Test 000-318: IBM WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment V8.5 Core Administration

The test consists of nine sections containing a total of 56 multiple-choice questions. The percentages after each section title reflect the approximate distribution of the total question set across the sections. 

Section 1 - Architecture (9%)

1. Identify the components and services in a WebSphere Application Server and describe how they are related or interact.
2. Recommend the appropriate WebSphere Application Server topology (e.g., flexible management, mixed platform topology, network deployment cells).
3. Apply appropriate design considerations when architecting topologies to achieve stability, redundancy, and fault tolerance.
4. Demonstrate an understanding of how client requests traverse various WebSphere Application Server topologies.
5. Demonstrate an understanding of the administration flow for a network deployment cell.

Section 2 - Installation, Configuration and Maintenance (13%)

1. Demonstrate an understanding of the IBM Installation Manager and its role in installing, configuring, and maintaining WebSphere application servers and components both locally and remotely.
2. Perform pre-installation verification and troubleshoot the installation (e.g., identify and analyze log files, Installation Verification Tool (IVT)).
3. Illustrate the silent installation process for the WebSphere Application Server software and fix pack installations.
4. Create and manage profiles.
5. Create and manage nodes in a WebSphere topology (e.g., flexible management, network deployment cell).
6. Backup and restore a configuration.
7. Demonstrate understanding of administrative task required to take an application deployed to the Liberty profile and deploy it on a WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment instance.

Section 3 - Application Management (Assembly, Deployment and Configuration) (11%)

1. Explain the structure of enterprise application.
2. Deploy enterprise applications to a WebSphere Application Server environment both manually and using scripts.
3. Describe the differences between enterprise applications and business level applications (OSGi, SCA).
4. Configure application resources (e.g., data sources, JNDI, class paths, J2C providers) as required by an enterprise application.
5. Use the IBM Assembly and Deploy Tools (IADT) or WebSphere Developer Tools (WDT) to examine and manipulate application EAR files.
6. Demonstrate an understanding of the WebSphere batch components and deploy batch applications.

Section 4 - Administrative Tools (14%)

1. Illustrate the usage of the IBM Solution Console (ISC) and its various tools (e.g., command assistance, runtime messages).
2. Use the standard set of command line administrative tools (wsadmin, profile management, plug-in generation, etc).
3. Demonstrate an understanding of the capabilities of the Job Manager tooling.
4. Use scripting to perform administrative tasks (e.g. scripting libraries, automation, ws_ant, wsadmin).
5. Write, test, and debug scripts by using IBM Assembly and Deploy Tools (IADT), Rational Application Developer or Eclipse.
6. Configure a WebSphere Application Server runtime using properties files.
7. Demonstrate an understanding of WebSphere Application Server Developer Tools plug-in.

Section 5 - Security (14%)

1. Configure user repositories (e.g., federated, standalone LDAP, local OS).
2. Configure SSL for clients and servers (e.g., create certificates, populate trust stores, modify certificate expiration).
3. Enable security auditing and examine audit data output.
4. Discuss the implications of resource security settings.
5. Implement multiple security domains.
6. Apply administrative security roles.
7. Configure LTPA and SSO.
8. Harden WebSphere Application Server security.

Section 6 - Clustering and Workload Management (9%)

1. Configure the HTTP server and the WebSphere Application Server plug-in.
2. Configure clusters in a workload management topology.
3. Configure distributed session management for high availability and failover scenarios.
4. Configure messaging engine policies for clustered service integration bus (SIBus) members.
5. Configure high availability using core groups.

Section 7 - Intelligent Management and Resiliency (9%)

1. Explain the dynamic cluster elasticity feature and its possible configurations and variations and the usage scenarios.
2. Create and configure On Demand Routers (ODR) and associated service policies to enable the dynamic operations.
3. Use health policies and actions to monitor and react to changing performance in the environment.
4. Configure and maintain application editions.
5. Demonstrate the resiliency features of messaging.

Section 8 - Performance Monitoring and Tuning (11%)

1. Use the Tivoli Performance Viewer (TPV) to monitor the WebSphere Application Server runtime.
2. Use the Tivoli Performance Viewer (TPV) Advisor and the Diagnostic Advisor to obtain advice on performance issues.
3. Identify the configuration settings (e.g., JVM settings, connection pools, thread pools) that affect WebSphere Application Server performance.
4. Use appropriate tools to tune, test and analyze performance parameters.
5. Use the Performance Monitoring Infrastructure (PMI) metrics and poll MBeans for performance data.
6. Configure and monitor the WebSphere Application Server caching mechanisms.

Section 9 - Problem Determination (11%)

1. Enable high performance extensible logging (HPEL) and view HPEL data.
2. Enable Cross Component Trace (XCT) and view trace data in XCT Log Viewer.
3. Use administrative tools to trigger and analyze heap dumps, javacore dumps, and verbose Garbage Collection (GC).
4. Configure diagnostic tracing.
5. Use the IBM Support Assistant to analyze diagnostic data or submit data to IBM Support.
6. Configure, review and analyze logs (e.g., First Failure Data Capture (FFDC), system logs, native logs) via the IBM Solution Console (ISC) and command line tools.