B Requirements for Installing Oracle Traffic Director on Engineered Systems

This appendix describes additional procedures required for configuring engineered systems before installing Oracle Traffic Director.

This appendix contains the following sections:

• Configuring Shared Storage on Exalogic before Installing Oracle Traffic Director
  
• Configuring and Creating Zones on Oracle SuperCluster for Installing Oracle Traffic Director
  

Configuring Shared Storage on Exalogic before Installing Oracle Traffic Director

This section describes how to configure shared storage on the ZFS appliance in Exalogic, before installing Oracle Traffic Director.

The setup that is discussed in this section is ideal when you are looking for application-level traffic management capabilities to monitor and shape the traffic within Exalogic. In order to achieve this, two compute nodes are allocated, wherein incoming traffic is appropriately screened and routed to one of the back-end application servers. In this scenario, Oracle Traffic Director, that acts as a web tier, is typically hosted on two compute nodes and the application tier is located on other compute nodes. The web tier and application tier traffic here are isolated both at the physical level as well as the network level.

Note:

On Exalogic (Solaris), Oracle Traffic Director can be configured for high availability only when installed on a global zone. In addition, all administration nodes must be running on the global zone.

This section contains the following sections:

• Overview of Shared Storage in Exalogic
  
• Creating Projects and Shares
  
• Mounting Shares
  

Overview of Shared Storage in Exalogic

In an Exalogic environment, all compute nodes are connected to a shared storage array (ZFS storage appliance) through the InfiniBand fabric. The shared storage array is used to install and configure all applications, and it is mounted locally within each of these compute nodes through Network File System (NFS).

Before installing Oracle Traffic Director on Exalogic, you must first create new projects and shares, and then mount these shares locally.

For an Oracle Traffic Director installation, it is recommended that the share hosting Oracle Traffic Director is unique to the compute node. For example, if Oracle Traffic Director is installed on two compute nodes for high availability, then the following installation layout is recommended:

• Create a share named primary within the storage array and mount this share locally within one compute node.

• Create a share named secondary within the storage array and mount this share locally within another compute node.

Creating Projects and Shares

If you wish to configure Oracle Traffic Director for high availability, the administration server and administration node must have root access within the instance root directory. Similarly, the ZFS share location needs to be configured appropriately so that a root user can read and write to this share location. This can be accomplished by enabling root access as NFS exception within the ZFS console.

Perform the following steps for creating and mounting shares with root access:

Note:

It is recommended that you install Oracle Traffic Director on each node. This is to ensure that there is no application downtime while patching Oracle Traffic Director.

1. Create a new project and create new shares within it, or create new shares within an existing project.
2. Sigh in to the ZFS storage appliance.
3. Ensure that the shares that you just created are configured to allow root access on the compute nodes that will host Oracle Traffic Director. This can be done by:

   • Using the ZFS shared storage Administration Console:

     In the NFS Exceptions section in the ZFS shared storage administration console, ensure that the share hosting Oracle Traffic Director configuration has appropriate NFS exceptions to allow root access.

     In addition, in the Properties section in the Project Settings page, deselect the following options:

     • Update access time on read

     • Restrict ownership change

     For more information about using these options, see the following guides:

     • Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud Machine Owner's Guide

     • Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud Administrator's Guide

   • Using the CLI:

     Enter the following command:

     sharenfs ="sec=sys,rw=@<ip-address-1>/<network-prefix-bits>,root=@<ip-address-2>/<network-prefix-bits>"
     

     • For an Exalogic physical configuration, ip-address-1 and ip-address-2 would be the BOND0 IP addresses of the compute nodes.

     • For an Exalogic virtual configuration, ip-address-1 and ip-address-2 would be the IP addresses of the vServers on the IPoIB-vServer-shared-storage network.

     Example:

     set sharenfs="sec=sys,rw=@196.168.10.0/24,root=@192.168.10.1/24"
     

     Note:

     • The terms BOND0 and BOND1 refer to the default interfaces for IP over InfiniBand (IPoIB) and Ethernet over InfiniBand (EoIB), respectively, on the Oracle Linux operating system.

     • Oracle Solaris uses the IP Multipathing (IPMP) technology to support IPMP Groups that consist of one or more physical interfaces on the same system that are configured with the same IPMP group name. This technology provides the same functionality as Bonded Interfaces on Oracle Linux. You can name the IPMP groups anything. In this guide, BOND0 and BOND1 are used as example names to keep the terminology consistent with Oracle Linux.

     For shares that were created without root access, run the following commands. This ensures that a root user within a compute node that hosts Oracle Traffic Director is able to start the administration server and administration node:

     <ZFS-SharedStorage> shares
     <ZFS-SharedStorage> select <Project-used-for-OTD>
     <ZFS-SharedStorage> get sharenfs
     <ZFS-SharedStorage> set sharenfs ="sec=sys,rw=@<<ip-address-1>/<network-prefix-bits>,root=@<ip-address-2>/<network-prefix-bits>"
     <ZFS-SharedStorage> commit

Mounting Shares

After creating the shares with the appropriate permission, mount the shares based on your requirement:

• For information about mounting shares on an Exalogic physical configuration, see Creating NFSv4 Mount Points on Oracle Linux in Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud Machine Owner's Guide.

• For information about mounting shares on an Exalogic virtual configuration, see Setting Up Access to the ZFS Storage Appliance for a vServer in Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud Administrator's Guide.

The mount point that you create is the location where Oracle Traffic Director will be installed. For more information, see Installing Oracle Traffic Director.

Configuring and Creating Zones on Oracle SuperCluster for Installing Oracle Traffic Director

This section provides information about global and non-global zones, and discusses the various options for installing Oracle Traffic Director on Oracle SuperCluster.

The setup that is discussed in this chapter is ideal when you are looking for application-level traffic management capabilities to monitor and shape the traffic within Oracle SuperCluster. In Oracle SuperCluster, two zones (global or non-global) are allocated, wherein incoming traffic is screened and routed to one of the back-end application servers. In this scenario, Oracle Traffic Director (web tier) is typically hosted on two zones and the application tier is located on another zone.

This section contains the following sections:

• Overview of Installing Oracle Traffic Director on Oracle SuperCluster
  
• Installing Oracle Traffic Director on Oracle SuperCluster
  

Overview of Installing Oracle Traffic Director on Oracle SuperCluster

Before installing Oracle Traffic Director on Oracle SuperCluster, you must consider the following.

• Oracle Traffic Director requires an application domain, such as Oracle VM Server for SPARC (formerly called Logical Domains), running Solaris 11.1 for it to run successfully.

• In an Oracle VM Server for SPARC, Oracle Traffic Director can be installed on either a global zone or a non-global zone.

  The global zone is the default operating system and has control over all the processes. A global zone always exists even when no other zones are configured. A global zone is also used for system-wide administrative control.

  A non-global zone, referred to as a zone, is configured inside the global zone. Each zone is an isolated OS environment that you can use to run applications. The applications and processes that are running in one zone do not affect what is running in other zones.

  For more information about global and non-global zones, see Oracle Solaris Zones section of Oracle Solaris 11.1 Administration: Oracle Solaris Zones, Oracle Solaris 10 Zones, and Resource Management: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26502_01/html/E29024/zone.html.

• One important factor to consider when choosing global or non-global zones is that Oracle Traffic Director can be configured for high availability only when installed on a global zone. In addition, all administration nodes must be running on the global zone.

  Note:

  Configuring VRRP and hence configuring failover groups is supported only in the global zone, and for a privileged user. This is because of Solaris VRRP limitations. For more information, see the VRRP Limitations section of the Managing Oracle Solaris 11.1 Network Performance Guide: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26502_01/html/E28993/gkmfl.html.

Installing Oracle Traffic Director on Oracle SuperCluster

Oracle Traffic Director can be installed on a global or non-global zone. Note that in order to take advantage of Oracle Traffic Director's high availability capability, you must install it on a global zone.

Note:

Another option to configure Oracle Traffic Director for HA is to install Oracle Solaris Cluster. For more information, see the Oracle Solaris Cluster Data Services Planning and Administration Guide.http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E29086_01/html/E29475/index.html.

For an Oracle Traffic Director installation, it is recommended that the zone (global or non-global) hosting Oracle Traffic Director is unique. Note that for installing Oracle Traffic Director on a non-global zone, it must be configured with appropriate disk and network information.

The steps for installing Oracle Traffic Director on Oracle SuperCluster are as follows:

1. Configure and create a new zone, either global or non-global. For more information about leveraging zones, see Oracle Solaris Zones in http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26502_01/html/E29024/zone.html.
2. Download and install Oracle Traffic Director on the zone. For more information on installing, see Installing Oracle Traffic Director.