How to "gracefully" shutdown a node in WebSphere Network Deployment?

Question

How can I "gracefully" shutdown a node on WebSphere Network Deployment 6.1? My worry is do not end active sessions when a shutdown is necessary. My intention is to prevent a node of accepting new sessions and then, when there are no more active sessions, I can safely shutdown that node. I believe that this can be done preventing the node for accepting new sessions (but keeping the existing sessions until their end) AND and preventing the IBM HTTP Server to send requests to that node. There is some way to do this? There is other way more appropriate? Meanwhile I'm considering to enable session sharing among the nodes, but that is not achievable right now.

Answer 1

Well, you don't really shut down a "node"; you shut down servers within a node. You may be confusing with a "Node Agent"; but a Node Agent doesn't process requests - it simply keeps the "link" between the Deployment Manager and the server instances on the actual node (you can shut down the Node Agent and server instances would still continue handling requests).

So, the answer to your question is simply - stop all servers in that node. A "regular" stop (i.e. not an immediate stop) does what you described as desirable - it first stops receiving new requests, then waiting until all in-flight requests finish - then shutting down the server.