Best Practices for resource management and analysis of WebSphere DataPower

Brief introduction

The goal of the IBM WebSphere DataPower Appliances (DataPower) is to quickly deploy system integration and security policies. Match firmware and hardware components to optimize policy execution in a hardened and manageable platform. DataPower accelerates the implementation of value, reducing the total cost of ownership of these complex infrastructure architectures.

DataPower configurations often implement solutions through integration with other services. For example, security policy decisions can be made by accessing a centralized directory (LDAP). The enterprise policy is available through the registry and the repository system. Logging can be performed by accessing the SYSLOG resource. Through database access, you can convert or "enrich" messages. Such functionality is typically performed before the message is delivered to the downstream application, and the response to the application may be handled extra before the response is returned to the client.

This centralized topology proves the DataPower's Agile connection function. However, each integration can bring delays or limitations to the successful processing of the stream. Although some interactions may be asynchronous or "disposable" (Fire and forget), other interactions will be synchronized, and they need to be completed before subsequent operations can begin. In both cases, the transaction may have to queue up and consume device resources to wait for the event to complete. The DataPower hardware platform provides faster interfaces, expanded memory, and faster CPUs, which in extreme cases may limit the ability to handle transactions at the best speed.

There are some best practices to manage these interactions. You can install monitors to track the incoming rate of transactional data and to process the duration required by each transaction. You can "adjust" and process transactions at a predetermined rate. The service level agreements and service level monitors can be configured to have complex mediation capabilities that can be used in conjunction with enterprise governance resources, including WSDL, Ws-mediation, and WebSphere Registry and Repository (WSRR).

This article discusses and demonstrates some techniques to make your DataPower configuration more resilient to the differences in integration dependencies and provide a more robust DataPower architecture. We will introduce some basic knowledge of DataPower resources for each platform and firmware version, and review the basics of resource monitoring. We will then explore some of the best practices that can be implemented to optimize DataPower services.

DataPower Resources Overview

DataPower is constantly improving in firmware and hardware design. The DataPower is designed with a variety of appearance specifications, including 1U, 2U, Blade and Virtual versions. In these devices, there are differences in physical properties. We will describe some of these differences, as well as some basic knowledge of resource analysis.

Device Capacity issues

The current DataPower hardware 71XX platforms (7198 and 7199) provide 1U and 2U devices. The previous generation of DataPower hardware platforms, including 9235 (9004), provide 1U models. Although many of the topics described in this article are related to all DataPower hardware platforms, including the Virtual version, we will focus on the current generation, the 71xx/4195 platform.

As shown in table 1, the physical memory and hard disk space of the 7198, 7199, and 4195 Blade models vary.

Firmware capacity Issues

Recent DataPower firmware version (5. X leverages extended memory support to provide enhanced processing capabilities for larger-scale message processing on XG45, XI52, xi50b, and XB62, and to support higher concurrency. These latest models are required to take full advantage of the extended memory capabilities of 5.X. You can use 5.X on previous generations of hardware, such as XI50, XS40, and XA35 model 9235 devices. You can run the firmware version prior to 5.X on XG45, XI52, XB62, and xi50b, but only in XG45, XI52, xi50b, and XB62 can you take full advantage of 5.X added functionality.

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