5 Managing Configurations

The first step toward creating a load-balanced service with Oracle Traffic Director is to create a configuration. A configuration is a collection of metadata defining the run-time characteristics of an Oracle Traffic Director server. After creating a configuration, you can use it to create instances of Oracle Traffic Director servers on one or more administration nodes.

This chapter contains the following topics:

See Oracle Traffic Director Terminology for the definitions of the Oracle Traffic Director terminology such as configuration, administration node, and instance. To understand the relationship between configurations, node managers, and instances, see Overview of Administration Tasks.

Creating an Oracle Traffic Director Configuration

You can create configurations that define your Oracle Traffic Director instances. A configuration is a collection of metadata that you can use to instantiate Oracle Traffic Director. Oracle Traffic Director reads the configuration when a server instance starts and while processing client requests.

Before You Begin

Before you begin creating a configuration, decide the following:

A unique name for the configuration. Choose the name carefully. After creating a configuration, you cannot change the name.
A unique listener host:port combination for the default virtual server that you create as part of the configuration.
host:port addresses of the servers in the origin-server pool that you create as part of the configuration.
(optional) Host names of the Node Managers on which you want to create instances of the configuration.

While creating a configuration using the New Configuration wizard, you can also choose to instantiate the configuration on one or more Node Managers. The wizard displays the host names of the Node Managers that are registered with the server.

Topics

Creating a Configuration Using Fusion Middleware Control

To create a configuration by using Fusion Middleware Control, do the following:

Log in to Fusion Middleware Control for Traffic Director, as described in Graphical User Interface-Fusion Middleware Control.
Click the WebLogic Domain button at the upper left corner of the page.
Select Administration > OTD Configurations.
In the Common Tasks pane select the Create button.
The New Configuration wizard opens.
Follow the on-screen prompts to complete creation of the configuration by using the details—origin server type, and so on—that you decided earlier.

After the configuration is created, the Results screen of the New Configuration wizard displays a message confirming successful creation of the configuration. If you chose to create instances of the configuration, then a message confirming successful creation of the instances is also displayed.
Click Close on the Results screen.

In the New Configuration wizard, if you chose not to create an instance of the configuration, the message Undeployed Configuration is displayed, indicating that the configuration that you just created is yet to be deployed.

Creating a Configuration Using WLST

To create a configuration, run the otd_createConfiguration command. This command can be run in online and offline mode.

The example creates a configuration named soa.example.com with an origin server, vault.example.com:80.

# Online
props = {}
props['name'] = 'soa.example.com'
props['listener-port'] = '12345'
props['server-name'] = 'foo'
props['origin-server'] = 'vault.example.com:80'
otd_createConfiguration(props)

The example creates a configuration named foo with an origin server, vault.mycompany.com:80.

# Offline
readDomain('/export/domains/otd_domain')
props = {}
props['name'] = 'foo'
props['listener-port'] = '12345'
props['server-name'] = 'foo'
props['origin-server'] = 'vault.mycompany.com:80'
otd_createConfiguration(props)
updateDomain()
closeDomain()

Viewing a List of Configurations

After creating Oracle Traffic Director configurations, you can view a list of the available configurations at any time. To view a list of configurations, run the otd_listConfigurations command.

Topics

You can view the list of configurations by using either Fusion Middleware Control or the WLST as described in the following topics:

Viewing a List of Configurations Using Fusion Middleware Control

Log in to Fusion Middleware Control, as described in Displaying Fusion Middleware Control.
Click the WebLogic Domain button at the upper left corner of the page.
Select Administration > OTD Configurations.

A list of the available configurations is displayed.

Description of the illustration GUID-F296D1D8-CEE2-490E-B137-5C43DA0E5EB5-print.gif

You can view the properties of a configuration by clicking on its name.

Viewing a List of Configurations Using WLST

To view a list of the available configurations, run the otd_listConfigurations command, as shown in the following example. You can run this command in online and offline mode.

# Online
otd_listConfigurations()

# Offline
readDomain('/export/2110_12c/iplanet/ias/server/work/TD_Linux2.6_DBG.OBJ/domains/otd_domain')
otd_listConfigurations()
closeDomain()

See Offline Commands in the WebLogic Scripting Tool Command Reference for Oracle Traffic Director for information about using WLST commands in offline mode.

Activating Configuration Changes

You can activate configuration changes to instances using the activate command. The activate command activates changes done after starting an edit session by executing the command startEdit.

Apart from activating the changes to Oracle Traffic Director, the activate command also activates changes to other components and managed servers done after starting an edit session. Certain configuration changes cannot be applied dynamically without restarting the instances.

You can activate the configuration changes by using either Fusion Middleware Control or WLST as described in the following topics:

Activate Configuration Changes Using Fusion Middleware Control

To activate configuration changes using the Fusion Middleware Control, do the following:

Log in to Fusion Middleware Control, as described in Graphical User Interface-Fusion Middleware Control.
Click the
Description of the illustration GUID-28CB3784-3AF4-442B-A9E6-789BAEF88797-print.gifbutton just below Weblogic Domain.
The Auto-Commit Mode is enabled by default.
- Enable: Enable Auto-Commit Mode and create a configuration. It displays a information that all changes have been activated.
- Disable: Disable Auto-Commit Mode and create a configuration. It displays a information that changes are pending for activation. Use change center to activate pending changes.

Activate Configuration Changes Using WLST

All commands executed in WLST must be activated using the activate command.

For example, the following command updates all instances of the configuration with the latest configuration settings.

wls:/mydomain/edit !> activate(200000, block='true')
Activating all your changes, this may take a while ...
The edit lock associated with this edit session is released once the activation iscompleted.
Action completed.
wls:/mydomain/edit>

Note:

See Updating Oracle Traffic Director Instances Without Restarting for information about parameters that can be re-configured without restarting Oracle Traffic Director instances.

Modifying an Oracle Traffic Director Configuration

After you create a configuration and create instances from it, you might need to change some of the settings such as log preferences, performance parameters, virtual server listener, origin-server pools, and so on.

Topics

You can modify a configuration by using either Fusion Middleware Control or the WLST as described in the following topics:

Modifying a Configuration Using Fusion Middleware Control

To modify a configuration by using the Fusion Middleware Control, do the following:

Log in to Fusion Middleware Control for Traffic Director, as described in Displaying Fusion Middleware Control.
Click the WebLogic Domain button at the upper left corner of the page.
Select Administration > OTD Configurations.

A list of the available configurations is displayed.
Select the configuration that you want to modify.
In the navigation pane, you can select the following additional categories of settings for the configuration. The parameters relevant to the selected category are displayed on the main pane.
- SSL
  - Schedule and manage CRL-update events. See Update CRLs Automatically.
  - SSL/TLS caching preferences. See SSL/TLS Session Caching.
- Logging
  - Set and change parameters for the server log file-name and location of the log file, log level, date format, and so on.
  - Enable and disable the access log.
  - Set and change parameters for the access log file-name and location of the log file and log format
  - Schedule and manage events to rotate the server and access log files.
  - Configure access-log buffer settings to tune performance. See Managing Logs.
- Advanced Settings
  - Specify general settings: the server user ID, the temporary directory in which the process ID and socket information for the instances of the configuration are stored, and the localization preferences.
  - Configure DNS lookup and cache settings. See Tuning DNS Caching Settings.
  - Create, enable, disable, view, delete events for the configuration. See Controlling Oracle Traffic Director Instances Through Scheduled Events.
  - HTTP: Set and change parameters to tune the performance of the virtual servers defined for the configuration such as, request buffer size, response buffer size, timeout thresholds for the request body and header, thread-pool settings, and keep-alive settings. See Tuning HTTP Request and Response Limits.
  - Monitoring: Enable and disable statistics collection, profiling, and the SNMP subagent. Specify the statistics-collection interval. See Monitoring Oracle Traffic Director Instances.
Specify the parameters that you want to change.

On-screen help and prompts are provided for all of the parameters.

When you change the value in a field or tab out of a text field that you changed, the Save button near the upper right corner of the page is enabled.

At any time, you can discard the changes by clicking the Reset button.
After making the required changes, click Save.
- A message, confirming that the updated configuration was saved, is displayed in the Console Messages pane.
- In addition, the Deployment Pending message is displayed at the top of the main pane. You can either deploy the updated configuration immediately by clicking Deploy Changes, or you can do so later after making further changes as described in Activate Configuration Changes.
Note:
- In the Advanced Settings page, if you change the Temporary Directory value, you should first stop all the instances of the configuration, deploy the changes, and then start the instances.
- If you deploy the changes without stopping the running instances, an error would occur when you attempt to stop the instances later. See Unable to stop instance after changing the temporary directory for details about solving this problem.

Modifying a Configuration Using WLST

WLST provides several commands that you can use to change specific parameters of a configuration.

Table 5-1 WLST Commands for Modifying a Configuration

Task	WLST Commands
Change the configuration properties	`otd_setConfigurationProperties`
Change access-log buffer properties	`otd_setAccessLogBufferProperties` `otd_getAccessLogBufferProperties`
Change caching properties	`otd_setCacheProperties` `otd_getCacheProperties`
Change DNS properties	`otd_setDnsProperties` `otd_getDnsProperties`
Change DNS caching properties	`otd_setDnsCacheProperties` `otd_getDnsCacheProperties`
Change HTTP request properties	`otd_setHttpProperties` `otd_getHttpProperties`
Change keep-alive settings for client connections	`otd_setKeepAliveProperties` `otd_getKeepAliveProperties`
Change error log settings	`otd_setLogProperties` `otd_getLogProperties`
Enable SNMP	`otd_setSnmpProperties` `otd_getSnmpProperties`
Change SSL/TLS session caching properties	`otd_setSslSessionCacheProperties` `otd_getSslSessionCacheProperties`
Change statistics collection properties	`otd_setStatsProperties` `otd_getStatsProperties`
Change TCP thread pool properties	`set-tcp-thread-pool-prop`
Change HTTP thread pool properties	`otd_setHttpThreadPoolProperties` `otd_getHttpThreadPoolProperties`
Change TCP thread pool properties	`otd_setTcpThreadPoolProperties` `otd_getTcpThreadPoolProperties`

For example, the following command changes the log level for the configuration foo to the most verbose (finest) setting, TRACE:32.

props = {}
props['configuration'] = 'foo'
otd_getConfigurationProperties(props)

See WebLogic Scripting Tool Command Reference for Oracle Traffic Director or run the commands with the --help option.

Copying an Oracle Traffic Director Configuration

When you want to create a configuration that is similar to an existing configuration, you can copy the existing configuration and make the required changes later.

Topics

You can copy a configuration by using either Fusion Middleware Control or the WLST as described in the following topics:

Copying a Configuration Using Fusion Middleware Control

To copy a configuration by using the Fusion Middleware Control, do the following:

Log in to Fusion Middleware Control for Traffic Director, as described in Displaying Fusion Middleware Control.
Click the WebLogic Domain button at the upper left corner of the page.
Select Administration > OTD Configurations.

A list of the available configurations is displayed.
Select the configuration that you want to copy.
In the Common Tasks pane, click Duplicate Configuration.
In the resulting dialog box, enter a name for the new configuration, and then click OK

A message is displayed confirming that the configuration was copied.
Click OK.

Copying a Configuration Using WLST

To copy a configuration, run the otd_copyConfiguration command.

For example, the following command copies the configuration foo to a new configuration named foo1.

props = {}
props['source-configuration'] = 'foo'
props['dest-configuration'] = 'bar'
otd_copyConfiguration(props)

Deleting an Oracle Traffic Director Configuration

You can delete configurations that are not required. To delete Oracle Traffic Director configurations, run the otd_deleteConfiguration command.

Topics

You can delete Oracle Traffic Director configurations by using either Fusion Middleware Control or the WLST.

Note:

To delete a configuration that has one or more failover groups, you should first delete the failover groups. See Managing Failover Groups.

Deleting a Configuration Using Fusion Middleware Control

To delete a configuration by using the Fusion Middleware Control, do the following:

Log in to Fusion Middleware Control, as described in Displaying Fusion Middleware Control.
Click the WebLogic Domain button at the upper left corner of the page.
Select Administration > OTD Configurations.
A list of the available configurations is displayed.
Select the configuration that you want to delete.
In the Common Tasks pane, click Delete Configuration.
- If there are no instances of the configuration that you want to delete, a prompt to confirm deletion of the configuration is displayed.
  1. Click OK.
    
    A message is displayed confirming that the configuration was deleted.
  2. Click OK.
- If there are instances of the configuration that you want to delete, a dialog box is displayed listing the administration nodes on which the configuration is deployed. The list also indicates whether the instances are running.
  1. If you want to proceed with the deletion, you can choose to save the log files of the instances by selecting the Save Instance Logs check box.
    
    To confirm deletion, click OK.
    
    A message is displayed confirming that the configuration and its instances were deleted.
  2. Click OK.
  Note:
  
  If you selected the Save Instance Logs check box, the server access and error logs for the instances that were deleted are retained in the INSTANCE_HOME/net-config_name/logs directory.
Click the Delete button corresponding to the configuration that you want to delete.

Deleting a Configuration Using WLST

To delete a configuration, run the otd_deleteConfiguration command, as shown in the following example. You can run the command in online and offline modes.

# Online
props = {}
props['configuration'] = 'foo'
otd_deleteConfiguration(props)

# Offline
readDomain('/export/2110_12c/iplanet/ias/server/work/TD_Linux2.6_DBG.OBJ/domains/otd_domain')
props = {}
props['configuration'] = 'foo'
otd_deleteConfiguration(props)
updateDomain()
closeDomain()