All the Oracle Enterprise Manager system components can be installed on one single host. For development or testing purposes, or learning environments, this is a good way to do, but in a production environment it is better to separate the various components on different hosts, for better performance and no single point of failure. Also for scaling purposes, this is a better way to do. For the Oracle Management Repository, you can use RAC for the Oracle Management Repository database.
When you want to scale out the WebLogic and Oracle Management Service tier, you can add a load-balancing solution to multiple frontend WebLogic servers hosting the Oracle Management Service. Adding a load balancer with additional WebLogic servers requires a virtual hostname for the WebLogic cluster, but in an existing Oracle Enterprise Manager environment, a reconfiguration of all of your Oracle Management Agents is necessary to resolve to the new virtual hostname. So when you deploy Oracle Enterprise Manager, consider using a virtual hostname for the web tier.
Enterprise Manager 12c (12.1.0.1) Grid Control requires a minimum of version WLS 10.3.5. This brings a new and improved interface, which also includes cloud computing management features such as charge back and metering.
In the following diagram, you can see an architectural overview of an Enterprise Manager system:
So a best practice, as you can see in this diagram, is to place the administrative web GUI and all the agents before the load balancer. They all can speak to one address in the form of a virtual hostname using the standard HTTP port 80 or even SSL for the GUI: and the agents connecting to the secure Management Port.
To integrate WebLogic Server 12c with Enterprise Manager 12c, there is a management pack available to provide a full and complete tool to manipulate, configure, monitor, and diagnose a WebLogic Domain. If you enable such a management pack, you are able to discover your WebLogic Server environments to integrate into your Enterprise Manager 12c.
The WebLogic Server Management Pack Enterprise Edition can be used for managing Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle WebLogic Server, and Oracle Application Server. This pack provides capabilities for application performance management, business transaction management, configuration management, service-level management, coherence management, as well as lifecycle management for Oracle Application Server, Oracle Fusion Middleware, and Oracle WebLogic Server software.
The features available with this pack are as follows:
- Configuration management features
- Application performance management features
- Service-level management features
- Coherence management features
- Business Transaction Management features
- Lifecycle management features
The WebLogic Server Management pack provides you rich management features in order to configure, clone, and store your configurations. These configurations can include:
- Detection of configuration changes: You can create a historical image of a configuration, and some time later you can match a newly created configuration with this so-called golden image to detect if there are any changes and, if necessary, take actions on it.
- Compliance and provisioning: Provisioning is discussed later in this chapter. The compliance framework makes it capable to give insight if your systems match valid configurations, or if these systems are vulnerable to configuration changes. Also, the framework can advise you to solve these vulnerabilities. In fact, it is a defined set of rules to be used to the benefit of your systems. You can run reports periodically to let Enterprise Manager 12c advise you if and how to take actions.
To be ready for a very demanding business, there is a possibility to clone your domain out of a provisioning profile.
You can create a provisioning profile entity with binaries and domain configuration or a middleware home entity with just binaries. You can clone a WebLogic domain or Middleware home from software library entities. There is a new out-of-box deployment procedure for deploying, redeploying, and undeploying Java EE applications from the Cloud Control Console. You can now access provisioning operations from the WebLogic domain menu.
You can clone WebLogic Domain from:
- Reference Install: This reduces time and eliminates errors in building environments. The clone operation includes WebLogic Server binaries and domain configuration files.
- Software Library: Creates components in Software Library for Middleware Home binaries and/or WebLogic Domain configuration. You can clone such components to new hardware and specify domain configuration such as listen addresses, ports, data sources, JMS stores, and security store/providers.
Cloning and provisioning can be achieved by using the Middleware Provisioning tool.
By using the Middleware Provisioning deployment procedures you can:
- Clone a WebLogic Domain from an existing installation: You can clone a WebLogic Domain from the existing installation. The Clone WebLogic Domain option starts a wizard for cloning a WebLogic Domain from an already existing reference domain that is already discovered or registered with Cloud Control. In this cloning process you will have to specify the following:
- Host Credentials
- On the Domain Properties page:
Domain Name, Domain Location (on file system)
Domain Administrator Username and Password
Unique Domain Name Identifier — used to name the farm target the same as the WebLogic domain name but with the
Farm_prefixNode Manager port address
Other resources such as JDBC, JMS, Security, Logging
- Keep in mind to use a unique port for the AdminServer as it might conflict with other already existing configurations.
The following screenshot shows you the cloning wizard:
- Cloning a Middleware Home from an existing installation: To do this, keep in mind that the hosts on which the Middleware domains are to be cloned must be registered in Cloud Control. Also, read permissions are required on the Middleware
Homedirectory on the host machine on which the Administration Server is running.The following screenshot shows you the Middleware Cloning Wizard:
- Cloning from a WebLogic Domain Provisioning Profile: With this you can clone a WebLogic Domain from an already existing profile present in the software library of the Enterprise Manager 12c.
- Cloning from an Oracle Middleware Home Gold Image: If you have installed WebLogic software on a host and you want to keep an image of it, you can create a so called Oracle Middleware Home Gold Image and save it in the Software Library. Later, you can then use this gold image as the source for future Middleware Home installations.
You will have to calculate how much an image (gold or domain provisioning) will consume disk space in the software library. A rule of thumb for Golder Images and Domain Provisioning is as follows:
- For Golden Images: Middleware Home Size + Space for temporary scripts
- For Domain Provisioning: Middleware Home Size + Domain Home Size + Space for temporary scripts
Oracle Enterprise Manager not only gathers a lot of configuration information about WebLogic Server, but also its underlying hardware and operating system.
Templates for specifying what configuration items should be collected for Oracle WebLogic Server and all its related components are available out of the box and can be customized to collect only the relevant configuration items that IT personnel require. Examples of information collected at regular intervals include:
- WebLogic Server software installations, including applied patches
- WebLogic Server configuration parameters (for example, ports, JVM information, JDBC JMS resources, startup, and shutdown classes) and configuration files
- Operating system settings, patches, kernel parameter settings, and installed packages
- Hardware components such as CPU, RAM, disk storage, and network devices
Configuration changes can be also monitored across the entire WebLogic Server stack. From the application down to the hardware it is possible to detect all changes for a specific configuration between a specified time frame. Changes that are applied to an environment that previously worked fine but is suddenly not performing at an acceptable level can be discovered very quickly.
The following screenshot shows you the use of a typical WebLogic Comparison Template:
