2 Planning Your Billing Care Installation

This chapter provides information on planning your Oracle Communications Billing Care installation.

About Planning Your Billing Care Installation

When planning a Billing Care installation, consider how many physical servers are required to support the Oracle Enterprise Database, Oracle WebLogic Server domains, and Oracle Identity and Access Management (IAM) components needed in your environment. High-availability requirements may increase the number of hosts.

Consider the security and networking requirements necessary for securing Billing Care communications with your Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management (BRM) system in addition to software and hardware requirements.

See "Billing Care System Requirements" for information about required hardware and software.

About Test Installations and Production Installations

Install Billing Care either as a test or production installation depending on your required environment.

About Test Installations

Use test installations when setting up internal development or testing Billing Care instances. Test installations allow users to use Billing Care without IAM security. The deployed Billing Care application in your test WebLogic server domain connects directly to your BRM system using native WebLogic server user management.

Test installations include the following components:

  • WebLogic Server

  • WebLogic Server domain to host Billing Care with Billing Care security disabled

  • Deployed Billing Care application WAR

This guide includes information on installing test installations. You do not need to perform the IAM pre-installation steps for test installations.

About Production Installations

Use production installations when setting up secure Billing Care instances using IAM security. Production installations require user authentication and authorization for securing access to Billing Care. This guide provides general guidelines in installing and configuring IAM components. It does not contain detailed information on configuring IAM components. Consult the respective product documentation using the links provided in this guide for more information on configuring IAM components.

Production installations include the following components:

  • Enterprise Database

  • Database creation with Oracle Repository Creation Utility (RCU)

  • WebLogic Server

  • Oracle Identity and Access Management (IAM) components, including:

    • Oracle Access Manager (OAM)

    • Oracle Entitlements Server (OES) Administration Server and Client Domains

    • Oracle Identity Manager (OIM)

    • Oracle Unified Domain (OUD)

  • Deployed Billing Care application WAR on each OES Client domain

Note:

Oracle provides Life Cycle Management (LCM) tools that facilitate installation of IAM components. LCM supports production environments.

See Oracle Fusion Middleware Deployment Guide for Oracle Identity and Access Management for more information on using LCM tools to install these components. This guide uses the LCM tools method. Alternatively, consult each product's individual documentation for individual installation instructions.

Database Planning

Billing Care production installations require an Enterprise Database used by IAM. This database is in addition to your BRM server database. Database sizing requirements depend on the number of Billing Care users in your environment.

See "Installing and Configuring Oracle Enterprise Database" for information on setting up the required database for Billing Care.

Authentication and Authorization Planning

When planning a Billing Care installation, consider IAM requirements carefully. Each OES Client domain hosts a deployed instance of Billing Care and connects to IAM for authentication and authorization. Determine how many OES Client domains are needed to support the Billing Care deployments required by your transaction volume.

See "Reviewing System Requirements and Certification" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Installation Guide for Oracle Identity and Access Management for more information on sizing your IAM host requirements.

About Installing a Secure System

In production environments, you must ensure that communication between components and access to the system servers are secure. The Billing Care installer prompts you to select security options. After you install Billing Care, enable SSL communication between Billing Care and BRM. For information about securing Billing Care, see Billing Care Security Guide.