New Wildfly 10 server config, overall questions

[bhart]

So truth right up front.. I'm not a dev, nor even devops.  I'm in operations, just a sysadmin whose been tasked with setting up a new WIldfly server/instances for the dev environment.

So the plan is to setup one vm running Cent7 with Wildfly 10 and 4 instances. Then shortly after we'll setup 2 more vm's with 4 instances each, then for Prod 4 servers with 4 instances each.

Right now though I wanted to ask about the first Dev server.  I'm reading the docs: Operating modes - WildFly 10 - Project Documentation Editor

I'm getting confused as to how all this will work.. judging from the example topology each VM/Host needs a host controller plus the server (which I interpret as instance).  Then a dedicated host for the DC role.  Starting out on the host controller.. I need to list the names of the instances, which would be just any name? Does/Can the name correspond to a directory name as well?  Where do you config and specify the domain controller to be contacted and registered with?

I wonder if anyone might know of a better doc/walkthrough/blog post about how all this works and how to set it up?

Thanks!

[claudio4j]

Hi Ben, follow this dzone article, it explains how to setup the host controller on the second machine.

As for your inquiries:

> I'm getting confused as to how all this will work..

The main difference between a domain and standalone is:

* domain: there is a centralized domain management host controller, that manages all servers, so when you deploy an app.war, it is deployed to many servers as is configured to a server group. The same when you want to setup a datasource and wants a centralized management. The domain mode requires at least three operating system process: process controller (it will control and restart the host controller process), host controller (interact with the domain controller and servers), servers (may be many servers, this is where the applications are deployed and the java ee runtime works).

* standalone: it is a standalone process, that will serve the application and the management endpoint (gui and cli), so if you have three standalone wildfly servers, each one will be managed individually, there will be no centralized management.

> judging from the example topology each VM/Host needs a host controller plus the server (which I interpret as instance).

That is a correct affirmation for domain mode. You can launch many servers per host controllers.

You can also launch several more than one host controller on the same VM, each one must have different IP addresses or if the same IP address, but different ports. It is more complicated to manage but wildfly is flexible enough to work this way.

> Then a dedicated host for the DC role.

May work this way, the DC itself doesn't consume much OS resources, so it can be a smaller VM.

> Starting out on the host controller.. I need to list the names of the instances, which would be just any name? Does/Can the name correspond to a directory name as well?  Where do you config and specify the domain controller to be contacted and registered with?

The host controller name is set at host.xml, there is a "name" attribute <host xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:4.2" name="master">, where "master" is the host controller name.