You can expand your environment by adding Managed Servers, expanding your domain to include other products, creating a cluster of Managed Servers, copying existing Oracle homes or existing Oracle Fusion Middleware components such as Oracle HTTP Server, as described by the following sections:
Scalability is the ability of a system to provide throughput in proportion to, and limited only by, available hardware resources. A scalable system is one that can handle increasing numbers of requests without adversely affecting response time and throughput.
The growth of computational power within one operating environment is called vertical scaling. Horizontal scaling is leveraging multiple systems to work together on a common problem in parallel.
Oracle Fusion Middleware scales both vertically and horizontally.
Oracle Fusion Middleware provides great vertical scalability, allowing you to add more Managed Servers or components to the same host. This is known as scale up.
Horizontally, Oracle Fusion Middleware can provide failover capabilities to another host computer. That way, if one computer goes down, your environment can continue to serve the consumers of your deployed applications. This is also known as scaling out or machine scale out. For information about scaling out, see "Scaling Out a Topology" in the High Availability Guide.
Deploying a high availability system minimizes the time when the system is down (unavailable) and maximizes the time when it is running (available). Oracle Fusion Middleware is designed to provide a wide variety of high availability solutions, ranging from load balancing and basic clustering to providing maximum system availability during catastrophic hardware and software failures.
High availability solutions can be divided into two basic categories: local high availability and disaster recovery.
See Also:
High Availability Guide for more information about high availability
When you create an Oracle WebLogic Server domain, you create it using a particular domain template. That template supports a particular component or group of components, such as Oracle WebLogic Server. If you want to add other components, such as Oracle HTTP Server, to that domain, you can extend the domain by creating additional Managed Servers in the domain, using a domain template for the component which you want to add.
When you extend a domain, the domain must be offline.
To extend a domain, you use the Oracle WebLogic Server Configuration Wizard from an Oracle home into which the desired component has been installed. Then, you select the domain that you want to extend and the component you want to add. For detailed information, see "Configuring Your WebLogic Domain" in Installing and Configuring the Oracle Fusion Middleware Infrastructure.
For example, to extend a domain that initially was created to support Oracle Application Development Framework so that it can now also support Oracle HTTP Server:
Use RCU to add any required schemas for the component, as described in Creating Schemas with the Repository Creation Utility.
Install Oracle HTTP Server, as described in Installing and Configuring Oracle HTTP Server.
From the Oracle home, invoke the Configuration Wizard, using the following command:
(UNIX) ORACLE_HOME/oracle_common/common/bin/config.sh (Windows) ORACLE_HOME\oracle_common\common\bin\config.cmd
The Configuration Wizard's Welcome screen is displayed.
Select Update an existing domain.
In Domain Location, specify the location of the domain.
Click Next.
Select Update Domain Using Product Templates.
Select Oracle HTTP Server (colocated).
Click Next.
Select Extend my domain automatically to support the following added products, Then, select the source from which this domain is to be extended. For example, select Oracle HTTP Server.
Click Next.
Select either RCU Data or Manual Configuration. If you select RCU Data, the information is automatically populated. If you select Manual Configuration, click Next.
Select the schemas for the new component you added, entering the following information:
For Vendor, select Oracle.
For Driver, select Oracle's Driver (Thin) for Service connections; Versions:9.0.1,9.2.0,10,11.
For Schema Owner, do not enter anything. Each data source uses the user name specified in the table.
If you used the same password when you created the schemas, select all of the schemas and enter the password in Schema Password.
Alternatively, you can specify different passwords for each data source by selecting each schema individually and entering the password.
With all of the schemas selected, for DBMS/Service, enter the SID of the database.
With all of the schemas selected, for Host Name, enter the host name of the database.
With all of the schemas selected, for Port, enter the listening port of the database.
Click Next.
The JDBC Component Schema Test screen is displayed.
If the test succeeds, click Next.
The Advanced Configuration screen is displayed.
Select System Components.
Click Next.
Click Add to create a new Oracle HTTP Server instance.
Enter a name for the instance and select OHS as the component type.
Click Next.
The fields in the OHS Server page are prepopulated.
Click Next.
If you do not want to create a new machine, in the Machines page, click Next.
In the Assign System Components page, double-click the server to move it under the machine.
Review the information on the screen and if it is correct, click Update.
When the operation completes, click Done.
You can add Managed Servers to a domain to increase the capacity of your system. The Managed Servers can be added to a cluster.
When a Managed Server is added to a cluster, it inherits the applications and services that are targeted to the cluster. When a Managed Server is not added as a part of a cluster, it does not automatically inherit the applications and services from the template.
To add a Managed Server to a domain, you can use Fusion Middleware Control, the Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console, or WLST.
See:
Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console Online Help and WLST Command Reference for WebLogic Server for complete information about adding Managed Servers.To add a Managed Server to a domain using the Fusion Middleware Control:
From the WebLogic Domain menu, choose Administration, then, Create/Delete Components.
The Create Components page is displayed.
Click Create, and select WebLogic Server.
The Create WebLogic Server page is displayed.
For Name, enter a name for the server.
Each server within a domain must have a name that is unique for all configuration objects in the domain. Within a domain, each server, computer, cluster, JDBC connection pool, virtual host, and any other resource type must be named uniquely and must not use the same name as the domain.
For Listen Port, enter the port number from which you want to access the server instance.
If you run multiple server instances on a single computer, each server must use its own listen port.
Select either Create new WebLogic Machine or Select Existing WebLogic Machine. If you select Select Existing WebLogic Machine, select a machine from the table.
Specify whether this server is to be a standalone server or a member of an existing cluster:
If this server is to be part of an existing cluster, select the cluster.
If this server is to be a standalone server, do not select a cluster.
Click Create
If the server or cluster did not have Oracle JRF applied, apply JRF, as described in Section 18.3.1.
Oracle JRF (Java Required Files) consists of those components not included in the Oracle WebLogic Server installation and that provide common functionality for Oracle business applications and application frameworks.
JRF consists of several independently developed libraries and applications that are deployed into a common location. The components that are considered part of Java Required Files include Oracle Application Development Framework shared libraries and ODL logging handlers.
You must apply the JRF template to a Managed Server or cluster in certain circumstances. You can only apply JRF to Managed Servers that are in a domain in which JRF was configured. That is, you must have selected Oracle JRF in the Configuration Wizard when you created or extended the domain.
Note the following points about applying JRF:
When you add a Managed Server to an existing cluster that is already configured with JRF, you do not need to apply JRF to the Managed Server.
When you add a Managed Server to a domain and the Managed Server requires JRF services, but the Managed Server is not part of a cluster, you must apply JRF to the Managed Server.
When you create a new cluster and the cluster requires JRF, you must apply JRF to the cluster.
You do not need to apply JRF to Managed Servers that are added by product templates during the template extension process (though you must select JRF in the Configuration Wizard).
You must restart the server or cluster after you apply JRF.
Note that if you start the server or cluster using Node Manager (for example, through the Administration Console, which uses Node Manager), you must set the Node Manager property startScriptEnabled to true. For more information, see Section 2.8.1.
If you create a server using Fusion Middleware Control, the JRF template is automatically applied.
You use the custom WLST command applyJRF to configure the Managed Servers or cluster with JRF. To use the custom WLST commands, you must invoke the WLST script from the Oracle Common home. See Section 2.4.2 for more information.
The format of the applyJRF command is:
applyJRF(target={server_name | cluster_name | *}, domainDir=domain_path,
[shouldUpdateDomain= {true | false}])
You can use the applyJRF command online or offline:
In online mode, the JRF changes are implicitly activated if you use the shouldUpdateDomain option with the value true (which is the default.) In online mode, this option calls the online WLST save() and activate() commands.
In offline mode, you must restart the Administration Server and the Managed Servers or cluster. (In offline mode, if you specify the shouldUpdateDomain option with the value true, this option calls the WLST updateDomain() command.)
For example, to configure the Managed Server server1 with JRF, use the following command:
applyJRF(target='server1', domainDir='DOMAIN_HOME')
To configure all Managed servers in the domain with JRF, specify an asterisk (*) as the value of the target option.
To configure a cluster with JRF, use the following command:
applyJRF(target='cluster1', domainDir='DOMAIN_HOME')
See Also:
"Java Required Files Custom WLST Commands" in the WLST Command Reference for Infrastructure Components
Section H.2.2 to use a different version of Spring than that which is supplied with JRF
A WebLogic Server cluster consists of multiple WebLogic Server server instances running simultaneously and working together to provide increased scalability and reliability. A cluster appears to clients to be a single WebLogic Server instance. The server instances that constitute a cluster can run on the same computer, or be located on different computers. You can increase a cluster's capacity by adding additional server instances to the cluster on an existing computer, or you can add computers to the cluster to host the incremental server instances. Each server instance in a cluster must run the same version of WebLogic Server.
You can create a cluster of Managed Servers using WLST, the Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console, or Fusion Middleware Control. This section describes how to create a cluster using Fusion Middleware Control.
To create a cluster of two Managed Servers, wls_server1 and wls_server2, take the following steps:
From the WebLogic Domain menu, choose Administration, then, Create/Delete Components.
The Fusion Middleware Components page is displayed.
Choose Create, then WebLogic Cluster.
The Create WebLogic Cluster page is displayed.
For Name, enter a name for the cluster.
In the Cluster Messaging Mode section, select one of the following:
Unicast. Then, for Unicast Broadcast Channel, enter a channel. This channel is used to transmit messages within the cluster.
Multicast. Then, for Multicast Broadcast Channel, enter a channel. A multicast address is an IP address in the range from 224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255. For Multicast Port, enter a port number.
Note:
You must ensure that the multicast address is not in use.In the Servers section, select one or more servers to be added to the cluster. In this scenario, select wls_server1 and wls_server2.
Click Create.
Now, you have a cluster with two members, wls_server1 and wls_server2.
See Also:
Administering Clusters for Oracle WebLogic Server for more information about clustersYou can copy an Oracle home or many Oracle Fusion Middleware components to a different location while preserving its configuration. Some situations in which copying Oracle Fusion Middleware is useful are:
Creating an Oracle home that is a copy of a production, test, or development environment, enabling you to create a new Oracle home or component with all patches applied to it in a single step. This is in contrast to separately installing, configuring and applying any patches to separate components.
Preparing a "gold" image of a patched home and deploying it to many hosts.
For information about the procedures you use to copy an Oracle home or component, see Chapter 19.