Learn About Migrating to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

Why Migrate to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

Oracle encourages you to migrate your existing cloud resources from Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic regions. You can gain several advantages by doing so.

In Oracle Cloud, you provision resources in specific regions, which are localized to geographic locations. A region supports either the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic or Oracle Cloud Infrastructure platform.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is Oracle's more modern infrastructure platform that's based on the latest cloud technologies and standards. It typically provides better performance than Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure also has more predictable pricing and lower costs in terms of Oracle Compute Units (OCPUs) per hour. Most importantly, Oracle continues to invest in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, including the addition of new regions, services, and features. See Data Regions for Platform and Infrastructure Services.

You can benefit from these additional administrative features in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure when you migrate your cloud resources from Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic:

Organize cloud resources into a hierarchy of logical compartments.
Create fine-grained access policies for each compartment.

About the Migration Scope

Before you migrate your existing Oracle Java Cloud Service instances to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, ensure that the service instance meets the prerequisites for the migration.

Oracle does not currently support the migration of Oracle Java Cloud Service instances that meet any of these conditions:

Oracle Fusion Middleware products and applications are deployed to the service instance.
Custom applications that use the Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF), Oracle Platform Security Services (OPSS), or Oracle Web Services Manager (OWSM) are deployed to the service instance.
Java Message Service (JMS) resources are deployed to the service instance.
The service instance includes multiple domain partitions.
The service instance is configured to use Oracle Identity Cloud Service for authentication.
The service instance includes an Oracle-managed or customer-managed load balancer.

This guide does not include detailed procedures on the configuration of basic Oracle Cloud Infrastructure security, network and storage resources that might be required to support your Oracle Java Cloud Service instance. Instead, this guide provides references to the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure documentation as appropriate.

Most service instances connect to one or more databases in order to access your application schemas. This guide does not include the detailed procedure for migrating these application databases from Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. See Migrate a single-instance database from Oracle Database Cloud Service to a Virtual Machine DB System.

This guide does not include detailed procedures on the migration of Oracle WebLogic Server users, groups, roles, or policies from the source instance to the target instance. This includes users and groups that are defined in the default WebLogic Server authentication provider (embedded LDAP), as well as users and groups that exist in an external identity provider like an LDAP server. Refer to the migration (export and import) capabilities of your identity provider.

About Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

Get familiar with basic Oracle Cloud Infrastructure security, network, and storage concepts, compared to their equivalent concepts in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic.

Cloud resources in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure are created in logical compartments. You also create fine-grained policies to control access to the resources within a compartment.

You create instances within an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure region. You also specify an availability domain (AD), if supported in the selected region. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic does not use availability domains.

A virtual cloud network (VCN) is comprised of one or more subnets, and an instance is assigned to a specific subnet. In Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic, you assign instances to IP networks or the shared network. Typically, you create one subnet for the shared network, and create a separate subnet for each IP network in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic. Note that unlike Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure does not allow you to reserve IP addresses for platform services.

A subnet's security lists permit and block traffic to and from specific IP addresses and ports. In Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic, an instance's access rules provide similar capabilities, although security lists are configured at the subnet level.

Instances can communicate with resources outside of Oracle Cloud by using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect, which provides a fast, dedicated connection to your on-premises network. This service is equivalent to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect Classic. Alternatively, use IPSec VPN in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure as a replacement for VPN as a Service (VPNaaS) or Corente in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic.

A bucket in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage can be used to store files and share them with multiple instances. A user's generated authentication token (auth token) is required to access the bucket. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage Classic provides the same service in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic, but does not use auth tokens.

To learn more, see Key Concepts and Terminology in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure documentation.

In Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic, you can create rules that automatically scale an instance. You must scale instances in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure manually.

In Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic, you can create an instance that uses Oracle Identity Cloud Service for authentication. This configuration is not currently available in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

About Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Users and Groups

Use the Identity and Access Management (IAM) system in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to manage users, groups, and policies.

For example, the following Oracle Cloud Infrastructure policy grants members of the group MyGroup all privileges to all resources in the compartment MyCompartment:

Allow group MyGroup to manage all-resources in compartment MyCompartment

By default, this system is also configured to use Oracle Identity Cloud Service as a federated identity provider. Therefore, when you define policies in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, you can reuse existing users and groups in Oracle Identity Cloud Service. You can either add users to a new group in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or map an existing Oracle Identity Cloud Service group to an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure group.

While policies control access to services in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, administrator roles control access to platform services that are found only on the My Services Dashboard. Assign Oracle Identity Cloud Service users and groups to administrator roles in order to grant them access to services that are not found in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Common Policies in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure documentation
Federating with Oracle Identity Cloud Service in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure documentation
Create a Service Administrator in Getting Started with Oracle Cloud

About the Migration Task Flow

Get an overview of the process that you use to migrate your existing Oracle Java Cloud Service instances to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

The following diagram shows the migration topology for a typical Oracle Java Cloud Service instance.

Description of jcs_diagram_migrate_oci.png follows

Description of the illustration jcs_diagram_migrate_oci.png

At a high level, the migration process is comprised of these tasks:

Prepare for the migration and perform any prerequisite tasks in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
Create the target Oracle Java Cloud Service in an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure region.
Use Oracle Data Guard to migrate any application databases in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic regions to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Database.
Use the Oracle WebLogic Server Deploy Tooling to discover and export the domain configuration, applications and other supporting files from your source Oracle Java Cloud Service instance.
Use the Oracle WebLogic Server Deploy Tooling to update the domain configuration on your target Oracle Java Cloud Service instance and to deploy your applications.
Test your applications on the target instance, and perform any other post-migration tasks.

About the Migration Tooling

You can use the Oracle WebLogic Server Deploy Tooling software to automate many of the tasks involved in migrating an Oracle Java Cloud Service instance to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Oracle WebLogic Server Deploy Tooling is an open-source project. It provides scripts that enable you to discover and export the configuration and application files from one Oracle WebLogic Server domain, and then import the configuration and applications into another existing domain.

Oracle WebLogic Server Deploy Tooling exports a domain as a YAML file, which is referred to as the metadata model. It supports a placeholder syntax to dynamically insert variables from an external file into the model file. For example, you can define your Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) or database passwords as variables in an external file.

When updating a domain, the YAML metadata model needs to describe only the resources that you want to add or update. For example, if a data source that is defined in the model is already created in the target domain, the tool does not try to recreate the data source. Instead, the tool updates the data source if the model description is different than the existing data source configuration. Similarly, if an application is already deployed, the tool compares the binaries and determines whether the application needs to be redeployed.

To learn more, see the Oracle WebLogic Server Deploy Tooling project on GitHub.