The first experience with Oracle was good. Unfortunately, the lady I picked for dating was too demanding for my environment. Nevertheless, it was an amazing experience. Encouraged by the "success" of the previous dating session, I went ahead to get indulged again. But, this time with little less sophisticated member of the family, i.e. Oracle WebLogic Application server only. The below demands were reduced by this choice.
- No mandatory database system.
- No predefined application package requirements.
- No severe demands on capacity. This is where I failed last time.
- No additional resource dependencies.
My first experience surely helped me in this adventure.
- I already had created the environment for our meeting. (Installations on Cloudshare exist already).
- I know some habits and characteristics of this lady already.
With the confidence and advantage on my side, I planned to setup new domain for my new lady. At the moment, this is a simple domain based on Basic WebLogic Server domain sample. The wardrobe (applications) will be decided later.
Figure : Sample domain for testing
As the Oracle Weblogic Server instances already exist on all the servers, I used it to my advantage to directly configure the domain using Fusion Middleware Configuration Wizard. The below steps helped to setup the hall provided by Cloudshare, as required for the lady.
- Execute Fusion Middleware Configuration Wizard.
- Create a new Weblogic domain.
- Select "Basic WebLogic Server domain" as the template domain.
- Enter a domain name and its location.
- Configure the Admin user ID and password.
- Configure server start mode and JDK.
- Select the optional configuration scenarios.
- Configure the Admin server details. In this case "oraclewls1"is the machine for Admin server.
- Configure the Managed servers for the domain. This lady has been provided with 3 servers.
- Create a cluster for Managed servers.
- Assign the Managed servers to the cluster.
- Configure the machines. Although the machines names are logical entities; for the first date, I wanted to be more straightforward. The machine names represent the hostnames.
- Assign the Managed servers to the configured machines. Assignment is done to keep things in synch i.e. managed server's listen address = machine's node manager listen address. Otherwise, it may not work. (I was not too adventures on try it in first meeting).
- Admin server is not assigned to any machine and will run on oraclewls1.
- Check the configuration in configuration summary.
- Execute the configuration to its completion to the beautiful message and start the Admin server :).
Wow! Did I say somewhere, this lady is simpler? Well, ladies are always complicated, isn't it? Nevertheless to see a smile on her face at the end is a big motivation.
Now the time is to start playing a little. I was disheartened, by the first attempt though. The message was ugly. I recovered quickly with a flashback that the default URL does not run anything. I corrected my approach and got the welcome message as a response. After answering the standard question, as ladies generally asks, I was allowed to enter the house. I am a lucky man once again, to see the details and status as expected. Now the time is to dive a little more deep.
- I registered the domain with each Node Manager on every machine.
- I verified the Node manager status. It was working fine.
- Checked the deployed application. As expected, no application exists. This meant less demands from the lady.
Everything seemed fine. I took a small step towards her (started two managed servers). She took a step back too. I noticed that one server failed to start. The server is on different host than the Admin server. Surprised, I checked the house again. I realized that there are still few things left from the previous experience and you know ladies do not like to share ;). Node manager on the other hosts was configured to use the start scripts, which no longer exists in new domain. I configured the node manager to default configuration and servers started perfectly. But, her face had some gloomy look around it. With an easy dialogue I found out that some things were still not as per the requirement and status was not really "Green".
This was bit disappointing. I thought that this one is an easy-to-go lady. Not disheartened and committed to make it a success, I started asking open question to get to the reason for her such a behavior. Soon, I was on my way.
First, I realized that ladies are common in some ways. Wasn't it obvious? So, I had to copy the scripts once again from the main machine, oraclewls1, to other machines, oraclewls2 and sapserver2, in the cluster. It also means that I had to renable the use of Start/stop scripts again.
Secondly, I made a mistake of not being specific. I had to assign proper "listen address" to each managed server i.e. the host name of the machine, where it is running.
Unfortunately, she still did not give a smile. Rather, she complained about not being able to connect. I realized, now that network level had multiple options and it was getting complex with public and private IP and IPv6 added another complexity. I fixed this one by configuring the "/etc/hosts" with specific IPv4 addresses in each host. At the same time, I informed the lady to use only IPv4. You know ladies are generally not tech savvy ;)
After, all the hard work to clean up the old traces, keeping the complexity away, coaxing the lady with appropriate inputs, I started the dialogue once again. This, time she was smiling broad and accepted by efforts to meet her. I was finally satisfied to see the results of my effort to able to have the first hug :).
Now, it is all set to start the play. I will share my playing experience with this lady in next blog.
Love
Arundeep Singh