A WLS domain cluster establishes the context for the scalability and reliability that come from adding one or more managed servers to the domain. Oracle BI establishes a default cluster in WLS, bi_cluster. This cluster refers to a WLS domain cluster, which has the goal of allowing redundancy and high-availability to be configured. This domain-cluster configuration is for the application server nodes themselves. This should not be confused with clustering the Oracle BI Server system components. A domain cluster is required for scaling-out Oracle BI. The term scaling-out typically refers to either scaling-up vertically, for adding processing power on the same server, or scaling-out horizontally to one or more separate servers for high-availability and fault-tolerance.

Expand bi > Environment > Clusters to see the default cluster configuration established during the default installation configuration of Oracle BI. The name of the cluster is bi_cluster. The default configuration for the cluster should be left alone unless an advanced implementation specifically requires modifying it:

Next, we'll look at where the identifying address of the Oracle BI server(s) resides in WLS.