<p>In a installation of WebSphere Application Server with Network Deployment, a node is:</p>

<ol>
<li>a physical machine</li>
<li>an instance of operative system</li>
<li>a logical set of WAS instances that is independent of physical machine or OS instance</li>
</ol>

[{'answer_id': 9130, 'author': 'Sam Merrell', 'author_id': 782, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/782', 'pm_score': 2, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>@ggasp Here is what I got off IBM\'s Information Center</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n  <p>A node is a logical grouping of managed servers.</p>\n  \n  <p>A node usually corresponds to a logical or physical computer system with a distinct IP host address. Nodes cannot span multiple computers.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><a href="http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/v6r1/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.websphere.nd.multiplatform.doc/info/ae/ae/cagt_node.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/v6r1/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.websphere.nd.multiplatform.doc/info/ae/ae/cagt_node.html</a></p>\n'}, {'answer_id': 79207, 'author': 'feniix', 'author_id': 14664, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/14664', 'pm_score': 2, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>Keep in mind that usually &lt;> always.</p>\n\n<p>Since WAS 6.0 and up you usually want to setup more than one node in each physical computer, given the usual power of the server you use the node to separate logical business entities.</p>\n\n<p>Like for example have 6 nodes, 3 in each of 2 machines and have 1 pair of nodes you could define 3 different clusters one for each stage (dev, qa, staging) and making each cluster be invisible to the other.</p>\n'}, {'answer_id': 93711, 'author': 'Autobyte', 'author_id': 6788, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/6788', 'pm_score': 3, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>Basically,<br>\n<br>\nA <b>server</b> is a runtime environment, a process of execution.<br>\nA <b>node</b> is a grouping of servers that share common configuration. It is a physical machine.<br>\nA <b>cell</b> is a grouping of nodes into a sigle administrative domain. For websphere, it mean that if you group several servers within a cell, then you can administer them with one Websphere admin console<br>\n<br>\nHope this helps!<br></p>\n'}, {'answer_id': 26573887, 'author': 'san242', 'author_id': 3779640, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/3779640', 'pm_score': 0, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>A Cell is a virtual unit that is built of a Deployment Manager and one or more Nodes. A Node is another virtual unit that is built of a Node Agent and one or more Server instances.</p>\n\n<p><a href="http://itdevworld.wordpress.com/2009/05/03/websphere-concepts-cell-node-cluster-server/" rel="nofollow">Here</a> you can find more details including a diagram.</p>\n'}]
['https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/4785', 'https://Stackoverflow.com', 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/527/']