When configuring the Web tier, you have the option of using Oracle Traffic Director to route requests to the application tier, rather than Oracle HTTP Server. The procedure for configuring Oracle Traffic Director is different than the procedure for configuring Oracle HTTP Server. If you decide to use Oracle Traffic Director, then you must install Oracle Traffic Director on both the Web tier hosts and the Application Tier hosts. Then, you extend the enterprise deployment domain to include Oracle Traffic Director.
Before you configure Oracle Traffic Director, be sure to review Understanding the Web Tier.
Note:
If you plan to configure Oracle Managed File Transfer, then you must configure Oracle Traffic Director to route FTP and SFTP requests over TCP. For more information, see Configuring Oracle Managed File Transfer in an Enterprise Deployment.
edg_config
. However, each enterprise deployment uses additional Oracle Traffic Director virtual servers and orgin-server pools for specific purposes. For example, each time you extend the domain with a new Fusion Middleware product, there are additional virtual servers that must to be defined.Parent topic: Configuring the Enterprise Deployment
Oracle Traffic Director is a software load balancer for load balancing HTTP/S and TCP traffic to application tier. The application-tier servers that receive the requests from Oracle Traffic Director are referred to as Oracle Traffic Director origin servers. Origin servers can be application servers, Web servers, Oracle Managed File Transfer, LDAP directory servers, MLLP servers, or any type of TCP server.
Starting with Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c (12.2.1), in addition to being available for use with the engineered systems (Oracle Exalogic running either Oracle Linux or Oracle Solaris or Oracle SuperCluster running Oracle Solaris), Oracle Traffic Director is available for customers with the Oracle WebLogic Server Multi-tenancy or Oracle WebLogic Server Continuous Availability add-on options.
For more information, see Getting Started with Oracle Traffic Director in Oracle Fusion Middleware Administering Oracle Traffic Director.
Oracle Traffic Director can be used as an alternative to Oracle HTTP Server on the Web tier. Like Oracle HTTP Server, it can route HTTP requests from the front-end load balancer to the application-tier WebLogic Managed Servers. However, only Oracle Traffic Director provides TCP load balancing and failover.
If you are configuring Managed File Transfer (which requires the routing and load balancing of the SFTP requests), then you must use Oracle Traffic Director.
In a enterprise deployment, you install Oracle Traffic Director on both the Web tier hosts and the Application Tier hosts, because Oracle Traffic Director is added to the domain in the application-tier hosts, for system management purposes.
On each Application Tier host, you install Oracle Traffic Director in collocated mode, in the same Oracle home where you installed the application tier software.
On each Web Tier host, you install Oracle Traffic Director in standalone mode.
You then use the Fusion Middleware Configuration Wizard to extend the application-tier domain to include the Oracle Traffic Director system components. This allows the Oracle Traffic Director components to be managed by the same Administration Server that is used to control the Managed Servers in the domain.
The following topics provide specific instructions for using the Oracle Traffic Director configuration required for Managed File Transfer. However, the procedures in these topics can be used to configure Oracle Traffic Director as the Web tier for other components in the enterprise deployment topology.
The procedures for installing and configuring Oracle Traffic Director reference use a series of variables that you can replace with the actual values used in your environment.
The following directory location variables are used in these procedures:
WEB_ORACLE_HOME
ASERVER_HOME
MSERVER_HOME
WEB_DOMAIN_HOME
JAVA_HOME
NM_HOME
For more information, see File System and Directory Variables Used in This Guide.
In addition, you'll be referencing the following virtual IP (VIP) address defined in Reserving the Required IP Addresses for an Enterprise Deployment:
ADMINVHN
Actions in this chapter will be performed on the following host computers:
APPHOST1
APPHOST2
WEBHOST1
WEBHOST2
Note:
Note that for this chapter, APPHOST1 and APPHOST2 provide a more generic variable for the application tier hosts. This is because, depending upon the domain you are creating, the host name variable will vary.
For example, if you are configuring Oracle Traffic Director for an Oracle SOA Suite domain, APPHOST1 is the same as SOAHOST1. However, if you are configuring Oracle Traffic Director for an Oracle Managed File Transfer domain, which is typically configured in its own domain, then APPHOST1 is the same as MFTHOST1.
You can install Oracle Traffic Director by using an interactive graphical wizard provided by the Oracle Universal Installer. To configure Oracle Traffic Director for high availability, perform the steps on two mount points.
To start the installation program:
When the installation program appears, you are ready to begin the installation.
The following table describes how to use the installer screens to install Oracle Traffic Director in colocated mode on the first application tier host.
If you need additional help with any of the installation screens, click the screen name.
Screen | Description |
---|---|
This screen introduces you to the product installer. Click Next. |
|
Installation Inventory Setup |
On UNIX operating systems, this screen will appear if this is the first time you are installing any Oracle product on this host. Specify the location where you want to create your central inventory. Make sure that the operating system group name selected on this screen has write permissions to the central inventory location. For more information about the central inventory, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Installing Software with the Oracle Universal Installer in Installing Software with the Oracle Universal Installer. |
Select whether or not you want to receive automatic updates for this product. |
|
Enter the path to the existing application tier Oracle home. Note that run-time processes cannot write to this directory. For the purposes of this enterprise deployment, enter the value of the ORACLE_HOME variable listed in Table 7-2. |
|
Use this screen to select the type of installation and consequently, the products and feature sets you want to install.
|
|
The installer analyzes the host computer to ensure that the prerequisites are fulfilled. The results of the prerequisite checks are displayed on this screen. If a prerequisite check fails, an error or warning message is displayed.
Click Next to continue. |
|
Specify Security Updates |
If you already have an Oracle Support account, use this screen to indicate how you would like to receive security updates. If you do not have one and are sure you want to skip this step, clear the check box and verify your selection in the follow-up dialog box. |
This screen displays the Oracle home directory that you specified earlier. It also indicates the amount of disk space that will be used for the installation and the free space available. Review information on this screen. To save the settings specified so far in the installation wizard in a text file (called a response file), click Save. If necessary, you can use the response file to perform the same installation from the command line. Click Install to begin the installation. For more information about silent or command line installation, see "Using the Oracle Universal Installer in Silent Mode" in Installing Software with the Oracle Universal Installer. |
|
This screen shows the progress and status of the installation process. If you want to cancel the installation, click Cancel. The files that were copied to your system before you canceled the installation will remain on the system; you should remove them manually. Click Next to continue. |
|
Click Finish. |
You can install Oracle Traffic Director by using an interactive graphical wizard provided by the Oracle Universal Installer. This standalone installation is performed on the two WEBHOST systems that is used in enterprise deployment.
Note:
For an improved footprint and to optimize startup, only core adapters are targeted to the SOA cluster (MFT Cluster if you are configuring MFT) after the Configuration Wizard session. You must target the following second-tier adapters manually, if needed:
MSMQAdapter
SocketAdapter
OracleBamAdapter
CoherenceAdapter
SAPAdapter
SiebelAdapter
ERPAdapter
Oracle SalesCloudAdapter
RightNowAdapter
EloquaAdapter
NetSuiteAdapter
For instructions for targeting adapters manually, see Targeting Adapters Manually.
To start the installation program:
When the installation program appears, you are ready to begin the installation.
The installation program displays a series of screens, in the order listed in the following table.
If you need additional help with any of the installation screens, click the screen name.
Screen | Description |
---|---|
Installation Inventory Setup |
On UNIX operating systems, this screen will appear if this is the first time you are installing any Oracle product on this host. Specify the location where you want to create your central inventory. Make sure that the operating system group name selected on this screen has write permissions to the central inventory location. For more information about the central inventory, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Installing Software with the Oracle Universal Installer in Oracle Fusion Middleware Installing Software with the Oracle Universal Installer. |
Click Next. |
|
Select whether or not you want to receive automatic updates for this product. |
|
Use this screen to specify the location of your Oracle home directory. Oracle home is the directory in which software binaries for Oracle products are stored. Note that run-time processes cannot write to this directory. For the purposes of an enterprise deployment, enter the value of the WEB_ORACLE_HOME variable listed in Table 7-3. |
|
Use this screen to select the type of installation and consequently, the products and feature sets you want to install.
|
|
The installer analyzes the host computer to ensure that the prerequisites are fulfilled. The results of the prerequisite checks are displayed on this screen. If a prerequisite check fails, an error or warning message is displayed.
Click Next to continue. |
|
Specify Security Updates |
If you already have an Oracle Support account, use this screen to indicate how you would like to receive security updates. If you do not have one and are sure you want to skip this step, clear the check box and verify your selection in the follow-up dialog box. |
This screen displays the Oracle home directory that you specified earlier. It also indicates the amount of disk space that will be used for the installation and the free space available. Review information on this screen. To save the settings specified so far in the installation wizard in a text file (called a response file), click Save. If necessary, you can use the response file to perform the same installation from the command line. Click Install to begin the installation. For more information about silent or command line installation, see "Using the Oracle Universal Installer in Silent Mode" in Installing Software with the Oracle Universal Installer. |
|
This screen shows the progress and status of the installation process. If you want to cancel the installation, click Cancel. The files that were copied to your system before you canceled the installation will remain on the system; you should remove them manually. Click Next to continue. |
|
Click Finish. |
After you complete the installation and the post-installation steps, verify that the Oracle home directory contains the following directories:
bin cfgtoollogs crs css has install inventory jlib ldap lib network nls OPatch oracle_common oracore oraInst.loc otd oui plsql plugins precomp rdbms slax sqlplus srvm webgate wlserver xdk
You need to perform certain tasks in order to extend the enterprise deployment domain with the Oracle Traffic Director software.
cd WEB_ORACLE_HOME/oracle_common/common/bin ./config.sh
After you start the Configuration Wizard, you can follow the instructions on the screen to provide the information required to extend the existing domain.
To select the domain type and domain location:
Note:
More information about the Domain home directory can be found in Choosing a Domain Home in Planning an Installation of Oracle Fusion Middleware.
More information about the other options on this screen can be found in Configuration Type in Creating WebLogic Domains Using the Configuration Wizard.
For more information about the ASERVER_HOME directory variable, see File System and Directory Variables Used in This Guide.
To select the configuration templates:
Tip:
More information about the options on this screen can be found in Templates in Creating WebLogic Domains Using the Configuration Wizard.
To complete the domain configuration for the topology, select the following option on the Advanced Configuration screen:
System Components
On the System Components screen, click Next.
It is not necessary to configure the system components in the configuration wizard. For instructions on how to create the Oracle Traffic Director instances required for the enterprise deployment, see Starting the Oracle Traffic Director Instances.
Use the Machines screen to create three new machines in the domain. A machine is required in order for the Node Manager to be able to start and stop the servers.
WebHOSTn
in the Node Manger Listen Address field and 556
in the Node Manager Listen Port field, for each machine.The Configuration Summary screen contains the detailed configuration information for the domain you are about to create. Review the details of each item on the screen and verify that the information is correct.
You can go back to any previous screen if you need to make any changes, either by using the Back button or by selecting the screen in the navigation pane.
Domain creation will not begin until you click Update.
Tip:
More information about the options on this screen can be found in Configuration Summary in Creating WebLogic Domains Using the Configuration Wizard.
The Configuration Success screen will show the following items about the domain you just configured:
Domain Location
Administration Server URL
You must make a note of both items as you will need them later; the domain location is needed to access the scripts used to start the Administration Server.
Click Finish to dismiss the configuration wizard.
After you have installed Oracle Traffic Director on the application tier hosts and you have extended the domain with Oracle Traffic Director system components, you can then copy the domain configuration to the hosts on the Web tier and configure the Node Manager.
Use the following steps to create a template JAR file that contains the domain configuration information:
Oracle Traffic Director runs alone in the Web tier hosts, and therefore, it is not necessary to create a per node Node Manager for each Web tier host. Instead, Oracle Traffic Director nodes use the default per domain Node Manager.
Oracle also recommends that you use the SSL Node Manager in the DMZ for security reasons.
To create the required Node Manager configuration and start Node Manager on each Web tier host, follow these steps. Repeat for each Web tier host.
An Oracle Traffic Director configuration is a collection of metadata that defines the run-time characteristics of an Oracle Traffic Director server. After you create a configuration, you can use it to create instances of Oracle Traffic Director servers on one or more administration nodes.
Note:
The server user that you specify for a configuration must meet the following requirements:
When the administration server is running as root, the server user must be either root or belong to the same group as the user that installed Oracle Traffic Director .
When the administration server is running as a non-root user, the server user must be the same as the administration server's server user.
The nodes to which a configuration is deployed must be homogenous in terms of the user accounts and groups that are configured on those systems.
To create a configuration:
Note:
The following are automatically created after you create the configuration:
One virtual servers named edgconfig
.
One instance on each of the hosts defined for the configuration.
You can use the Oracle Traffic Director configuration to create instances of Oracle Traffic Director servers on one or more administration nodes.
To start the Oracle Traffic Director default instance:
By default, when you created the configuration, a default virtual server for HTTP access was created, named edg_config
. However, each enterprise deployment uses additional Oracle Traffic Director virtual servers and orgin-server pools for specific purposes. For example, each time you extend the domain with a new Fusion Middleware product, there are additional virtual servers that must to be defined.
For a complete list of the virtual servers required for the enterprise deployment, see Summary of the Virtual Servers Required for an Enterprise Deployment
For general information about creating Oracle Traffic Director virtual servers, see Creating a Virtual Server in the Fusion Middleware Administering Oracle Traffic Director.To create and configure virtual servers, you must create the origin server pools and then define the virtual servers.
Each Oracle Fusion Middleware product requires specific Oracle Traffic Director origin servers, virtual servers, and routing information for each virtual server.
Origin Server Pools Required for Each Product
The following table lists the origin server pools required by the Fusion Middleware products. You can use this information as you create the origin server pools, using the Oracle Traffic Director management pages in Fusion Middleware Control.
Product | Origin-Server Pool | Type | Origin Servers |
---|---|---|---|
All products; one for each domain |
admin-pool |
HTTP |
|
Oracle Web Services Manager |
wsm-pool |
HTTP |
|
Oracle SOA Suite Business Process Management Oracle SOA Suite for Healthcare |
soa-pool |
HTTP |
|
Oracle Enterprise Scheduler |
ess-pool |
HTTP |
|
Business Activity Monitoring |
bam-pool |
HTTP |
|
Oracle Service Bus |
osb-pool |
HTTP |
|
Oracle Managed File Transfer |
mft-pool |
HTTP |
|
Oracle Managed File Transfer |
mft-sftp-pool |
TCP |
|
Oracle SOA Suite for Healthcare |
healthcare-tcp-pool |
TCP |
|
Note:
*7022 is the default port that is used for the SFTP listeners on the Managed File Transfer servers.Virtual Servers Required for Each Product
The following table lists the virtual servers required by the Fusion Middleware products. You can use this information as you create the required virtual servers, using the Oracle Traffic Director management pages in Fusion Middleware Control.
Product | Virtual Server Name | Host Served | Pool | Listener |
---|---|---|---|---|
All products; one for each domain |
admin.example.com |
admin.example.com |
admin-pool |
* |
Oracle SOA Suite Business Process Management Oracle SOA Suite for Healthcare |
soa.example.com |
soa.example.com |
soa-pool |
* |
Oracle Enterprise Scheduler |
soa.example.com |
soa.example.com |
ess-pool |
* |
Business Activity Monitoring |
soa.example.com |
soa.example.com |
bam-pool |
* |
Oracle SOA Suite Business Process Management |
soainternal.example.com |
WEBHOST1-V1* |
soa-pool |
* |
Oracle Web Services Manager |
soainternal.example.com |
WEBHOST1-V1* |
wsm-pool |
* |
Oracle Enterprise Scheduler |
soainternal.example.com |
WEBHOST1-V1* |
ess-pool |
* |
Business Activity Monitoring |
soainternal.example.com |
WEBHOST1-V1* |
bam-pool |
* |
Oracle Service Bus |
osb.example.com |
osb.example.com |
osb-pool |
* |
Oracle Service Bus |
osbinternal.example.com |
WEBHOST2-V1* |
osb-pool |
* |
Oracle Managed File Transfer |
mft-http.example.com |
mft.example.com |
mft-pool |
* |
Oracle Managed File Transfer |
mft-sftp.example.com |
mft.example.com |
mft-sftp-pool |
* |
Oracle SOA Suite for Healthcare |
soahealthcare.example.com |
soahealthcare.example.com |
healtchare-tcp-pool |
* |
Note:
*WEBHOST1-V1
and WEBHOST2-V1
are the VIPS that will be used for the corresponding Oracle Traffic Director failover groups.Virtual Server Routes Required for Each Product
The following table lists the virtual server routes (or URIs) required by the Fusion Middleware products. You can use this information as you create the required routes, using the Oracle Traffic Director management pages in Fusion Middleware Control.
Product | Virtual Server Name | Route | Origin-server pool | URIs |
---|---|---|---|---|
All products; one for each domain |
admin.example.com |
admin-route |
admin-pool |
/console /em /consolehelp |
Oracle Web Services Manager |
soainternal.example.com |
soa-route |
wsm-pool |
/wsm-pm |
Oracle SOA Suite |
soa.example.com |
soa-route |
soa-pool |
/soa-infra /inspection.wsi /integration /b2bconsole /b2b/services/ws/sdpmessaging/userprefs-ui /DefaultToDoTaskFlow /workflow /ADFAttachmentHelper /soa/composer /frevvo /insight-soa/ |
Oracle Service Bus |
osb.example.com |
osb-route |
osb-pool |
/sbinspection.wsil /sbresource /osb /alsb /insight-osb/resources/ |
Business Process Management |
soa.example.com |
soa-route |
soa-pool |
/bpm/composer /bpm/workspace |
Oracle Enterprise Scheduler |
soa.example.com |
soa-route |
ess-pool |
/ess /EssHealthCheck /ess-async /ess-wsjob |
Business Activity Monitoring |
soa.example.com |
soa-route |
bam-pool |
/bam/composer /OracleBAMWS /oracle/bam/server /insight |
Oracle B2B |
soa.example.com |
soa-route |
soa-pool |
/b2bconsole /b2b |
Oracle SOA Suite for Healthcare |
soa.example.com |
soa-route |
healthcare-TCP-pool |
/healthcare |
Oracle SOA Suite for Healthcare |
soainternal.example.com |
soa-route |
healthcare-pool |
/healthcare |
Oracle Managed File Transfer |
mft-http-example.com |
mft-route |
mft-pool |
/mftconsole |
Oracle MFT uses a TCP proxy to route sftp requests to the backend MFT WLS servers.
A failover group ensures high availability of Oracle Traffic Director instances by combining two Oracle Traffic Director instances.
When a request is sent to one of the virtual hosts in the EDG, the front end load balancer redirects the request to the IP address that has been configured to load balance requests. This IP address is enabled on one of the OTD instances but it can be migrated to another OTD instance should a failure occur. You can combine two Oracle Traffic Director instances in a failover group represented by one or two virtual IP (VIP) addresses. You can do this by creating an active-passive failover group for the IP address. This failover group lists a primary and a number of secondary instances.
The following instructions explain how to create failover groups for the IP addresses associated with the different virtual servers in the configuration. The failover groups for the MFT OTD IP addresses are optional since the load balancer fails over requests between the two Oracle Traffic Director instances, but they will provide faster failure detection and failover than the typical load balancer monitors.
For more information about creating failover groups or other high availability configurations for Oracle traffic Director, see Configuring Oracle Traffic Director for High Availability in the Administrator's Guide.
This section describes how to implement a highly available pair of Oracle Traffic Director instances by creating failover groups.
Before you begin:
Decide the unique VIP address that you want to assign to the failover group.
The VIP addresses should belong to the same subnet as that of the nodes in the failover group.
The VIP addresses must be accessible to clients.
Note:
To configure an active-active pair of Oracle Traffic Director instances, you must create two failover groups with the same instances, but with a distinct VIP address for each failover group, and with the primary and backup node roles reversed.• Identify the network prefix of the interface on which the VIP should be managed. The network prefix is the subnet mask represented in the Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) format, as described in the following examples.
For an IPv4 VIP address in a subnet that contains 256 addresses (8 bits), the CIDR notation of the subnet mask 255.255.255.0
would be 24, which is derived by deducting the number of addresses in the given subnet (8 bits) from the maximum number of IPv4 addresses possible (32 bits).
Similarly, for an IPv4 VIP address in a subnet that has 4096 addresses (12 bits), the CIDR notation of the subnet mask 255.255.240.0
would be 20 (=32 minus 12).
To calculate the CIDR notation of the subnet mask for an IPv6 subnet, you should deduct the bit-size of the subnet's address space from 128 bits, which is the maximum number of IPv6 addresses possible.
The default network-prefix-length is 24 or 64 for an IPv4 VIP or IPv6 VIP, respectively. The default network-prefix-length is used, if not specified, for automatically choosing the NIC and for validating if the VIP is in the same subnet as the specified NIC.
While actually plumbing the VIP, it is preferred to use the hostmask, 32 for IPv4 and 128 for IPv6, so that any outgoing traffic originating from that node does not use the VIP as the source address.
Identify the Oracle Traffic Director administration nodes that you want to configure as primary and backup nodes in the failover group. The nodes should be in the same subnet.
Note that the administration nodes that you select should have Oracle Traffic Director instances present on them for the specified configuration.
Identify the network interface for each node.
For each network interface that is currently up on the host, the administration server compares the network part of the interface's IP address with the network part of the specified VIP. The first network interface that results in a match is used as the network interface for the VIP.
For this comparison, depending on whether the VIP specified for the failover group is an IPv4 or IPv6 address, the administration server considers only those network interfaces on the host that are configured with an IPv4 or IPv6 address, respectively.
You can bind to a VIP IP address within the HTTP listener by performing a system configuration that allows you to bind to a non-existing address, as a sort of forward binding. Perform one of the following system configurations:
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_nonlocal_bind
or
sysctl net.ipv4.ip_nonlocal_bind=1
(change in /etc/sysctl.conf
to keep after a reboot)
Make sure that the IP addresses of the listeners in the configuration for which you want to create a failover group are either an asterisk (*) or the same address as the VIP. Otherwise, requests sent to the VIP will not be routed to the virtual servers.
Make sure that the router ID for each failover group is unique. For every subsequent failover group that you create, the default router ID is decremented by one: 254, 253, and so on.