Chapter 4: WebSphere Infrastructure Design

Overview

In this chapter, you'll look at the three most common platform architectures onto which you'll deploy WebSphere application servers. Specifically, you'll look at the x86 from Intel/Wintel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), the SPARC from Sun, and the PowerPC from IBM. For example, why choose an Intel Xeon over that of a Pentium 4?

This chapter's aim is to provide you with a fairly in-depth understanding of the three platforms and provide guidelines for the configuration best suited to your specific environment when deploying or designing a WebSphere implementation.

I've approached this chapter in the following way: Each main section ”covering Intel/AMD, Sun SPARC, and IBM PowerPC ”discusses the three platforms in some detail. I'll discuss the most recent processors available from each platform and their advantages and disadvantages. I'll then present the CPU models in each platform family that should be used for specific purposes ”for instance, I'll present the model of processor in the Intel family that should be used for small, medium, and large WebSphere environments. I'll also present other important system architecture components , including network and disk technologies.

By the end of the chapter, you should understand the best-practice topology or platform architecture choices best suited to a WebSphere environment and be versed in the platform of your choice from the point of view of the Central Processing Unit (CPU) architecture, storage, network infrastructure, memory and Input/Output (I/O) controller, and interface.

This chapter isn't intended to provide you with a deep architectural understanding of the different processor models and families. Instead, it's a guide to what model is best in the three families of platform architectures, and it'll help you appreciate why one processor ”usually affiliated with a certain level of server ”is recommended over another processor.