About Application Server Administration

To enable administrators to manage server instances and clusters running on multiple hosts, Application Server provides these tools:

• The Admin Console, a browser-based graphical user interface (GUI)

• The asadmin utility, a command-line tool

• Programmatic Java^TM Management Extensions (JMX^TM) APIs

These tools connect to a server called the Domain Administration Server, a specially designated Application Server instance that intermediates in all administrative tasks. The Domain Administration Server (DAS) provides a single secure interface for validating and executing administrative commands regardless of which interface is used.

A domain is a collection of configuration data, deployed applications, and machines with a designated administrator. The domain definition describes and can control the operation of several applications, stand-alone application server instances, and clusters, potentially spread over multiple machines. When the DAS is installed, a default domain called domain1 is always installed. You work with the default domain in this guide.

To complete most of the steps presented in this guide, you will use the Admin Console.