C H A P T E R 3 - Distributed RFID Event Manager Environment

C H A P T E R 3

Distributed RFID Event Manager Environment

This chapter includes the following topics:

General Distributed Installation Considerations

Managing a Distributed Installation

General Distributed Installation Considerations

RFID Event Manager Execution Agents communicate and gather information from the RFID readers. A single Execution Agent is capable of controlling and collecting information from multiple RFID Readers.

In a large deployment, you can install a copy of the Execution Agent on multiple hosts in the network. Each Execution Agent can then manage and communicate with a subset of the RFID Readers.

Which readers communicate with a particular Execution Agent is specified by the RFID Event Manager. Deploying multiple Execution Agents enhances the availability of the system because each Execution Agent is capable of carrying out the workload of other Execution Agents if a particular Execution Agent becomes unavailable.

You use the RFID Configuration Manager to define Configuration Objects that encapsulate how to process the data received from the readers. The Control Station provisions the Configuration Objects to the Execution Agents as units of work.

Execution Agents and their Control Station need to share a common Jini Group in order to communicate with each other. At installation time, you are asked to define a group name for your deployment. This name needs to be the same across the set of multiple Execution Agents you want to communicate with a single Control Station. You can change the Control Station's group name after installation by invoking the RFID Configuration Manager. The only way to change the group name for the Execution Agents is to reinstall them, so be careful when you define the group name.

Note - All of your deployment information is managed from the Control Station. No configuration information is lost by reinstalling an Execution Agent.

Managing a Distributed Installation

Use a custom installation to create distributed installations where the Execution Agent components are located on separate machines that are remote to the Control Station machine. See the Sun Java System RFID Software 3.0 Installation Guide for more information on creating a distributed installation for your RFID Software.

Distributed Installation Component Scripts

The RFID Software includes scripts that are designed to run or stop various software components. When a distributed installation is created, the Control Station and Execution Agents can be started separately by invoking their individual startup scripts. The same is true for separately stopping the components. These scripts also include a "restart" option for use with their respective components.

Note - The Control Station must be started before the Execution Agent can be started. Starting the Execution Agent when no Control Station is present results in an error. You need to stop and restart the Execution Agent after the Control Station has been started.

Starting and Stopping the Control Station

If the Control Station components are installed as part of a Custom installation, use the script station stored in /rfid-install-dir/bin to start the Control Station.

To use the script, change to the specified directory and type one of the following:

To start the Control Station, type station start.

To stop the Control Station, type station stop.

To show the status of the Control Station, type station status.

To show the version of the Control Station, station version.

Starting and Stopping the Execution Agent

Similarly, on hosts where the Execution Agent components are installed without the Control Station, you can find the script agent installed in /rfid-install-dir/bin.

To use the script, change to the specified directory and type one of the following, as needed:

To start the Execution Agent, type agent start.

To stop the Execution Agent, agent stop.

To show the status of the Execution Agent, type agent status.