The purpose of this page is to describe how to configure a remote Connect Server on a machine other than the one hosting the Application Server installation.
Remote Connect Server can be installed on a node in the same network but it can also be installed, for example, on another machine on the Internet. It will be possible thanks to the fact that the Connect Server is using only http/https protocol for the communication with the Application Server.
One typical use is to have a local file reader on a separate machine.
All files that are necessary for creation of a remote Connect Server will be packed into one single zip file by the installer tool. This file will be located in <ifs_home>\instance\<instance_name> and will have name RemoteConnectServer_<instance_name>.zip (on the node hosting the Application Server).
Below are the installation steps that have to be performed on the target computer, i.e. the one that will host the installation of the remote Connect Server.
Installation Steps:
<IFS_HOME>.<JAVA_HOME>.You have to edit some values in the script files for the following parameters
as indicated in the readme.txt file.
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| IFS HOME | The directory where the remote Connect Server is installed. |
| JAVA HOME | The location where Java has been installed. |
Setup configuration parameters of the Connect Server instance, add all connectors that are intended to be processed by this Connect Server.
It is possible to run several Connect Servers against the same Application Server with a limitation: reading from a single data source is only possible from one Connect Server at time. This is because of lack of mechanisms that could make it possible to lock/mark messages being processed by an instance of Connect Server.
Typically a single Connector Reader represents a single data source. But it is possible to have duplicated instances of readers reading from the same source, e.g. two Mail Readers configured for reading from the same mail box will represent the same data source. In contrast, if the two readers will be configured to read from different mail boxes they will be treated as different data sources.
So as long as different instances of Connect Servers will read from different data sources, which will in practice mean they will instantiate different Connector Readers, everything will work as expected.
Exception: There is one exception from the rule above – File Reader. Because the File Reader has a capability of locking files during processing of messages, it is possible to have different Connect Servers reading from the same file repository.
Configuring an additional
ConnectServer instance is very similar to
configuring an additional
BatchServer. It will include the following steps (all mentioned below files
are located in folder <ifs_home>\instance\<instance_name>\bin):
start_connectserver1.cmd to
start_connectserver2.cmd on Windows or connectserver1.sh
to connectserver2.sh on Unix/Linux. Edit the name and file
names. Note that the properties file defining logging properties must exist
(you can simply copy and edit the existing one located in <ifs_home>\instance\<instance_name>\conf).
start_connectserver1.ifm to start_connectserver2.ifm:
install_service_connectserver1.cmd to
install_service_connectserver2.cmd:
uninstall_service_connectserver1.cmd to
uninstall_service_connectserver2.cmd:
uninstall_services.cmd:
install_service_connectserver2.cmd.After setting parameters you can run the start script of the remote Connect Server.
You can find the script start_connectserver1_<instance_name>.cmd for
Windows and connectserver1_<instance_name>.sh for Unix in
<ifs_home>\instance\<instance_name>\bin.
Run the script and examine the log files in <ifs_home>\instance\<instance_name>\logs\connectserver.
Note: If the Connect Server was not started, no log files will appear in <ifs_home>\instance\<instance_name>\logs\connectserver directory.