About Managing Oracle SOA Cloud Service Instances

Following best practices ensures that your Oracle SOA Cloud Service instances are manageable.

Reliable management of Oracle SOA Cloud Service instances requires a specific software environment that includes service instances of Oracle Database Classic Cloud Service and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage Classic, and a secure shell (SSH) public key. For details on these features, see Prerequisites.

To keep your service instances manageable by Oracle SOA Cloud Service, follow these guidelines:

• To ensure that you can restore the database for an Oracle SOA Cloud Service instance without risking data loss for other service instances, do not use the same Oracle Database Classic Cloud Service as a Service instance with multiple Oracle SOA Cloud Service instances. Backups of an Oracle Database Cloud Service instance that are used with multiple Oracle SOA Cloud Service instances contain data for all the Oracle SOA Cloud Service instances. If you restore the database while restoring an Oracle SOA Cloud Service instance, data for all the Oracle SOA Cloud Service instances is restored.
• Do not use an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage Classic container that you use for backups of Oracle SOA Cloud Service instances for any other purpose. For example, do not use it to back up Oracle Database Classic Cloud Service instances. Using the container for multiple purposes can result in billing errors.
• Apply only patches that are applicable for Oracle SOA Cloud Service. This includes Patch Set Updates (PSUs) and Oracle SOA Cloud Service bundle patches.
• Use only the default domain that was provisioned when a service instance was created. Do not add any Oracle WebLogic Server domains to the service instance.
• If you plan to integrate multi-domain environments, ensure that the first eight characters of your Oracle SOA Cloud Service instance name are unique so that all domains and associated resources have unique names.

  By default, the names of the domain and cluster in the Oracle SOA Cloud Service instance are generated from the first eight characters of the Oracle SOA Cloud Service instance name, and will use the following formats, respectively:

  • first8charsOfServiceInstanceName_domain

  • first8charsOfServiceInstanceName_cluster

  See Administering JMS Resources for Oracle WebLogic Server ( 12.2.1.4 | 12.2.1.3 | 12.2.1.2 | 12.1.3).

• Add Managed Servers to a service instance only by scaling out the Oracle WebLogic Server cluster in the service instance. Do not use Oracle WebLogic Server administrative interfaces for this purpose.

  For information about how to scale out the cluster in a service instance, see Scale Out an Oracle SOA Cloud Service Cluster.

• Add Oracle WebLogic Server clusters to a service instance only by using the Oracle SOA Cloud Service REST API for scaling out a service instance. Do not use Oracle WebLogic Server administrative interfaces for this purpose.

  For information about the REST API for scaling out a service instance, see REST API for Oracle SOA Cloud Service.

• Do not attach custom storage volumes to a service instance's VMs.

  Any custom storage volumes that you attach are detached if the service instance is restarted.

  If a service instance requires additional storage, add storage by scaling the service instance’s cluster as explained in Scale Out an Oracle SOA Cloud Service Cluster.

• For any disk volume that Oracle SOA Cloud Service attaches to an service instance VMs during creation of the service instance:
  • Do not detach, change file access permissions for, or change the mount point of a disk volume
  • Except for the DOMAIN_HOME volume, do not change the content of a disk volume.

  For details about these volumes, see About the Storage Volumes Attached to the WebLogic Server Nodes in Administering Oracle Java Cloud Service.

• Do not change the egress and ingress network and security settings of any infrastructure resources that the service instance uses.
• If you close any ports or protocols post-provisioning, you may end up in blocking your server endpoint URLs. You must ensure that you have valid ingress rules allowing traffic from known sources only.

  You can open new ports and protocols, but closing existing ports and protocols may impair the functioning of a service instance.

  See About the Default Access Ports.

• Do not detach NAT IP addresses from any of a service instance's VMs.
• Do not change the Oracle Fusion Middleware component schemas with which a service instance was provisioned.
• Do not change the ports for the Oracle WebLogic Server administration server and the Oracle Traffic Director administration server.
• Do not change OS users and SSH key settings that Oracle SOA Cloud Service configured during creation of a service instance.