Question : How to gracefully shutdown/quiesence a node in a WebSphere cluster.

We have a "leaky" application that needs to be restarted 1-2 times a week. It is deployed to a 2 node cluster. How can you stop one node/JVM without ending the sessions? The new sessions will go to the other cluster member and once all sessions have ended on the stopping JVM will the JVM actually stop.

The infrastrucure is setup like this: F5 Big-ip -> (2) IBM HTTP servers -> (2) Websphere 6.1  

Answer : How to gracefully shutdown/quiesence a node in a WebSphere cluster.

I agree with HonorGod.  With the current setup there is no graceful shutdown.

Changes need to be made.

Some possible options:

1) Enable session fail-over, which will add overhead to the WAS servers.
2) Setup the HTTP servers so that they do not do load balancing, that HTTP#1 only routes to WAS#1 and HTTP#2 only routes to WAS#2.  Then in the F5 disable the HTTP server that feeds the WAS you want to stop.
3) Remove the HTTP servers and let the F5 feed the WAS servers directly.  Then disable the WAS server you want to shutdown.