6 Preparing the Load Balancer and Firewalls for an Enterprise Deployment
It is important to understand how to configure the hardware load balancer and ports that must be opened on the firewalls for an enterprise deployment.
- Configuring Virtual Hosts on the Hardware Load Balancer
The hardware load balancer configuration facilitates to recognize and route requests to several virtual servers and associated ports for different types of network traffic and monitoring. - Configuring the Firewalls and Ports for an Enterprise Deployment
As an administrator, it is important that you become familiar with the port numbers that are used by various Oracle Fusion Middleware products and services. This ensures that the same port number is not used by two services on the same host, and that the proper ports are open on the firewalls in the enterprise topology.
Parent topic: Preparing for an Enterprise Deployment
Configuring Virtual Hosts on the Hardware Load Balancer
The hardware load balancer configuration facilitates to recognize and route requests to several virtual servers and associated ports for different types of network traffic and monitoring.
The following topics explain how to configure the hardware load balancer, provide a summary of the virtual servers that are required, and provide additional instructions for these virtual servers:
- Overview of the Hardware Load Balancer Configuration
- Typical Procedure for Configuring the Hardware Load Balancer
- Summary of the Virtual Servers Required for an Enterprise Deployment
- Additional Instructions for admin.example.com
- Additional Instructions for wcp.example.com
- Additional Instructions for wcpinternal.example.com
Overview of the Hardware Load Balancer Configuration
As shown in the topology diagrams, you must configure the hardware load balancer to recognize and route requests to several virtual servers and associated ports for different types of network traffic and monitoring.
In the context of a load-balancing device, a virtual server is a construct that allows multiple physical servers to appear as one for load-balancing purposes. It is typically represented by an IP address and a service, and it is used to distribute incoming client requests to the servers in the server pool.
The virtual servers should be configured to direct traffic to the appropriate host computers and ports for the various services that are available in the enterprise deployment.
In addition, you should configure the load balancer to monitor the host computers and ports for availability so that the traffic to a particular server is stopped as soon as possible when a service is down. This ensures that incoming traffic on a given virtual host is not directed to an unavailable service in the other tiers.
Note that after you configure the load balancer, you can later configure the web server instances in the web tier to recognize a set of virtual hosts that use the same names as the virtual servers that you defined for the load balancer. For each request coming from the hardware load balancer, the web server can then route the request appropriately, based on the server name included in the header of the request. See Configuring Oracle HTTP Server for Administration and Oracle Web Services Manager.
Parent topic: Configuring Virtual Hosts on the Hardware Load Balancer
Typical Procedure for Configuring the Hardware Load Balancer
The following procedure outlines the typical steps for configuring a hardware load balancer for an enterprise deployment.
Note that the actual procedures for configuring a specific load balancer will differ, depending on the specific type of load balancer. There may also be some differences depending on the type of protocol that is being load balanced. For example, TCP virtual servers and HTTP virtual servers use different types of monitors for their pools. Refer to the vendor-supplied documentation for actual steps.
-
Create a pool of servers. This pool contains a list of servers and the ports that are included in the load-balancing definition.
For example, for load balancing between the web hosts, create a pool of servers that would direct requests to hosts WEBHOST1 and WEBHOST2 on port 7777.
-
Create rules to determine whether a given host and service is available and assign it to the pool of servers that are described in Step 1.
-
Create the required virtual servers on the load balancer for the addresses and ports that receive requests for the applications.
For a complete list of the virtual servers required for the enterprise deployment, see Summary of the Virtual Servers Required for an Enterprise Deployment.
When you define each virtual server on the load balancer, consider the following:
-
If your load balancer supports it, specify whether the virtual server is available internally, externally, or both. Ensure that internal addresses are only resolvable from inside the network.
-
Configure SSL Termination, if applicable, for the virtual server.
-
Assign the pool of servers created in Step 1 to the virtual server.
-
Parent topic: Configuring Virtual Hosts on the Hardware Load Balancer
Summary of the Virtual Servers Required for an Enterprise Deployment
This topic provides details of the virtual servers that are required for an enterprise deployment.
The following table provides a list of the virtual servers that you must define on the hardware load balancer for the Oracle WebCenter Portal enterprise topology:
Virtual Host | Server Pool | Protocol | SSL Termination? | External? |
---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
HTTP |
No |
No |
|
|
HTTPS |
Yes |
Yes |
|
|
HTTP |
No |
No |
|
|
TCP |
No |
No |
Parent topic: Configuring Virtual Hosts on the Hardware Load Balancer
Additional Instructions for admin.example.com
This section provides additional instructions that are required for the virtual server-admin.example.com.
When you configure this virtual server on the hardware load balancer:
-
Enable address and port translation.
-
Enable reset of connections when services or hosts are down.
Parent topic: Configuring Virtual Hosts on the Hardware Load Balancer
Additional Instructions for wcp.example.com
This section provides additional instructions for configuring the virtual server—wcp.example.com.
When you configure this virtual server on the hardware load balancer:
-
Use port 80 and port 443. Any request that goes to port 80 (non-ssl protocol) should be redirected to port 443 (ssl protocol).
-
Specify HTTP as the protocol.
-
Enable address and port translation.
-
Enable reset of connections when services and/or nodes are down.
-
Create rules to filter out access to
/console
and/em
on this virtual server.These context strings direct requests to the Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console and to the Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control and should be used only when accessing the system from
admin.example.com
.
Parent topic: Configuring Virtual Hosts on the Hardware Load Balancer
Additional Instructions for wcpinternal.example.com
This section provides additional instructions for configuring the virtual server—wcpinternal.example.com.
This virtual server is used for internal invocations of WebCenter Portal and WebCenter Content services. This URL is not exposed to the Internet and is accessible only from the intranet. The incoming traffic from clients is not SSL enabled. Two virtual servers are configured at the hardware load balancer using this address with different ports.
This address is used for both HTTP and Remote Intradoc Client (RIDC) traffic:
-
HTTP connections are received at the hardware load balancer on port 80 and forwarded to the WEBHOST servers on the OHS default port 7777.
-
RIDC TCP connections are received at the hardware load balancer on port 6300 and forwarded to the WCCHOST servers on the RIDC default port 4444.
Note:
It is recommended to use a unique port for the front-end configuration versus simply receiving and forwarding on the RIDC service port number (for example, 4444).
Two server pools are configured at the hardware load balancer to support this topology:
-
Web servers; containing: WEBHOST1:7777 and WEBHOST2:7777
-
RIDC servers; containing: WCCHOST1:4444 and WCCHOST2:4444
The RIDC traffic uses port 6300 on the load balancer (6300 is mainly for masking), but the traffic ultimately routes to the RIDC port (4444) on the WebCenter hosts.
When you configure this virtual server on the hardware load balancer:
-
Enable address and port translation.
-
Enable reset of connections when services or nodes are down.
-
As with the
wcp.example.com
, create rules to filter out access to/console
and/em
on this virtual server.
Parent topic: Configuring Virtual Hosts on the Hardware Load Balancer
Configuring the Firewalls and Ports for an Enterprise Deployment
As an administrator, it is important that you become familiar with the port numbers that are used by various Oracle Fusion Middleware products and services. This ensures that the same port number is not used by two services on the same host, and that the proper ports are open on the firewalls in the enterprise topology.
The following tables lists the ports that you must open on the firewalls in the topology:
Note:
The ports and port ranges specified for application access at firewallFW1
in the following table apply to the static cluster use-case. Ports and port ranges will vary for dynamic clusters based on scalability needs.
Firewall notation:
-
FW0 refers to the outermost firewall.
-
FW1 refers to the firewall between the web tier and the application tier.
-
FW2 refers to the firewall between the application tier and the data tier.
Table 6-1 Firewall Ports Common to All Fusion Middleware Enterprise Deployments
Type | Firewall | Port and Port Range | Protocol / Application | Inbound / Outbound | Other Considerations and Timeout Guidelines |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Browser request |
FW0 |
80 |
HTTP / Load Balancer |
Inbound |
Timeout depends on the size and type of HTML content. |
Browser request |
FW0 |
443 |
HTTPS / Load Balancer |
Inbound |
Timeout depends on the size and type of HTML content. |
Browser request |
FW1 |
80 |
HTTP / Load Balancer |
Outbound (for intranet clients) |
Timeout depends on the size and type of HTML content. |
Browser request |
FW1 |
443 |
HTTPS / Load Balancer |
Outbound (for intranet clients) |
Timeout depends on the size and type of HTML content. |
Callbacks and Outbound invocations |
FW1 |
80 |
HTTP / Load Balancer |
Outbound |
Timeout depends on the size and type of HTML content. |
Callbacks and Outbound invocations |
FW1 |
443 |
HTTPS / Load Balancer |
Outbound |
Timeout depends on the size and type of HTML content. |
Load balancer to Oracle HTTP Server |
n/a |
7777 |
HTTP |
n/a |
n/a |
OHS registration with Administration Server |
FW1 |
7001 |
HTTP / t3 |
Inbound |
Set the timeout to a short period (5-10 seconds). |
OHS management by Administration Server |
FW1 |
OHS Admin Port (7779) |
TCP / HTTP |
Outbound |
Set the timeout to a short period (5-10 seconds). |
Session replication within a WebLogic Server cluster |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
By default, this communication uses the same port as the server's listen address. |
Administration Console access |
FW1 |
7001 |
HTTP / Administration Server and Enterprise Manager t3 |
Both |
You should tune this timeout based on the type of access to the admin console (whether you plan to use the Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console from the application tier clients or clients external to the application tier). |
Database access |
FW2 |
1521 |
SQL*Net |
Both |
Timeout depends on database content and on the type of process model used for SOA. |
Coherence for deployment |
n/a |
9991 |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
Oracle Unified Directory access |
FW2 |
389 636 (SSL) |
LDAP or LDAP/ssl |
Inbound |
You should tune the directory server's parameters based on load balancer, and not the other way around. |
Oracle Notification Server (ONS) |
FW2 |
6200 |
ONS |
Both |
Required for Gridlink. An ONS server runs on each database server. |
Table 6-2 Firewall Ports for Product-specific Components in Oracle Fusion Middleware Enterprise Deployments
Type | Firewall | Port and Port Range | Protocol / Application | Inbound / Outbound | Other Considerations and Timeout Guidelines |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
WSM-PM access |
FW1 |
7010 Range: 7010 - 7999 |
HTTP / WLS_WSM-PMn |
Inbound |
Set the timeout to 60 seconds. |
Portal Server access |
FW1 |
9001 |
HTTP / WLS_Portaln |
Inbound |
Set the timeout to a short period (5–10 seconds). |
RIDC API requests |
FW1 |
6300 |
TCP/WLS_WCCn |
Inbound |
n/a |
SOA Server access |
FW1* |
8001 Range: 8000 - 8010 |
HTTP / WLS_SOAn |
Inbound |
Timeout varies based on the type of process model used for SOA. |