28 Using Clusters and High Availability Features

A high availability architecture is one of the key requirements for any Enterprise Deployment. Oracle Fusion Middleware has an extensive set of high availability features, which protect its components and applications from unplanned down time and minimize planned downtime.

This chapter provides an overview of the architecture, interaction, and dependencies of Oracle Fusion Middleware components, and explains how they can be deployed in a high availability architecture to maximize performance.

This chapter includes the following sections:

• Section 28.1, "About Clusters and High Availability Features"

• Section 28.2, "Using Clusters with Oracle Fusion Middleware"

• Section 28.3, "Using High Availability Features with Oracle Fusion Middleware"

Note:

Using clusters and other high availability options is a complex and detailed process. This chapter is meant to introduce the concepts as they relate to Oracle Fusion Middleware. Table 28-1 provides a list of Oracle Fusion Middleware guides that contain detailed high availability information.

28.1 About Clusters and High Availability Features

One of the most important factors in both high availability and performance is the use of clusters. A cluster is a set of processes running on single or multiple computers that share the same workload. Using a clustered configuration promotes scalability, high availability, and performance.

High availability refers to the ability of users to access a system without loss of service. Deploying a high availability system minimizes the time when the system is down, or unavailable and maximizes the time when it is running, or available. See

Details about using clusters and other high availability features can be located in the application-specific guides listed in Table 28-1:

Table 28-1 Clusters and High Availability Information in Oracle Fusion Middleware Documentation

Component	Location of Information
Oracle Fusion Middleware	Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide
Oracle WebLogic Server	Oracle Fusion Middleware Using Clusters for Oracle WebLogic Server Oracle Fusion Middleware Performance and Tuning for Oracle WebLogic Server
Oracle SOA Suite	The Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle SOA Suite The Oracle Fusion Middleware Enterprise Deployment Guide for Oracle SOA Suite
Oracle WebCenter	The Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle WebCenter The Oracle Fusion Middleware Enterprise Deployment Guide for Oracle WebCenter
Oracle ADF	The Oracle Fusion Middleware Fusion Developer's Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework The Oracle Fusion Middleware Web User Interface Developer's Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework
Oracle Fusion Middleware Backup and Recovery	The Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide
Oracle Web Cache	The Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle Web Cache
Oracle Identity Management	The Oracle Fusion Middleware Installation Guide for Oracle Identity Management The Oracle Fusion Middleware Enterprise Deployment Guide for Oracle Identity Management
Oracle Virtual Directory	The Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle Virtual Directory
Oracle HTTP Server	The Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle HTTP Server
Oracle Internet Directory	The Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle Internet Directory
Oracle Repository Creation Utility (RCU)	The Oracle Fusion Middleware Repository Creation Utility User's Guide
Oracle Portal	The Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle Portal

28.2 Using Clusters with Oracle Fusion Middleware

For production environments that require increased application performance, throughput, or high availability, you can configure two or more Managed Servers to operate as a cluster. A cluster is a collection of multiple Oracle WebLogic Server server instances running simultaneously and working together to provide increased scalability and reliability.

For more information on using clusters with Oracle Fusion Middleware, see the following:

• "Understanding Managed Servers and Managed Server Clusters" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide

• Oracle Fusion Middleware Using Clusters for Oracle WebLogic Server

• Oracle Real Application Clusters Administration and Deployment Guide

28.3 Using High Availability Features with Oracle Fusion Middleware

In addition to using a clustered architecture within your Fusion Middleware components, there are a number of high availability features built-in to ensure your applications are continuously accessible by the users. The following list provides a few options for setting up a comprehensive high availability system. The options that you integrate depend on your overall performance goals as well as your system architecture. This list is meant to provide examples only.

• Process death detection and automatic restart

  Processes may die unexpectedly due to configuration or software problems. A proper process monitoring and restart system should constantly check the health of the applications and restart them when problems appear.

  A system process should also maintain the number of restarts within a specified time interval. This is also important since continually restarting within short time periods may lead to additional faults or failures. Therefore a maximum number of restarts or retries within a specified time interval should also be designed as well.

• State replication and routing

  For stateful applications, client state can be replicated to enable stateful failover of requests in the event that processes servicing these requests fail.

• Failover

  With a load-balancing mechanism in place, the instances are redundant. If any of the instances fail, requests to the failed instance can be sent to the surviving instances.

• Server load balancing

  When multiple instances of identical server components are available, client requests to these components can be load balanced to ensure that the instances have roughly the same workload.

• Disaster Recovery

  Disaster recovery solutions typically set up two homogeneous sites, one active and one passive. Each site is a self-contained system. The active site is generally called the production site, and the passive site is called the standby site. During normal operation, the production site services requests; in the event of a site failover or switchover, the standby site takes over the production role and all requests are routed to that site. To maintain the standby site for failover, not only must the standby site contain homogeneous installations and applications, data and configurations must also be synchronized constantly from the production site to the standby site.

For more information see the Oracle Fusion Middleware High Availability Guide.