About the Patch Tool

Oracle WebCenter on Marketplace in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) provides a patching utility tool to download and apply patches for the WebCenter instances. 

You can apply a patch on the WebCenter compute instances using this patch tool.

The patch tool should be executed only on WebCenter Weblogic Admin server instance which has a hostname ending with '-wls-1'.

Note: This patching mechanism involves downtime.

See the following sections:

Patch Management Using the Patch Tool

Patch Management Using the Patch Tool

Use the patch tool utility in Oracle WebCenter on Marketplace on OCI to list, download, and apply patches. 

List Patch

  1. Connect to the bastion instance as the opc user.

    ssh -i path_to_private_key opc@bastion_public_ip

  2. Connect to the weblogic admin server compute instance which has a name ending with 'wls-1'.

    ssh -i path_to_private_key opc@compute_wls-1_private_ip

  3. Change to 'Oracle' user.

    [opc@**-wls-1 ~]$ sudo su - oracle

  4. Go to the patch tool path.

    [oracle@**-wls-1 ~]$ cd /u01/scripts/patch/

  5. List the patches.

    [oracle@**-wls-1 patch]$ sh patch_tool.sh --list_available_patches
Available Patches:
24.6.1:
    18143322: JDK 8 April CPU patch
    36491614: WebCenter Stack Patch Bundle 12.2.1.4.240408
    34809489: ADF One Off Patch
    36609513: Webcenter Content Marketplace Bundle patch June 2024
    36449729: Webcenter Enterprise Capture Bundle patch 12.2.1.4.0.240327
    36402122: OUTSIDE IN TECHNOLOGY 8.5.7 for WCC 12.2.1.x OPatch 2

    To apply a patch: sh patch_tool.sh --apply_patch --patch_version 24.6.1

Apply Patch

  1. Connect to the bastion instance as the opc user.

    ssh -i path_to_private_key opc@bastion_public_ip

  2. Connect to the weblogic admin server compute instance which has a name ending with 'wls-1'.

    ssh -i path_to_private_key opc@compute_wls-1_private_ip

  3. Change to 'Oracle' user.

    [opc@**-wls-1 ~]$ sudo su - oracle

  4. Shutdown all the weblogic servers and the node manager on all the nodes using the following commands.

    # First, Run for all non-admin VMs in stack using their host names
[oracle@**-wls-1 ~]$  ssh oracle@<hostname> sh /u01/scripts/sh/shutdown_servers.sh


# For current VM-1
[oracle@**-wls-1 ~]$ sh /u01/scripts/sh/shutdown_servers.sh

  5. Go to the patch tool path.

    [oracle@**-wls-1 ~]$ cd /u01/scripts/patch/

  6. List the patches.

    [oracle@**-wls-1 patch]$ sh patch_tool.sh --list_available_patches
Available Patches:
24.6.1:
    18143322: JDK 8 April CPU patch
    36491614: WebCenter Stack Patch Bundle 12.2.1.4.240408
    34809489: ADF One Off Patch
    36609513: Webcenter Content Marketplace Bundle patch June 2024
    36449729: Webcenter Enterprise Capture Bundle patch 12.2.1.4.0.240327
    36402122: OUTSIDE IN TECHNOLOGY 8.5.7 for WCC 12.2.1.x OPatch 2

    To apply a patch: sh patch_tool.sh --apply_patch --patch_version 24.6.1

  7. Apply the patch.

    [oracle@**-wls-1 patch]$ sh patch_tool.sh --apply_patch --patch_version 24.6.1 --skip_health_check --skip_server_restart

  8. Start all the weblogic servers and the node manager using the below commands.

    # For current VM-1
[oracle@**-wls-1 ~]$ sh /u01/scripts/sh/start_servers.sh


# Run for all non-admin VMs in stack using their host names
[oracle@**-wls-1 ~]$  ssh oracle@<hostname> sh /u01/scripts/sh/start_servers.sh

Integrate WebCenter with OCI Monitoring and Console Dashboard

For WebCenter on Marketplace, you can monitor the status and performance of WebCenter resources using OCI Monitoring and OCI Console Dashboard. The monitoring resources are configured with default settings during stack provisioning and can be modified to fit their requirements.

List of product types with support for OCI Monitoring and Console Dashboard:

WebCenter with OCI Monitoring

WebCenter metrics are collected in OCI Monitoring to display the status and performance of WebCenter and OCI resources.

To view and query metrics:

  1. Navigate to Observability & Management and then to Metrics Explorer under the Monitoring section.
  2. Under Query, select the stack’s compartment in the Compartment field.
  3. Select webcenter_monitoring in the Metric namespace field.
  4. Select the stack’s resource name prefix in the Resource group field.
  5. Select a specific metric in the Metric Name drop-down list. Optionally, to view a metric from a specific server, select server under Dimensions and the server name.
  6. Select Update Chart.

All metrics listed under Metric Names have data from every WebCenter server. The Metrics Explorer also displays metrics from OCI resources such as Compute and Load Balancer in their associated namespaces.

This image shows the Metrics Explorer page.

Weblogic metrics are collected and sent to OCI Monitoring in a scheduler in the WebCenter Admin VM instance (wls-1). Every five minutes, metrics are published to OCI Monitoring and the logs for metrics are collected in the log file /u01/data/domains/logs/metrics/publish_metrics.log.

Alarms can be created using the WebCenter metrics to actively monitor health and performance. See the documentation for creating a basic alarm using the webcenter_monitoring namespace: Creating a Basic Alarm.

To turn off monitoring integration with OCI Monitoring, the crontab scheduler can be disabled in the WebCenter Admin VM instance of the admin server (wls-1).

  1. Log in to WebCenter Admin VM (wls-1) and verify the scheduler is running.

    crontab -l

    Expected output:

    */5 * * * * python3 /u01/scripts/sh/../python/integrations/publish_metrics.py

  2. Run the following commands to disable metrics publishing.

    sudo su oracle
crontab -l | grep -v '.*publish_metrics.py' | crontab -

  3. Verify that the metrics have stopped collecting after five minutes in OCI Monitoring.

Note: Integration with OCI Monitoring can incur a charge for publishing. See pricing documentation.

WebCenter with OCI Console Dashboard

The WebCenter dashboard is created with OCI Console Dashboard using the WebCenter metrics from the webcenter_monitoring namespace and OCI Compute metrics.

To view the dashboard:

  1. Navigate to the home page in the OCI console and then the Dashboard tab.
  2. Under Dashboards, go to Dashboard Groups and select the compartment where the WebCenter resources are provisioned.
  3. Select the dashboard group for WebCenter webcenter-dashboard-group.
  4. Select the WebCenter dashboard under the group. The dashboard name is <resource-name-prefix>-dashboard.

This image shows the dashboard.

By default, the WebCenter dashboard has monitoring widgets pre-configured for ease of use. These monitoring widgets or charts describe the application status and performance of the Weblogic servers and the Compute instance utilization. The dashboard widgets can be rearranged and redefined to the desired display. To update a widget, click on the ellipses and View and edit settings. The OCI console dashboard has a limit of 20 widgets.

To turn off the dashboard integration with WebCenter and OCI metrics, the console dashboard can be removed in the tenancy:

  1. Navigate to the WebCenter dashboard.
  2. Select the Dashboard Action and then delete the dashboard.

Backup and Restore Scripts for WebCenter

For WebCenter on Marketplace, you can perform backup and restore for weblogic domain and middleware home using scripts. For storing backup, you need to create an object storage bucket in the same tenancy, same region’s stack compartment.

List of product types with support for backup and restore operation:

WebCenter Backup Operations

To perform backup, separate scripts are available for the weblogic domain and middleware home. To run these scripts:

  1. Connect to the bastion instance as the opc user.

    ssh -i path_to_private_key opc@bastion_public_ip

  2. Connect to the weblogic admin server compute instance which has a name ending with 'wls-1'.

    ssh -i path_to_private_key opc@compute_wls-1_private_ip

  3. Change to 'Oracle' user.

    [opc@**-wls-1 ~]$ sudo su - oracle

  4. Change directory as '/u01/scripts/lcm/sh'

    [opc@**-wls-1 ~]$ cd /u01/scripts/lcm/sh

WebCenter Domain Backup Operation

To perform Weblogic Domain backup for WebCenter, run the below command.

[opc@**-wls-1 ~]$ sh backup_domain.sh -b <bucket-name>

WebCenter Middleware Home Backup Operation

To perform Weblogic Middleware Home backup for WebCenter, run the below command.

[opc@**-wls-1 ~]$ sh backup_middleware_home.sh -b <bucket-name>

WebCenter Restore Operations

For restoring backups, separate scripts are available for the weblogic domain and middleware home. To run these scripts:

  1. Connect to the bastion instance as the opc user.

    ssh -i path_to_private_key opc@bastion_public_ip

  2. Connect to the weblogic admin server compute instance which has a name ending with 'wls-1'.

    ssh -i path_to_private_key opc@compute_wls-1_private_ip

  3. Change to 'Oracle' user.

    [opc@**-wls-1 ~]$ sudo su - oracle

  4. Change directory as '/u01/scripts/lcm/sh'

    [opc@**-wls-1 ~]$ cd /u01/scripts/lcm/sh

WebCenter Domain Restore Operation

To restore Weblogic Domain backup for WebCenter, run the below command.

sh restore_domain.sh -b <bucket-name>

Note: The script will show the Weblogic Domain backup available for WebCenter which can be used for the restore operation, and it will prompt for the file name as input.

WebCenter Middleware Home Restore Operation

To restore Weblogic Middleware Home backup for WebCenter, run the below command.

[opc@**-wls-1 ~]$ sh restore_middleware_home.sh -b <bucket-name>

Note: The script will show the Weblogic Middleware Home backup available for WebCenter which can be used for the restore operation, and it will prompt for the file name as input.