Overview

TIBCO Silver Fabric Enabler for ActiveSpaces Enterprise Edition is used to configure, start, and manage TIBCO ActiveSpaces as-agents using TIBCO Silver Fabric Administration Tool. After installing TIBCO Silver Fabric Enabler for ActiveSpaces Enterprise Edition, you can configure TIBCO Silver Fabric components and stacks according to your system architecture's use of ActiveSpaces as-agents deployed within a metaspace.

This guide assumes that you are familiar with using TIBCO Silver Fabric Administration Tool. For detailed information, see the TIBCO Silver Fabric Cloud Administration Guide.

To run TIBCO Silver Fabric Administration Tool, you must have a Silver Fabric Broker running and know the hostname, user name, and password. If this is not the case, see Silver Fabric Installation Guide or contact the administrator responsible for the Silver Fabric installation.

Components

TIBCO ActiveSpaces as-agents are configured as TIBCO Silver Fabric J2EE Components. When TIBCO Silver Fabric Enabler for ActiveSpaces Enterprise Edition is installed in your TIBCO Silver Fabric environment, Runtime Context Variables specific to configuring ActiveSpaces as-agents become available for configuration of a J2EE Component type. The as-agent command line options have been mapped to component Runtime Context Variables as appropriate for deployment within the TIBCO Silver Fabric environment.

To create a new Component using the ActiveSpaces Enabler, follow these steps:

1.	Select Stacks->Components. In the Global Actions drop-down list, select Create New J2EE Component. In the Create New J2EE Component pop-up, select Silver Fabric Enabler for TIBCO ActiveSpaces, version 1.2.0.0 and Click OK.

Figure 1 J2EE Active Space Component

2.	In the Configure General Properties window, name your component and provide a description. Click Next until you come to the Configure Component Options window. Change the Statistics Collection Frequency in seconds value from 10 to 60.

Figure 2 Component Wizard

3.	Click Next until you come to the window in which you can add/override/edit enabler and component-specific runtime context variables. If you want to specify a distribution version which should be used, please follow below instruction, otherwise proceed to the step 5.

4.	Click the Add Variable drop-down list and select String, in Add/Edit Variable dialog, enter "middlewareVersions" in the Name field and "TIBCO_ActiveSpaces_distribution:<Distribution_Version>" in the Value field. Then Click OK to save the changes.

Figure 3 Add variable to runtime context variable

Example: "TIBCO_ActiveSpaces_distribution:2.1.6

Middleware Version is optional and if it is not specified, the latest distribution version is used.

5.	Click Add from Enabler. In the pop-up that appears, select AS_METASPACE in the drop down list of variables for the enabler and click OK.

Figure 4 Override an enabler specific context variable

6.	Highlight AS_METASPACE by clicking on it, and then click Edit. Type the desired metaspace name in the Value field (default: ms) and click OK.

Figure 5 Edit AS_METASPACE

7.	Repeat the above two steps, to add any additional Runtime Context Variables and specify their settings and click Finish.

8.	Select the Gear icon next to the component you just configured and select Publish Component.

See ActiveSpaces Enabler Runtime Context Variables to find out more about available options for configuring a component that uses the ActiveSpaces Enabler.

Stacks

TIBCO Silver Fabric Stack is used to deploy a single TIBCO ActiveSpaces metaspace environment. A stack might have only one ActiveSpaces Enabler Component, but will probably have several ActiveSpaces Enabler components configured in TIBCO Silver Fabric Stack. In TIBCO Silver Fabric Stack, ActiveSpaces Enabler Components can be configured to run on independent machines, or the same machine, as individual components or as components dependent upon other components.

To create a new Stack, follow these steps:

1.	Select Stacks->Stacks. Click Create New Stack. In the Name field, enter a name for your Stack.

2.	Click on the plus sign (+) next to Components to show a list of the Components you have configured. Click on your ActiveSpaces component under Available Components then click >> to add it to the list of Selected Components.

3.	Click the Policies tab. Click on the plus sign (+) to display the list of components selected for this stack.

Figure 6 Stack Builder

4.	Set min and max to the minimum and maximum number of engines allocated to each component.

5.	Set the component priority relative to other components.

6.	Click Choose a rule type to display a drop-down list of rules to add for this component.

7.	(Optional) Select Component Dependency to specify whether this component is dependent upon another component starting up first.

8.	(Optional) Select Resource Preference to specify property settings to affect the running of component instances. Click Save when your stack configuration is complete. Select the Gear icon next to the stack you just configured, and click Publish Stack.

9.	When you are ready to run your stack, select the Gear icon next to the stack and click Run Stack in Manual Mode.

Controlling Where Components Run

The TIBCO Silver Fabric Stack configuration controls which machines your as-agents run on. For scenarios where you need to run as-agents on different machines (for example, for host-aware replication), it is good practice to create separate component configurations that are then configured in the stack to run on separate machines. You can do this by adding a Resource Preference rule to the component that specifies the Host Name of the machine that the component should run on.

Figure 7 Creating Resource Reference Rule (Host)

When running in the cloud, it might not be possible to know in advance the host name of the machine you want your component instances to run on. In this case, have your Asset Manager use a Silver Fabric property (for example, Group) and assign machines in the cloud to have different predetermined property values as they are started.

For example, when the first machine in the cloud starts, have the Asset Manager configure the machine so that it uses the Group property with a value of Machine1, the second machine so that it uses the Group property with a value of Machine2, and so on. Then add a Resource Preference rule to the component in the stack configuration that specifies the Group that engines should belong to when determining the engines on which the component should run.

In Silver Fabric Administration Tool, follow these steps to set the value of a daemon property:

1.	Select Engines->Daemons. Click on the Gear icon next to the daemon whose property you want to set.

2.	Select Edit/View Properties. On the Engine Properties window, click New. Click the down arrow of the Property field and select the property you want to set from the list displayed.

3.	In the Value field, enter the value for the property and click Save.

Any engines started for that daemon will have that property and value. You can now configure component instances to run only on engines with that particular property value by adding a Resource Preference rule to the component in your stack configuration.

For example, if you configured one of the daemons to have a Group property with a value of MyGroup1, then to constrain component instances to run only on engines of that daemon, you would configure the component in the stack with a Resource Preference rule as shown in the following figure:

Figure 8 Creating Resource Reference Rule (Group)