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Posts Tagged "oracle architecture"
Posted
on Apr 26, 2011 in Industry Trends, Offerings, Technical Tips | 0 comments
I have been running Oracle Identity Management 10g with heavy use of 10g SSO capabilities. Much of our web security architecture along with application authentication relies on this infrastructure. What do I do as development begins to shift from OracleAS to WebLogic, and our middleware stack goes from 10g to 11g? We will need to run 10g and 11g in production side-by-side for some period of time.
This is a question many of our customers are asking and it is understandable that there is confusion around this. Oracle hasn’t provided the clearest of answers, and in general, identity management initiatives are not for the faint of heart to tackle. The fact is that 11g identity management has begun a paradigm shift away from the 10g approach. The good news is that customers have options as they inevitably run 10g and 11g together in their environments since identity management solutions span across applications and nobody [I know of] decides to upgrade all of their enterprise applications at once.
In 11g, you have the option of integrating applications (i.e. ADF 11g applications) running on WebLogic with 10g SSO through identity asserters. This approach basically passes in header information to WebLogic that enables it to “trust” a user authenticated via 10g SSO much like it would trust AD or any other form of identity assertion. As you move to an 11g identity management stack, nowhere will you find 10g SSO as you know it. You will need to buy into the OAM (Oracle Access Manager) 11g model, which includes a robust enterprise access management approach in line with 11g applications that rely on J2EE security standards like JAAS.
Posted
on Apr 8, 2011 in Industry Trends, Technical Tips | 0 comments
I had been using VMWare Server 2 for a few years now. It was free and provided extra features that were not present in VMWare Player. Unfortunately I found out that VMWare Server is no longer going to be supported as of June 2011. I needed to make a decision quickly so I could stand up a Linux CentOS VM to run a memory intensive software stack.
For me VMWare Server probably would not have worked anyway because of memory and processor restrictions. I decided to look to 3 different solutions to get me up and running quickly, VMWare Player, VMWare Workstation and Oracle VirtualBox (formerly Sun VirtualBox).
VMWare Player
VMWare Player was included early on because it now allows you to create VMs instead of only running them. It also has increased memory and processors/cores available to a VM. I did however quickly eliminate Player because it lacks essential features including multiple snapshots, cloning and replay.
Snapshots are a must have as I am always installing different operating systems, software and making configuration changes. Some of the changes involve technology I have not worked with before so being able to rollback to a snapshot if something goes wrong has been an invaluable tool. This also allows me to experiment more knowing I can recover to a previous state.
VMWare ESXi
VMWare suggests moving to one of their other products, mainly ESXi or Workstation. ESXi is free and looks to be an exciting product. It basically is your base operating system. It requires a dedicated server with no base OS installed. It also limits the types of hardware it works with, so no you can’t break out your old PC and have it automagicly work with ESXi. I did not have a dedicated box so I chose to look at VMWare Workstation.
VMWare Workstation
VMWare Workstation had all of the functionality I was looking for including snapshots, cloning and replay. It also had good memory (32g), processor (8) and core (8 per processor) support. I downloaded and installed Version 7. I created a Linux CentOS VM. The install was overly easy with “Easy Install” and the OS booted up in no time. The user interface for workstation is intuitive and provides easy configuration. I installed VMWare tools and changed my display resolution. Next up, I started my software stack taking snapshots along the way. The branching snapshot functionality was easy and worked well. All in all Workstation was quick and easy.
VirtualBox
Next I looked at VirtualBox 4. VirtualBox was started under Sun as an open source product. It is obviously now an Oracle product and still open source. VirtualBox has come a long way and provides many features that are present in VMWare Workstation. Installation of CentOS was only a bit more of a task then VMWare Easy Install. VirtualBox’s UI was fairly simple and I liked the layout with the popout VM windows. The initial install did not have have a CD/DVD ROM drive installed so installing VirtualBox Guest Additions (like VMWare Tools) did not work. Not a big deal, just add a CD drive.
The VirtualBox VM OS window played funny tricks with my mouse as I tried to move it in and out of the window. I am also not quite clear on how you increase the size of the virtual hard drive after creation. Say you need more hard drive space on a certain drive or partition how do you do that in VirtualBox? I see you can add another virtual hard drive but no way to increase the existing drives size. I have increased the drive size for a VMWare Workstation Linux VM drive and then used a repartition tool to allocate the extra space.
My final decision was to go with VMWare Workstation. This was a result of Workstation’s features, support and maturity of the product. I also chose it because it has a broad base of use, it’s ease of sharing VMs. It has ACE, better snapshot functionality, replay, integration with Eclipse, encryption and 3D video. Workstation 7.1 does retail for $189 right now, although I did receive a discount on it. I have started to Google “coupon” for everything I buy now to see if there are any discounts out there on the web. I did this for Workstation and received 30% off. I did really like Virtual Box’s speed and ease of use. I will be spending more time with this free product soon.
I have gone back and forth with free and commercial software, they both have their place in my opinion. I have used Eclipse for years and love it. However, I believe that nothing is really ever free. You have to sacrifice some functionality, support and reliability for products that are free. Even with Eclipse, I ended up moving to the new-at-the-time MyEclipse commercial product because I liked some of the extra functionality and tooling it provided. This was a commercial product with a free product as its base! Everything has its place and obviously if you don’t have the cash then free is the way to go. It gives an entire population of our community access to tools. I don’t know where I would be with out these free products.
This is just a quick look at a few of the Virtual Machine technologies out there today. In the future I am interested in looking at Oracle VM and Linux Xen. What are your opinions of Virtual Machines?
Posted
on Mar 21, 2011 in Technical Tips | 0 comments
There could be a number of reasons you want to verify the value of the REMOTE_USER variable in an app you are running in WebLogic. A quick way to check is by dropping in a JSP file that prints the value:
<html>
<body>
REMOTE_USER: <%= request.getRemoteUser() %>
</body>
</html>
Posted
on Mar 21, 2011 in Technical Tips | 0 comments
There are a couple of different ways you can verify you are running Oracle Application Server 10.1.2.3. Perhaps the simplest is to navigate to the EM Consile about page typically found at:
http://[domain]:18101/emd/console/aboutApplication
Another option is to use oPatch by running the following command:
[ORACLE_HOME]/opatch/opatch lsinventory -detail
Then, navigate to [ORACLE_HOME]/.patch_storage and look for the latest log file. You will have a full listing of products installed in your ORACLE_HOME.
If you have just upgraded Oracle Portal to 10.1.4.2 and want to verify its version as well, you can simply navigate to Portal Administer tab > Global Settings.
Posted
on Mar 3, 2011 in Technical Tips | 0 comments
This walkthrough provides step-by-step screens for the installation of a Nagios XI Agent installation. The install was performed in Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition (32-bit). You will notice that this is downloading and installing NSClient++.
Free Download
Please complete the following for access to the free download.
Posted
on Mar 3, 2011 in Technical Tips | 0 comments
For Fusion Middleware Control to be able to manage and monitor Oracle HTTP Server instances, they must be registered with the domain. To do this, you must register Oracle HTTP Server with Oracle WebLogic Server using the following command:
WEBHOST1> cd ORACLE_INSTANCE/bin
WEBHOST1> ./opmnctl registerinstance -adminHost -adminPort 7001 -adminUsername weblogic
Posted
on Feb 22, 2011 in Industry Trends, Technical Tips | 0 comments
I was slightly excited about WebCenter 11g PS3′s ability to run on IBM WebSphere — not because I run WebSphere, but because it could open the doors for WebCenter at places that run an IBM infrastructure. I was disappointed to find that I couldn’t even download the WebSphere trial from IBM’s site (see the accompanying video). Ironically, the [WebSphere] server that is serving the download produces an Internet Server 500 error. Yes, I verified that others also received the error. I’ll stick with WebLogic for now.
Posted
on Feb 21, 2011 in Business Strategy, Industry Trends, Offerings, Technical Tips | 0 comments
You are not alone. Many organizations are going through the same analysis and process. There are many possible options/variables to consider, but “should I roll-my-own custom site vs. leverage [open-source] products?” is one of the most common questions to answer today when considering a new web project. Following is a quick list of reasons you might want to consider choosing one over the other.
Custom-Built Solution
- Complete Flexibility: Build a relevant solution without any, or many, compromises — whatever compromises you do make will likely be based on time and money as opposed to wrestling the wisdom of someone else’s architectural choices
- Smaller Footprint: Along the same lines, only write code and maintain what is vital to your specific needs
Liferay
- Why build that?: Liferay handles aspects of the implementation that you simply do not want to have to build and maintain on your own unless you have a compelling reason to do so
- authentication options – pre-built integration with LDAP and other technologies like CAS
- security – roles-based permissions model
- technology architecture (db abstraction, UI design, templating, page structure, etc.) – Liferay has already thought through flexible approach
- Learning curve: though there is a learning curve to Liferay (or any other product), it you can actually find external resources who understand Liferay, but anyone outside the organization will need time to pick up on all the nuances of your custom code/architecture
- Still Custom: We have built enterprise web applications in portal environment where one would have to dig a bit to determine a portal framework was used. You can still build custom features and drop in standards-based portlets where you need in a solution like Liferay’s. Also, remember, you have access to the source code, unlike other products on the market.
Click here to learn more
There are certain use cases where I generally lean to one side more than the other. In cases where Liferay’s features related to page structure, templating, collaboration, and security are useful, I tend to go in that direction. For scenarios where I know my user community and stakeholders have very specific workflow and UI needs for a web-based application where requirements are clear, I consider custom code more carefully.
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