Deploying SOA across Active-Active Data Centres by Simon Haslam

April 10, 2016 Leave a comment

clip_image002I’ve recently started on another active-active SOA infrastructure project and thought I’d share a few introductory notes since it’s a relatively new topic in the context of Fusion Middleware.

History

Over recent years within Europe some customers have accepted a close geographic distance (e.g. 15 km) between data centres in return for a high bandwidth, low latency interconnect (typically ‘dark’ or dedicated fibre). This is to enable them to share normal production workload across both sites – so called "active/active" data centres – which is contrary to the traditional approach of having a highly segregated Disaster Recovery (DR) site (an "active/standby" topology).

  

Prior to the mid-2013 Oracle supported a single approach to High Availability (HA), which was clustering within a single site, as described by Fusion Middleware High Availability Guide, and not stretched across two sites. The Oracle supported approach to Disaster Recovery was entire site fail-over using an active-standby model, as shown below (from Fusion Middleware Disaster Recovery Guide):

A few large customers had negotiated agreements with Oracle to support architectures that were simultaneously active in 2 data centres, but these were people spending considerable sums on licences and ACS support.

Network Trend

Over the last 5 years the cost of site-to-site fibre has fallen considerably with “metropolitan” scale data centre links becoming common. Whilst the term Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) originally meant a connection across a city, these days it tends to also apply to low latency connections between neighbouring conurbations, typically running Ethernet over DWDM. The scale of a MAN falls in between the Local Area Network (LAN) within a single data centre and the traditional Wide Area Network (WAN) which can span hundreds of miles. Read the complete article here.

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For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center.

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Upgrading to SOA 12c and details of the next UKOUG Middleware SIG by Simon Haslam

August 18, 2015 Leave a comment

clip_image002SOA 12c is the most important release of Oracle’s flagship integration product set that we’ve seen for 5 years (when 11g was launched). Oracle has also now produced the first SOA 12c bundle patch-set (12.1.3.0.1) so in my opinion any new SOA installations should definitely be using 12c, and existing 11g users should be seriously considering upgrading to take advantage of the many new features.

For administrators what is particularly nice about this release is that a lot of work has clearly been put into the upgrade process, building on some of the changes introduced in WebLogic 12.1.2. The upgrade is actually surprisingly straightforward – in outline you have to:

  • Carefully review pre-requisites and do any purging of old instances
  • Install Fusion Middleware Infrastructure and SOA Suite 12c into a new Oracle home
  • Shut down SOA 11g, backup repository and domain home
  • Run RCU to install the new 12c schemas into the existing repository alongside the 11g ones
  • Run the Upgrade Assistant to upgrade the 11g schemas, including running instance data, to 12c format
  • Run the new Reconfiguration Wizard against the 11g domain home to rewire for the 12c home
  • Run the Upgrade Assistant a second time to upgrade some infrastructure components
  • If you have modified setDomainEnv,sh etc you will need to re-apply the changes
  • Backup repository and domain home, then start up SOA

Of course you may only have short-lived processes so be able to drain down the old SOA 11g system and switch over to a brand new SOA 12c system running in parallel, in which case the above upgrade is probably unnecessary.

The above does not consider migration from SOA Suite 10g to 11g/12c which is much more complicated and, if you’ve not already done it by now, a project in itself. Plus I’ve not mentioned Service Bus or BAM yet but we’ll describe in more detail in a week’s time…

UKOUG Middleware SIG – 25 March 2015

If you’re a UKOUG member and interested in SOA have a look at next week’s UKOUG Middleware SIG, themed around SOA 12c.  We’ve split the day into two – during the morning we will have several sessions by Oracle’s Yogesh Sontakke and Sid Joshi. These will review the new SOA 12c features, focus on the changes to Service Bus which will be very relevant to administrators, look at improvements to EDN and describe the new MFT product. As you might expect my interest mostly lies in the non-functional features of the platform, which happily has also been a focus for 12c under the moniker "Industrial SOA". Therefore I will be presenting some Oracle slides about changes in this area and will include some of my own 12c observations from project and O-box development work. Read the complete article here.

SOA & BPM Partner Community

For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center.

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Upgrading to SOA 12c and details of the next UKOUG Middleware SIG by Simon Haslam

July 14, 2015 Leave a comment

 

clip_image002SOA 12c is the most important release of Oracle’s flagship integration product set that we’ve seen for 5 years (when 11g was launched). Oracle has also now produced the first SOA 12c bundle patch-set (12.1.3.0.1) so in my opinion any new SOA installations should definitely be using 12c, and existing 11g users should be seriously considering upgrading to take advantage of the many new features.

For administrators what is particularly nice about this release is that a lot of work has clearly een put into the upgrade process, building on some of the changes introduced in WebLogic 12.1.2. The upgrade is actually surprisingly straightforward – in outline you have to:

  • Carefully review pre-requisites and do any purging of old instances
  • Install Fusion Middleware Infrastructure and SOA Suite 12c into a new Oracle home
  • Shut down SOA 11g, backup repository and domain home
  • Run RCU to install the new 12c schemas into the existing repository alongside the 11g ones
  • Run the Upgrade Assistant to upgrade the 11g schemas, including running instance data, to 12c format
  • Run the new Reconfiguration Wizard against the 11g domain home to rewire for the 12c home
  • Run the Upgrade Assistant a second time to upgrade some infrastructure components
  • If you have modified setDomainEnv,sh etc you will need to re-apply the changes
  • Backup repository and domain home, then start up SOA

Of course you may only have short-lived processes so be able to drain down the old SOA 11g system and switch over to a brand new SOA 12c system running in parallel, in which case the above upgrade is probably unnecessary.

The above does not consider migration from SOA Suite 10g to 11g/12c which is much more complicated and, if you’ve not already done it by now, a project in itself. Plus I’ve not mentioned Service Bus or BAM yet but we’ll describe in more detail in a week’s time… Read the complete article here.

SOA & BPM Partner Community

For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center.

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O-box at Oracle OpenWorld 2014 by Simon Haslam

January 10, 2015 Leave a comment

At this year’s Oracle OpenWorld conference I presented during two sessions. Firstly, I co-presented “Oracle WebLogic on Oracle Database Appliance: Combining High Availability and Simplicity [CON8004]” with Frances Zhao-Perez from Oracle. I have been presenting with Frances for several years now – originally about GridLink for RAC, then Application Continuity and most recently WebLogic on ODA – and always thoroughly enjoy it (though we both invariably run out of time!).

For this session Frances discussed the WebLogic on ODA implementation, what’s new in the 12.1.3 release, and the up-coming Enterprise Manager 12c plug-in for ODA. I then described what you needed to do to install SOA (and so other ‘upper stack’ Fusion Middleware products) on the ODA.

clip_image002Frances & Simon presenting. Oracle teddy bears & other goodies were given away in raffle!
Photo credit: O-Tech Magazine

In summary, if you’re looking to install SOA on ODA using the WebLogic on ODA implementation, you need to tackle:

  • Disk space, in particular the middleware home which only comes with 3GB and you’ll need at least 5GB for SOA (fortunately ODA 12.1.2 now has an API to add extra disk space so you no longer need the trickery we had to do for O-box)
  • Packages: you need to install another 17-43 RPMs (depending on version)
  • Tuning to suit SOA WebLogic instances (the default managed server heap is 3GB but you’ll probably want to increase that)
  • Installing Fusion Middleware Infrastructure for SOA 12c
  • Port management as the VMs have firewalls enabled out of the box
  • Domain design and how to add extra SOA environments (i.e. domains) later
  • Licensing and setting up CPU pools
  • Status of VMs and their lifecycle management (currently only possible via CLI)
  • SSL certificates as by default WebLogic on ODA uses Demo Certificates which aren’t suitable for production use
  • Automating patches and updates, e.g. for the JDK quarterly security updates

These are most of the areas we have been working on since the O-box proof of concept back in May 2013. We hope that if you’re looking for SOA on ODA you’ll consider the O-box SOA Appliance, but otherwise tackling these steps should help you to provision a SOA platform for yourself.

SOA & BPM Partner Community

For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center.

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Podcast Show Notes: Finding a Shorter Path to SOA

April 7, 2014 Leave a comment

A podcast featuring Oracle ACE Directors Lonneke Dikmans, Simon Haslam, and Ronald van Luttikhuizen in a discussion about strategies for simplifyng SOA implementation.

The OTN ArchBeat Podcast kicks off the new year with a conversation with three highly experienced SOA experts about strategies for dealing with some of the problems that can thwart SOA efforts within some organizations. One of those strategies involves a new collaborative venture that promises to remove many of the technical hurdles on the path to SOA implementation. Listen to the podcast here.

SOA & BPM Partner Community

For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center.

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Oracle Fusion Middleware Partner Community (SOA and WebLogic) Forum in Faro by Simon Haslam – thanks fort he nice ink

March 19, 2013 Leave a comment

Oracle Fusion Middleware Partner Community (SOA and WebLogic) Forum in Faro

Last week I attended Oracle’s Fusion Middleware Partner Community event in Vilamoura (near Faro, Portugal). This is maybe my fifth or sixth forum in succession now so I thought I’d outline the latest one to show why I find them so useful.

Boats in Valamoura harbour, February 2013

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SOA & BPM Partner Community

For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit  www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center.

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