This paper discusses techniques for determining the cause of problems with WebSphere Application Server system management. The symptoms that this paper discusses are:

You are not able to access the administrative console.

You cannot access server processes using wsadmin or the management scripts such as stopServer.

You are getting errors performing system management functions. For example, managing application servers, node agents, Web servers, or applications.

You are not able to federate a node with a deployment manager.

You are getting save conflict messages in the administrative console

Your enterprise applications no longer appear in the administrative console.

You have problems with WebSphere Rapid Deployment.

You are having trouble communicating using SSL and are getting messages that indicate your certificates have expired.

This paper applies to WebSphere Application Server V6 for distributed systems only. It does not cover WebSphere Application Server for z/OS.