1 Overview

The business sponsor is responsible for the Oracle Fusion Applications deployment, and determines the business needs to be met by the deployment. As a business sponsor, work with Oracle to determine licensing, sizing, functional requirements, and selecting Oracle Fusion Applications components. Work also with systems integrators who assist with deployment and functional setup.

In the context of the organization, determine the budget, scheduling, resource allocation, and staffing for the deployment and ongoing support after rolling out the system.

The primary tasks of a business sponsor are as follows:

• Communicating requirements, licensing, sizing

• Budgeting

• High level scheduling

• Managing system interfaces (functional)

• Staffing and project management

• Filling out the Oracle Fusion Applications Offerings table in the Provisioning tab in the Oracle Fusion Applications Installation Workbook .

The project manager is responsible for the day-to-day management of the deployment on several levels. This mainly involves reconciling the aggressive schedules set by business sponsors with the realities of staffing resources.

The main tasks include creating and managing the detailed project schedule, breaking down sets of tasks, and assigning them to team members acting in specialized functional roles. Daily project management requires to monitor successful task completion against milestone targets identified in the project schedule. The project manager may need to re-allocate resources to keep the deployment project on schedule. The project manager may also need to adjust the project schedule on occasion due to unexpected events or changes in staffing resources.

The primary tasks of a project manager are:

• Coordinating among staff performing technical and functional roles

• Building the project time line and task list

• Monitoring completed tasks against the project time line

• Project status reporting

• Managing the completion of the Oracle Fusion Applications Installation Workbook

The IT director oversees and prioritizes all past, present, and future IT projects. The IT director works closely with business sponsors to assess organizational needs and the importance of the Oracle Fusion Applications deployment relative to other ongoing projects. The IT director also coordinates resource allocations and staffing requirements with the project manager.

The primary tasks of an IT director are:

• Managing the following:

  • Staffing and resource allocations

  • Budgeting

  • System interfaces

• Managing licensing and sizing

• Project management

• Making topology decisions

• Coordinating the completion of the Oracle Fusion Applications Installation Workbook

The job of the enterprise architect straddles the middle ground between fulfillment of business requirements and technical implementation. The enterprise architect is responsible for making most of the key technical decisions after consulting with IT specialists in the system administration, networking, security, and database roles.

Along with the system administrator, the enterprise architect ensures the technical correctness and completeness of the system in its entirety, including the base Oracle Fusion Applications installation and all extensions, customizations, and integrations with other external systems.

The primary tasks of an enterprise architect are:

• Making topology decisions

• Managing system interfaces

• Delineating security requirements

• Filling out the following tabs in the Oracle Fusion Applications Installation Workbook:

  • Environment tab: Environment Info table

  • Provisioning tab: Post-Install Tasks table

  • Topology tab: All

  • Network - Virtual Hosts tab: All

The system administrator is responsible for the critical hardware and operating system layers of the Oracle Fusion Applications deployment. The system administrator ensures that all hardware meets with organizational standards and, along with the architect, that operating systems are configured in accordance with Oracle Fusion Applications requirements.

The system administrator is also responsible for overall systems testing, and coordinating all necessary system and subcomponent migrations from testing to QA, and, finally, production platforms.

The primary tasks of the system administrator are:

• Procuring and setting up hardware

• Installing and configuring operating systems

• Filling out the following tabs in the Oracle Fusion Applications Installation Workbook:

  • Topology tab: All

  • Storage tab: All

  • Network - Ports tab: All

The network engineer is responsible for the setup and ongoing maintenance and monitoring of all components that facilitate communication among computers within the enterprise computing infrastructure. The tasks of a network engineer include the configuration and setup of machine interfaces such as hosts tables, network cards, network interfaces, IP address allocations, and network equipment such as switches, routers, gateways, and load balancers.

The primary tasks of a network engineer are:

• Setting up and configuring machine interfaces and network equipment

• Monitoring and maintaining the network infrastructure

• Filling out the following tabs in the Oracle Fusion Applications Installation Workbook:

  • Environment tab: Email Server table

  • Environment tab: Web Proxy table

  • Topology tab: Topology table

  • Network - Virtual Hosts tab: All

  • Storage tab: All

  • Network - Ports tab: All

The database engineer manages the database layer of the Oracle Fusion Applications deployment, and fills out the Database tab in the Oracle Fusion Applications Installation Workbook.

A security specialist creates and maintains policies to protect corporate data and computing resources from a variety of real and potential threats.

In the context of Oracle Identity Management, the tasks of a security specialist include creating and managing the enterprise computing components that authenticate, authorize, and account for individual access to computing resources and systems. The security specialist also controls the corporate LDAP directories and their associated AAA systems.

Oracle Fusion Applications deployments require creating and configuring identity and policy stores that may differ from pre-existing Oracle Identity Management components in the enterprise. As such, the security specialist must coordinate the effort to install and manage Oracle Identity Management components bearing in mind the effects the new components may have on existing components in the enterprise.

The primary tasks of a security specialist are:

• Creating and managing authentication and authorization enterprise computing components

• Creating and configuring identity and policy stores for Oracle Identity Management, in conjunction with existing Oracle Identity Management components

• Managing security certificates

• Managing password policies (functional security)

• Managing roles and responsibilities (functional setup)

• Managing system account password maintenance policies

• Setting up the database (Vault, if applicable)

• Filling out the following tabs in the Oracle Fusion Applications Installation Workbook:

  • Provisioning tab: Oracle Identity Management Products table

  • Identity Management tab: All

  • SSL and Certificates tab: All

  • Topology tab: DMZ column in the Topology table

  • Environment tab: Web Proxy table

The Oracle Fusion Applications technical lead works closely with other IT specialists, including the database, network, and system administrators as they install and configure the Oracle Fusion Applications infrastructure. The main responsibility of the technical lead is the hands-on management of low-level tasks to be completed during technical setup and validation.

The primary tasks of a technical lead are:

• Managing technical setup and validation tasks during Oracle Fusion Applications deployment

• Managing system interfaces

The Oracle Fusion Applications functional lead is responsible for the functional setup of Oracle Fusion Applications following the completion of its technical deployment. The functional lead works closely with the business sponsor to ensure the system is configured in accordance with business requirements, and with technical leads and architects to ensure the successful completion of post-installation tasks.

It is useful to have a background in performing systems integration and specializing in the Oracle Fusion Applications pillars being installed and configured.

The primary tasks of a functional lead are:

• Managing the functional setup of Oracle Fusion Applications

• Managing system interfaces

• Filling out the following tabs in the Oracle Fusion Applications Installation Workbook :

  • Provisioning tab: Post-Install Tasks table

The Oracle Fusion Applications developer is responsible for extending or customizing Oracle Fusion Applications pillars to meet specific enterprise business requirements. Typically, Oracle Fusion Applications are customized and extended after the provisioning the installation. However, it may be useful to participate in provisioning so as to establish continuity between the installation and customization.

If the organization's particular Oracle Fusion Applications deployment requires reporting and data warehouse capabilities, a reporting specialist has a primary role in the technical deployment. The expertise of the reporting specialist is mostly be required for the functional setup of the project, after reporting requirements have been determined and implemented.

The primary tasks of the reporting specialist are:

• Depending on the requirements of the organization, assisting in the technical deployment and functional setup

• Filling out the following tabs in the Oracle Fusion Applications Installation Workbook:

  • Databases tab: Oracle Fusion Applications Data Warehouse Database

The support technician is responsible to assist end users with any computing applications in the enterprise. The Oracle Fusion Applications deployment is usually one of many systems the support technician might cover.

Many organizations have technical and functional areas of specialization within the support technician role.

Some organizations choose to hire Oracle Fusion Applications system integrators on a consulting basis who can fill gaps in technical expertise when necessary. Depending on the enterprise and the scope and scale of the deployment, an external Oracle Fusion Applications system integrator might be hired for a short or long period. Ideally, the systems integration consulting team is able to transfer substantial knowledge to support staff.

A transaction database must have been installed and configured before installing product offerings. The Provisioning Wizard can be used to create an empty, single-instance database instance. This is a discrete and separate task from the other provisioning options. Alternatively, the database can be installed manually without using the wizard.

In either case, finish the database installation by running the Oracle Fusion Applications Repository Creation Utility (Applications RCU) to load applications and middleware content into the database. This process creates the applications and middleware schemas, loads seed data, and creates the tablespaces, as well all other required packages.

Oracle Business Intelligence is a portfolio of technology and applications comprising an integrated toolset (for querying, reporting, analysis, alerts, mobile analytics, data integration and management, and desktop integration), as well as financial performance management, applications, operational business intelligence applications, and data warehousing.

Typically, Oracle Business Intelligence products are integrated with, and accessible from, other operational applications, such as Oracle Fusion Applications. This integration provides business metrics in the context of an organization's business function and industry.

The Oracle Business Intelligence products integrated with Oracle Fusion Applications include:

• Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (Oracle BI EE): A suite of business intelligence tools that delivers a full range of analytic and reporting capabilities.

  Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition is installed and provisioned as part of the Oracle Fusion Applications installation and provisioning process. The BI Provisioning step creates a WebLogic domain, the BI Web application (J2EE) components, and the BI Server and BI Presentation Services, which are deployed on the computer that hosts the domain. The resulting environment is referred to as the "Business Intelligence domain" or "BI Domain."

• Oracle Business Intelligence Applications: Uses Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse, a unified data repository for all customer-centric data that supports the analytical requirements of Oracle Business Intelligence Applications. Oracle Business Intelligence Applications supplies the warehouse database schema, as well as the logic that extracts data from the Oracle Fusion Applications transactional database and loads it to the warehouse.

  The Oracle Fusion Applications installation and provisioning process installs the Oracle BI Applications software components in the Business Intelligence Oracle Home but does no further setup. To finish setting up Oracle BI Applications, follow the instructions in Overview of Functional Configuration in Oracle BI Applications in the Oracle Business Intelligence Applications Configuration Guide.

• Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence: An ad hoc query and self-service reporting solution offered to all Oracle Fusion Applications customers. Paired with Oracle BI EE, it provides business users with an easy-to-use interface for performing current state analysis of their business applications. Constructed queries and reports are executed in real time against the transactional schema supported by a layer of view objects. This product is configured and deployed during provisioning.

• Oracle Essbase: An online analytical processing (OLAP) server that provides an environment for deploying prepackaged applications or developing custom analytic and enterprise performance management applications.

• Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher: An enterprise reporting solution for authoring, managing, and delivering reports from multiple data sources in multiple formats via multiple channels.

  For more information about reporting, see Managing Report Delivery Servers in the Oracle Fusion Applications Administrator's Guide.

• Oracle Real-Time Decisions: A platform that combines both rules and predictive analytics to apply real-time business intelligence at the point of contact. It optimizes all interactions with the customers by infusing analytical decisions into each transaction.

  For more information Oracle Real-Time Decisions, see About Oracle Real-Time Decisions Installation in the Oracle Real-Time Decisions Installation and Administration Guide.

Oracle Identity Management enables enterprises to manage the end-to-end life cycle of user identities across all enterprise resources — both within and beyond the firewall. An installation of Oracle Fusion Applications relies on Oracle Identity Management components to provide web Single Sign-on capability and to act as the policy, credential, and identity store. Although the majority of these components fall within the prerequisite environment, the resource WebGate that acts as the proxy for user authentication must be provisioned along with the applications.

The Oracle Identity Management components required to be present in an Oracle Fusion Applications environment are:

• Oracle Access Manager (OAM): Manages authentication and authentication policies, including Oracle Single Sign-On, security functions, user self-service, policy management, and delegated administration

• Oracle Internet Directory (OID): A general-purpose directory service that enables fast retrieval and centralized management of information about dispersed users and network resources

The Oracle Fusion Applications software provides a repository of installers, each called silently when needed to perform application-specific tasks during the provisioning of the new environment. During the creation of the response file, indicate the location of the repository in the Provisioning Wizard interview.

The provisioning repository must be on a network drive that is visible to all hosts that are associated with the Oracle Fusion Applications environment. See Create the Oracle Fusion Applications Provisioning Repository.

The provisioning installer (faprov) creates the Oracle Fusion Applications Provisioning framework. It includes the following components:

• Provisioning Wizard: A question-and-answer interview that guides through the process of installing a database, creating or updating a response file, and installing or deinstalling the components of an Oracle Fusion Applications environment. The Provisioning Wizard can only be used on the database host to install a single instance database, or on the primordial host (refer to Types of Hosts in a Multiple-Host Environment) for the other provisioning options such as creating a response file, updating a response file, provisioning an applications environment and deinstalling an applications environment.

• Provisioning Command-Line Interface (CLI): Used for starting the provisioning wizard and running installation phases on the primary, secondary, and DMZ hosts (when present). Use also provisioning CLI on the primordial host for manual cleanup and restore, and for running provisioning phases as needed.

• Provisioning-related files and utilities: Repository of ANT utilities, binary files, library files, templates, locations of saved response files and provisioning build scripts, and other provisioning utilities required for performing provisioning tasks. Choose a location to install these utilities, for example, framework_location/provisioning.

See Install the Oracle Identity Management and Oracle Fusion Applications Provisioning Frameworks.

This release of Oracle Fusion Applications relies on supported platforms documentation for Oracle Fusion Applications to supply certified versions of Oracle components. This documentation provides details about hardware and software, minimum disk space and memory requirements, required system libraries, packages, or patches, and minimum database requirements. Consult an Oracle Fusion Applications sizing-certified representative to obtain specific, customized system hardware requirements.

Please note that the self-signed certificate is set to three years when provisioning is complete.

For information about the supported platforms for Oracle Fusion Applications, see the latest certification information published at My Oracle Support.

As the Oracle Fusion Applications Release 12 Media Pack is specific for a platform, Oracle Fusion Applications must be installed on the same platform. This includes the Oracle Database, Oracle Identity Management, and Oracle Fusion Applications.

The Oracle Identity Management Provisioning Wizard steps through all Identity Management provisioning tasks. Using the wizard, create or update a response file, configure the Identity Management environment, install an Identity Management database, and configure a load balancer.

The wizard allows to accomplish the following tasks.

• Response File Creation. Create a response file before provisioning the Identity Management environment. Use a pre-existing response file, if one exists, or create a new one. Response file information includes the name, version, creation date, and so on.

• Install Location Configuration. Specify the software repository and installation locations, as well as the shared configuration location.

• Node Topology Configuration. Select Identity Management node configuration options and provide information about hosts and products.

• Virtual Hosts Configuration. Configure virtual hosts for the Identity Management servers, as required for Oracle Fusion Applications.

• Common Passwords. Set the common password for all administrative Identity Management users and keystores.

• Oracle Internet Directory Configuration. Specify the distinguished name of the Oracle Internet Directory realm.

• Oracle Directory Services Manager Configuration. Select configuration options for Oracle Directory Services Manager (ODSM).

• Oracle HTTP Server for Identity Management Configuration. Change the installation ports used for Oracle HTTP Server (OHS).

• Oracle Access Manager Configuration. Use the OAM Configuration Page to select installation options for Oracle Access Manager.

• Oracle Identity Management Database Configuration Use the IDM DB Configuration Page to enter information about the Database that contains the schemas for Oracle Internet Directory and Oracle Access Manager.

• Load Balancer Configuration. Configure the load balancer for multiple host installations.

The Provisioning Wizard steps through all provisioning-related tasks. Using the wizard, install a transaction database, create or update a response file, provision a new environment, and deinstall an applications environment.

• Install an Applications Transaction Database. Install a database to hold transactional data before creating a response file. Then, enter the database configuration values set up during the database installation in the response file. The provisioning process uses those values to connect the database to the new applications environment. Complete the process by running Oracle Fusion Applications RCU to create schemas and tablespaces, load seed data, and perform other database configuration tasks.

• Create a New Applications Environment Response File. A response file is a provisioning configuration file containing information about credentials, applications, and middleware hosts; used to install a new environment. Specify the location of this response file to provision the new environment. The wizard also allows to update an existing response file.

• Update an Existing Response File. Select this option to add or change the details in a partially completed response file or to update a completed response file that has not yet been used to provision an applications environment.

• Provision an Oracle Fusion Applications Environment. Select this option and specify the location of a response file as the first step in initiating the installation, configuration, and deployment of the product offerings. In a multiple host environment, the installation runs on each host individually, in phase order, using a combination of the provisioning wizard and command line interface.

• Deinstall an Oracle Fusion Applications Environment. Selecting this option removes all components installed to an existing Oracle Fusion Applications environment using the wizard. Run this process on all hosts. The wizard does not remove the database and LDAP.

With the Provisioning Wizard question-and-answer interview tool, specify one or more provisioning configurations and collect details associated with the product offerings in those configurations. These responses are the basis for creating a response file. This response file contains the structural outline of the applications environment topology that are being implemented. To provision the environment, specify the location of the response file and initiate the installation process.

The wizard interview questions fall into the following general areas:

• Global and contextual

• Database configuration and application dependency

• Shared middleware services

During the creation of a response file, select one or more offerings in any of the provisioning configurations listed in the wizard interview. During the actual provisioning process, all application and middleware products (components) associated with the selections are installed, configured, and deployed. However, only the Managed Servers for the product offerings that were selected are started.

Later, to start using an offering that was part of the initial provisioning configuration but has not yet been enabled, navigate to the Oracle Fusion Applications Setup Manager and start the Managed Servers for that offering.

For example, in the Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management configuration, there are two product offerings: Oracle Sales and Oracle Marketing. If only Oracle Sales is selected, the Managed Servers for that offering are started when the new environment is provisioned. To enable Oracle Marketing later, use the Oracle Fusion Applications Functional Setup Manager. There is no need to run provisioning a second time.

See Select Product Offerings for more information about provisioning configurations.

The classification of hosts in a multiple-host environment determines the order in which the installation is run. The following types of hosts are available.

• Primordial host: Location of the common domain, specifically the administration server of the common domain. There is one primordial host in each provisioned environment where the administration server of the common domain will be.

• Primary host: Location of the administration server for a domain. Only one primary host exists in a domain.

• Secondary host: Location of the managed servers for any application when they are not on the same host as the administration server of the same domain. This term is typically used along with primary host to differentiate the physical hosts when a domain spans across them.

• DMZ host: A host that cannot access the shared storage behind the firewall is said to be in a demilitarized zone (DMZ). Typically used to install Oracle HTTP Server so as to enforce restrictions on communication with components behind the firewall.

For information about Oracle Fusion Applications environments, see Oracle Fusion Applications Topologies.

Installation actions are completed in phases, across all hosts, in a prescribed phase order. Each phase must be completed on all hosts before running the next phase. For example, the preverify phase must be completed on hosts A, B, and C successfully before running the install phase on any other host. Any one phase can run simultaneously on multiple hosts. For example, run the install phase on hosts A, B, and C simultaneously. Oracle recommends to start the installation on the primordial host.

The provisioning installation phases are as follows (listed in phase order). See Installation Phases and Types of Hosts in a Multiple-Host Environment for complete details.

• Preverify: Checks to see that the prerequisites for an installation are met.

• Install: Installs middleware and applications components and applies database patches shipped with provisioning (for databases created with the wizard).

• Preconfigure: Updates the Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) configuration.

• Configure: Creates domains, Managed Servers, and clusters. Configures data sources and performs Node Manager registration of servers on the primordial and primary hosts.

• Configure-secondary: Performs the configuration actions on a primary or secondary host (or both), registers Managed Servers with the Node Manager on secondary hosts, and creates a web tier instance. If there are no primary or secondary hosts, or if there are only primary hosts, this phase runs, but takes no action.

• Post-Configure: Configures Oracle SOA Suite composite deployment and Oracle HTTP Server, and populates policies and grants. Configures middleware and applications that require servers to be online.

• Startup: Starts the Administration Server and Managed Servers on the current host. Performs online configuration, including global unique identifier (GUID) reconciliation and Financial/IPM configuration.

• Validate: Validates the deployment configuration and starts the Managed Servers.