Migrating, coexisting, and interoperating

Learn the concepts and processes behind migrating various aspects of your existing product configuration to WebSphere® Application Server Version 9.0. These aspects include migrating servers and applications to use the new features and technologies in this version of WebSphere Application Server, such as Java™ EE 7.

Migrating your application servers

The goal of migrating your application servers to WebSphere Application Server Version 9.0 is for the migrated servers to behave as closely as possible to how they behaved in the previous release. After you migrate the servers, you can further configure them to use new Version 9.0 features.

Applications that are installed in the old environment are redeployed to the new application server without any changes. To use new technologies that are available in Version 9.0, you must update your applications. For information about migration toolkits that can help you migrate your applications, see the Migrating your applications section.

The application servers are defined and configured within a profile. The WebSphere Application Server product provides a set of tools that you can use to migrate profiles. These tools also support various migration strategies, including:
  • Local or remote: Migrating within the same host or machine, or migrating to new ones
  • Standard or clone: Disable the old profile after migration, or keep the old profile functional

Regardless of the type of migration, you can use the command-line or GUI tools to migrate your product configuration as dependent on your operating system.

Migrating your applications

Best practice: Rather than manually gathering information and migrating your applications, scan your applications by using the Migration Toolkit for Application Binaries and the WebSphere Application Server Migration Toolkit.
  1. Evaluate, inventory, and analyze your applications by using the command-line Migration Toolkit for Application Binaries.
    The application binary scanner provides several reports to help assess what is required to migrate your applications:
    • The application evaluation report evaluates the technologies in your application to find the best-fit application platform.
    • The inventory report identifies the contents of your applications, such as entity beans, session beans, and servlets.
    • The detailed migration analysis report helps you better understand the type and scope of changes that your applications might require. The report also includes detailed help to assist with the analysis of the potential migration issues.

    Because the tool installs quickly and does not require Eclipse or the application source code, you can easily integrate the tool into your application migration planning.

  2. Migrate your applications with help from the WebSphere Application Server Migration Toolkit.
    The Eclipse-based migration toolkit scans your application source to assist your migration in the following ways:
    • Identifies deprecations, removals, and behavior changes that affect the application
    • Provides quick fixes to automatically make updates when possible
    • Provides detailed help for each migration issue
In addition to assisting in migrations from previous versions of WebSphere Application Server, the application migration tools can also help you migrate your applications to WebSphere Application Server Liberty or cloud environments such as IBM Cloud®.

For more information and to download the toolkit, see the Migration Toolkit information.

Migrating to IBM Cloud

If you are considering moving to the cloud, then the recommended tool is IBM® Cloud Transformation Advisor. Transformation Advisor provides important planning information, includes more comprehensive application and configuration analysis, as well as generates customized assets and recommendations for moving to Liberty and cloud environments.

Coexisting product installations

Coexisting is running multiple installations of WebSphere Application Server on the same machine at the same time. The installations can be the same version or different versions.

Interoperating product installations

Interoperating is exchanging data between two different product installations on the same machine or different machines that are at the same or different version. For example, an application can invoke a process that is supported by another application on a different machine. Another example is a Version 9.0 deployment manager that is managing a Version 8.5 federated node.

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