - ClusterManager: detected 1 failed or restarted instances.

30 Jan 2012 09:43:38,067 [QuartzScheduler_PVM:Quartz Scheduler-twomjkv121327596401015_ClusterManager] [WARN ] com.tibco.pvm.persist.quartz.jdbcjobstore.IpmQuartzJobStoreTX - This scheduler instance (twomjkv121327596401015) is still active but was recovered by another instance in the cluster. This may cause inconsistent behavior.