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Tomcat on iseries/as400 platform

 
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Is it a good idea to host tomcat webserver on iseries v7r1 platform?

Currently we are hosting a Web application on websphere hosted on iseries v7r1 connecting to db2/as400 database. We are thinking to replace websphere 7.1 with apache tomcat.
We had perfomace issues on iseries platform.
Analyzing the feasibility of tomcat on iseries vs other platforms..
Any idea on maintenance of tomcat on iseries?

Any help is appreciated
 
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I know some people here in town who make it their primary business to work with Tomcat on iSeries.

However, before you even think of doing that, check your existing apps. WebSphere is a full-stack JEE appserver. Tomcat is not. So if you need advanced JEE features like EJBs or JMS, then Tomcat is not the best option.

If you are basically doing straight WARs, then Tomcat may be a good option. Tomcat is generally less overhead than full-stack servers are precisely because it doesn't have to run all those extra services that a full-stack implementation does.

I migrated one or 2 systems from iSeries to other platforms and didn't suffer, but there are no benchmarks. It's hard for me to say for certain, however, since I never stress-tested before or after. I don't do much day-to-day work on the iSeries systems because there's nothing available at the price point I could justify keeping one around for the occasional project.

Although the iSeries OS is quite advanced and unique, it's not really well-supported compared to Intel-based systems. IBM's reputation for superior support went down the tubes years ago. I had one project fall apart because I couldn't get adequate support and the less said about my experiences trying to get IBM support for OS/2 at a Fortune 500 company the better.
 
ci john
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Tim Holloway wrote:I know some people here in town who make it their primary business to work with Tomcat on iSeries.

However, before you even think of doing that, check your existing apps. WebSphere is a full-stack JEE appserver. Tomcat is not. So if you need advanced JEE features like EJBs or JMS, then Tomcat is not the best option.

If you are basically doing straight WARs, then Tomcat may be a good option. Tomcat is generally less overhead than full-stack servers are precisely because it doesn't have to run all those extra services that a full-stack implementation does.

I migrated one or 2 systems from iSeries to other platforms and didn't suffer, but there are no benchmarks. It's hard for me to say for certain, however, since I never stress-tested before or after. I don't do much day-to-day work on the iSeries systems because there's nothing available at the price point I could justify keeping one around for the occasional project.

Although the iSeries OS is quite advanced and unique, it's not really well-supported compared to Intel-based systems. IBM's reputation for superior support went down the tubes years ago. I had one project fall apart because I couldn't get adequate support and the less said about my experiences trying to get IBM support for OS/2 at a Fortune 500 company the better.



Thank you for the reply.
we are currently using EJB's but we are planning to migrate to spring framework and get rid of ejb's. that's why we were exploring the option of tomcat.
the new framework will work perfectly on tomcat.

When we did the analysis for the existing architecture webshere/iseries platform/db2, this was the worst performing combination compared to windows/unix server platforms.
the question is where to host the tomcat server in iseries box or windows/unix platform. when we searched apache sites, they were mainly taking only about windows/UNIX platforms.
i know we can make it working on iseries. did anyone have any sort of experience in hosting it on iseries platform?


 
Tim Holloway
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As I said, there are people here in town whose primary business involves Tomcat on iSeries machines. If you want, I can probably put you in touch with them.

However, if you just want to run Tomcat and you're looking at Intel processors, then you might as well host on a linux or Windows box and save a step. There is a JDBC driver that allows accessing the DB2 database on an iMachine from either of those 2 platforms, if that's what's holding you back.

The biggest obstacle in getting completely free of iSeries is that IBM has no binary compatibility between DB2/Z, DB2/I and DB2/e. You cannot simply copy the database data files from one platform to another, and - worse yet - there were no IBM migration tools last time I needed to do so. Their dump/restore utilities are fairly limited (compared to the MySQL and PostgreSQL open-source equivalents) even within the single server environment, even without trying to cross OS's and CPU types. I ended up having to set up a series of ETL jobs using Pentaho DI.

That's only a problem if you intend to get rid of the iSeries machine altogether, though. If you have legacy apps to support and plan on keeping the machine - and to continue using its DB2 database as the authoritative DBMS for your shop, just connect to it via JDBC.
 
ci john
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Tim Holloway wrote:As I said, there are people here in town whose primary business involves Tomcat on iSeries machines. If you want, I can probably put you in touch with them.

However, if you just want to run Tomcat and you're looking at Intel processors, then you might as well host on a linux or Windows box and save a step. There is a JDBC driver that allows accessing the DB2 database on an iMachine from either of those 2 platforms, if that's what's holding you back.

The biggest obstacle in getting completely free of iSeries is that IBM has no binary compatibility between DB2/Z, DB2/I and DB2/e. You cannot simply copy the database data files from one platform to another, and - worse yet - there were no IBM migration tools last time I needed to do so. Their dump/restore utilities are fairly limited (compared to the MySQL and PostgreSQL open-source equivalents) even within the single server environment, even without trying to cross OS's and CPU types. I ended up having to set up a series of ETL jobs using Pentaho DI.

That's only a problem if you intend to get rid of the iSeries machine altogether, though. If you have legacy apps to support and plan on keeping the machine - and to continue using its DB2 database as the authoritative DBMS for your shop, just connect to it via JDBC.



i'm not planning to change database from DB2. database is still going to be db2/as400. Currently we are using db2/jt400 jdbc driver to connect the DB.  we are planning to keep iseries machine to host all DB related activities.
The place where web server/app is hosting is what we are analyzing. weather to host on iseries platform or should setup a new windows 2012 server and host the tomact there and connect DB with jdbc driver as you mentioned.
when you mentioned about people who works on tomcat on iseries, is it  going to be licensed based custom tomcat server?

 
ci john
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Tim Holloway wrote:As I said, there are people here in town whose primary business involves Tomcat on iSeries machines. If you want, I can probably put you in touch with them.

However, if you just want to run Tomcat and you're looking at Intel processors, then you might as well host on a linux or Windows box and save a step. There is a JDBC driver that allows accessing the DB2 database on an iMachine from either of those 2 platforms, if that's what's holding you back.

The biggest obstacle in getting completely free of iSeries is that IBM has no binary compatibility between DB2/Z, DB2/I and DB2/e. You cannot simply copy the database data files from one platform to another, and - worse yet - there were no IBM migration tools last time I needed to do so. Their dump/restore utilities are fairly limited (compared to the MySQL and PostgreSQL open-source equivalents) even within the single server environment, even without trying to cross OS's and CPU types. I ended up having to set up a series of ETL jobs using Pentaho DI.

That's only a problem if you intend to get rid of the iSeries machine altogether, though. If you have legacy apps to support and plan on keeping the machine - and to continue using its DB2 database as the authoritative DBMS for your shop, just connect to it via JDBC.



hi tim,
"As I said, there are people here in town whose primary business involves Tomcat on iSeries machines. If you want, I can probably put you in touch with them."
if you can give the contacts of the tomcat on iseries people, then it would be great.
 
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