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# Create and configure clusters

Before you begin

- Install WebLogic Server on the computer on which you want to run the server. See Installation Guide.

  Note: The Administration Server and all Managed Servers in a domain must be the same WebLogic Server version. See Version Requirements for a Domain.

- Create servers. A cluster always contains at least one server. You can create additional servers. See Create Managed Servers.

A WebLogic Server cluster consists of multiple WebLogic Server server instances running simultaneously and working together to provide increased scalability and reliability. A cluster appears to clients to be a single WebLogic Server instance. The server instances that constitute a cluster can run on the same machine, or be located on different machines. You can increase a cluster’s capacity by adding additional server instances to the cluster on an existing machine, or you can add machines to the cluster to host the incremental server instances. Each server instance in a cluster must run the same version of WebLogic Server.

The main steps for creating and configuring clusters are:

1. Determine your cluster architecture.

   For information on cluster architectures, see Cluster Architectures in

2. Start the Administration Server.
3. Create a cluster

   For more information on configuring clusters, see Configuration Roadmap in Using WebLogic Server Clusters.

4. Configure clusters
5. Assign servers to clusters
6. Perform additional cluster configuration if required. See any of the following:
   - Configure server migration in a cluster
   - Configure cross-cluster replication
   - Configure HTTP settings for a cluster
   - Configure health monitoring in a cluster
7. Control Managed Servers within the cluster. See any of the following:
   - Start Managed Servers in a cluster
   - Shutdown servers in a cluster
8. Delete a cluster or remove Managed Servers from a cluster. See any of the following:
   - Delete clusters
   - Remove servers from a cluster

Related Tasks

- Create Managed Servers
- Start and stop servers
- Shut down a server instance
- Resume a server
- Delete Managed Servers

Related Topics

- Understanding WebLogic Server Clustering
- Session State Replication Across Clusters
- Server Migration
- Understanding Server Life Cycle
- Using Node Manager to Control Servers
- WebLogic Server Exit Codes and Restarting After Failure