Node Manager Overview

Node Manager is a WebLogic Server utility which is used to control the WebLogic Server instances remotely.Node Manager process is not associated with a specific WebLogic domain, but with a Machine.

WebLogic Server instances in a production environment often distributed across multiple domains, machines and geographic locations.  Node manager is used to control these instances remotely.

It is recommended  to use use node manager in production environment but not mandatory

Note:
You can use the same nodemanager process to control server instances in any WebLogic Server domain, as long as the server instances reside in same machine as the Node Manager Process.

Node Manager Capabilites

A Node Manager can be used to:

• Start, Shutdown and Restart an Administration Server
• Start, Shutdown, Suspend and Restart Managed Servers
• Monitors the health of the servers
• Automatically Restart Admin and Managed Servers on failure
• Automatically kill WebLogic Server instances whose health state is "failed"
• Node Manager is used in whole server migration for IP Migration and server restart on another machine

Node Manager Types

Basically, there are 4 types of node managers available in weblogic

1. PLAIN
2. SSL
3. SSH
4. RSH

Accessing the Node Manager

You can access the Node Manager from the following clients:

Administration Console - From the Environments -- Machines -- Configurations-- Node Manager (Tab)

WLST Commands and Scripts