SOA Architecture

SOA Architecture

Source:Oracle Documentation

http://tahiti.oracle.com


Oracle SOA Suite is a complete set of service infrastructure components for creating,deploying and managing services. Oracle SOA Suites enables services to be created,managed, and orchestrated into composite applications and business processes.

Additionally you can adopt it incrementally on a project by project basis and still benefit from the common security,management,deployment architecture and development tools that you get out of box.

Oracle SOA Suite is a standard-based best-of-breed technology suite that consists of the following

1) Integrated Service Environment (ISE) to develop services
2) Oracle BPEL Process Manager to orchestrate services into business processes
3) ESB to connect exisiting IT systems and business partners as a set of services
4) Oracle Business Rules for dynamic decisions at runtime that can be managed by business users or business analysis.
5) OracleAS Integration Business Activity Monitoring to monitor services and disparte events and provide real-time visibility into the state of the enterprise,business processes,people and systems
6) Oracle web services manager to secure and manage authentication,authrization,and encryption policies on services that is separate from you service logic.
7) UDDI registry to discover and manage the lifecycle of web services.
8) Oracle Application server 10g Release (10.1.3) to provide a complete Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) 1.4-compliant for your J2EE applications.


In my next post you will learn how to setup a SOA applicaiton which includes installation of SOA Suites.

Version Info - Oracle Applicaton Server ,Fusion Middleware and Collaboration Suite

Version information of Oracle Applicaton Server ,Fusion Middleware and Collaboration Suite. I will focus on latest versions in my blog. You can find the documentation on http://tahiti.oracle.com.


Oracle Applicaton Server and Fusion Middleware:

Oracle 9i AS (Release 9.0.2)

Oracle Application Server 10g(Release 9.0.4)

Oracle Application Server 10g (Release 10.1.2)

Oracle Application Server 10g (Release 10.1.3)

Oracle Identity Management 10g (Release 10.1.4)

Oracle Collaboration Suite:

Oracle Collaboration Suite Release 10g (10.1.2)

Oracle9 Collaboration Suite Release 9.0.4.

Oracle9 Collaboration Suite Release 9.0.3.

Troubleshooting the Oracle Cluster Registry

In this post, you will come to know about Troubeshooting the OCR.

Topics:
a)OCRCHECK Utility
b)Resolution of common problems with OCR

a)OCRCHECK Utility:

- displays the data block format version used by the OCR.
- OCR free and used space.
- the ID used by OCR and the locaiton where you configured the OCR.
- Verify the integrity of each block. It calculates for all data blocks in the OCR's.
- It return the individual status each OCR's and overall OCR integrity check.

OCRCHECK utility log file location:

$CRS_HOME/log/hostname/client/orcheck_nnnnn.log

Note:nnnnn is the process ID of the operating session that issued the ocrcheck command

b)Resolving Common Oracle Cluster Registry Problems

Ref Oracle Clusterware Documentation: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/rac.102/b28759/adminoc.htm#BEJIEABC

Administer the Oracle Cluster Registry

The OCR contains information about the cluster node list, which instances are running on which nodes, and information about Oracle Clusterware resource profiles for applications that have been modified to be managed by Oracle Clusterware.

In this post, I am going to discuss about how to Administer the OCR:

Topics:
a)Adding an OCR Location
b)Replacing an OCR
c)Repairing an Oracle Cluster Registry Configuration on a Local Node
d)Removing an Oracle Cluster Registry

Note:ocrconfig command cannot modify OCR configuration information for nodes that are shut down or for nodes on which Oracle Clusterware is not running. So, you should avoid shutting down nodes while modifying the OCR using the ocrconfig command.


a)Adding an OCR Location

OCR location can be added after upgrade or after Installation of RAC. Oracle RAC environment do not support more then two OCR's (Primary and Secondary). In your enviornment if the the OCR is already mirror you do not require to add an OCR location. It is important to note that if you opted for normal redundancy instead of external redudancy,Oracle Clustware can manage two OCR's automatically.

Target location for additional OCR can be a desitnation_file or a disk.

ocrconfig -replace ocr destination_file
ocrconfig -replace ocr disk

To add a mirror OCR location

ocrconfig -replace ocrmirror destination_file
ocrconfig -replace ocrmirror disk

Note: Use above command as root user.

b)Replacing an OCR: You can change the location of an existing OCR or change the location of failed OCR to the location of working one. Follow the below steps as long as OCR file remains online.

1. verify that a copy of the OCR other than the one you are going to replace is online:

ocrcheck

Note:The OCR that you are replacing can be either online or offline

2. Verfiy if the Oracle clusteware is running on the node where the replace operatoin will be performed.

crsctl check crs

3. Replace the OCR (using destination_file or disk)

ocrconfig -replace ocr destination_file
ocrconfig -replace ocr disk

4. To replace an OCR mirror location (using destination_file or disk)

5. To let that node rejoin the cluster after the node is restarted where the node was shutdown/stopped.

ocrconfig -repair

c)Repairing an Oracle Cluster Registry Configuration on a Local Node

To repair an OCR configuration on the node on which you have stopped the Oracle Clusterware daemon.


ocrconfig –repair ocrmirror device_name

Note:Node that was shut down while you were adding, replacing, or removing an OCR.You cannot perform this operation on a node on which the Oracle Clusterware daemon is running.This operation changes the OCR configuration only on the node from which you run this command.

d)Removing an Oracle Cluster Registry

Do not perform this OCR removal procedure unless there is at least one active OCR online

1. To ensure that at least one OCR other than the OCR that you are removing is online

ocrcheck
2. To remove one copy of the OCR

ocrconfig -replace ocr

Note: Run the above command on any node in the cluster.It updates the OCR configuration on all the nodes on which Oracle Clusterware is running.

Oracle 10gR2 - Oracle Clusteware World

Source: Oracle Clusteware documentation (http://tahiti.oracle.com)


Oracle Clusterware Configuration

Note:1)Oracle Clusterware supports up to 100 nodes in a cluster on configurations running Oracle Database 10g Release 2 and later releases
2)Cluster-aware storage may also be referred to as a multihost device.

Terms used in this post:

RAC: Real Application Clusters
OCR: Oracle Cluster Registry
CRS: Cluster Ready Service

Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) uses Oracle Clusterware as the infrastructure that binds together multiple nodes that then operate as a single server. Oracle Clusterware is a portable cluster management solution that is integrated with Oracle Database. In an Oracle RAC environment, Oracle Clusterware monitors all Oracle components (such as instances and Listeners). If a failure occurs, Oracle Clusterware automatically attempts to restart the failed component and also redirects operations to a surviving component.

Oracle Clusterware includes two important components: the voting disk and the OCR. The voting disk is a file that manages information about node membership, and the OCR is a file that manages cluster and Oracle RAC database configuration information.The Oracle Clusterware installation process creates the voting disk and the OCR on shared storage

Oracle Clusterware processes on Linux and UNIX systems include the following:

crsd—Performs high availability recovery and management operations such as maintaining the OCR and managing application resources. This process runs as LocalSystem. This process restarts automatically upon failure.

evmd—Event manager daemon. This process also starts the racgevt process to manage FAN server callouts.

ocssd—Manages cluster node membership and runs as the oracle user; failure of this process results in a node restart.

oprocd—Process monitor for the cluster. Note that this process only appears on platforms that do not use third-party vendor clusterware with Oracle Clusterware.


When to Backup up Voting Disks:

1) After Installation
2) After adding nodes to or deleting nodes from the cluster
3) After performing voting disk add or delete operations

Syntax to backing up Voting Disk using dd command:

dd if=voting_disk_name of=backup_file_name

Use device name when the voting disk is reside on raw partition

dd if=/dev/sde1 of=/tmp/voting.dmp

Note: There is no need to stop CRS (dameon - crsd.bin) before taking the backup of Voting Disk.

Voting Disk Recovery from Backup:

dd if=backup_file_name of=Active_voting_disk_name

Add and Remove Voting Disk:

You can dynamically perform add and removal of Voting Disk after installation of RAC.

As a root user add a Voting Disk:

crsctl add css votedisk path

As a root user remove a Voting Disk:

crsctl delete css votedisk path

Note:a)where path is the fully qualified path for the additional voting disk.
b)-force option should not be used when the cluster node is active. -force option to modify the voting disk when either of these commands when the Oracle clusteware dameon is not active (crsd.bin).
c)Oracle Clusterware automatically creates OCR backups every 4 hours. At any one time, Oracle Clusterware always retains the latest 3 backup copies of the OCR that are 4 hours old, 1 day old, and 1 week old. You can use other backup software to keep a copy of OCR backup generated automatically on a different device at least once a daily.


Viewing Available OCR Backups:

To check the most recent backup on any node of cluster:

ocrconfig -showbackup


Backing Up the OCR

ocrconfig tool to make copies of the automatically created backup files at least once a day. You should be loggin as root to use ocrconfig tool.


OCR contents export to a file in case of configuration changes causes erros:

ocrconfig -export backup_file_name

Recovering the OCR

Before you proceed with recovering the OCR you should ensure that OCR is unavailable.

There are two methods for recovering the OCR.

a) automatically generated OCR file copies.
b) manually created OCR export files.

Ensure that the OCR is unavailable:

ocrcheck

The above command should display the result as 'Device/File integrity check succeeded' for atleast one copy of OCR . If not then your primary and the OCR mirror have failed. The only option left is to resotre from the backup.

a)Restoring the OCR (First method mentioned above):

1.Check if the backup is available

# ocrconfig -showbackup

2. Verify the contents of OCR backup

ocrdump -backupfile backup_file_name
3. Stop the clustware on all RAC nodes (as root)

crsctl stop crs ( run this command on all RAC nodes as root)
4. Restore from the OCR backup (as root0

ocrconfig -restore backup_file_name

5. Start the Oracle clusterware after restore

# crsctl start crs (run this command on all RAC nodes as root)

6. verify the OCR integrity after restore

$ cluvfy comp ocr -n all [-verbose]
Note: -n all argument retrieves a list of all the cluster nodes that are configured as part of your cluster.

b)Recovering the OCR (Second Method mentioned above)

1. Keep the OCR export file to a accessible directory.

ocrconfig -export

2. Stop the Oracle Clusterware

crsctl stop crs (run this command on all nodes of cluster as root)

3. Import the contents from backup OCR export file

ocrconfig -import export_file_name

4. Start the Oracle Clusterware

crsctl start crs (run this command on all nodes of cluster as root)

5. Verify OCR Integrity after restore

cluvfy comp ocr -n all [-verbose]
Note: a)-n all argument retrieves a list of all the cluster nodes that are configured as part of your cluster.
b)You cannot use the ocrconfig command to import an OCR backup file

OracleAS Infrastructure Installation Types

Source: Oracle Documentations

When you install the infrastructure, the installer asks if you want to install the Oracle Identity Management components, OracleAS Metadata Repository, or both. These are the installation types for the OracleAS Infrastructure:

Oracle Identity Management and OracleAS Metadata Repository

Oracle Identity Management

OracleAS Metadata Repository

Special Note:In addition to the components listed below, when you install the OracleAS Infrastructure, you also get the Oracle HTTP Server, Oracle Containers for J2EE, and Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g components. These components are always installed and configured, regardless of which installation type you selected.


OracleAS Infrastructure Components

1. Oracle Identity Management components

These components provide directory, security, and user management functionality. Some of these components have schemas in the OracleAS Metadata Repository.

- Oracle Internet Directory
- OracleAS Single Sign-On
- Oracle Delegated Administration Services
- Oracle Directory Integration Platform
- OracleAS Certificate Authority


2. OracleAS Metadata Repository

OracleAS Metadata Repository is a collection of schemas used by other Oracle Application Server components. The schemas can be grouped into these categories:

- Product metadata :These schemas are used by middle-tier components, such as OracleAS Portal and OracleAS Wireless.

- Oracle Identity Management metadata :These schemas are used by Oracle Identity Management components, such as Oracle Internet Directory, OracleAS Single Sign-On, and OCA.

- Management metadata:These schemas are used by components such as DCM.

Note:You can install the OracleAS Metadata Repository on one computer, and the Oracle Identity Management components on another computer. Within the Oracle Identity Management option, you can install Oracle Identity Management components over multiple computers as well.

These options also enable you to create a new database or use an existing database for the OracleAS Metadata Repository. Selecting either the "OracleAS Metadata Repository" or the "OracleAS Metadata Repository and Oracle Identity Management" option causes the installer to create a new database and populate it with the OracleAS Metadata Repository.


Infrastruture Installation Order:

If you plan to install both OracleAS Metadata Repository and Oracle Identity Management components on the same computer, select the "Oracle Identity Management and OracleAS Metadata Repository" option. The installer installs the components in the proper order.

You need to follow the order to install the infrastructure components on separate computers:


1. First Step to install OracleAS Metadata Repository

Installer will create a new database and populate it with the OracleAS Metadata Repository, or run the Oracle Application Server Repository Creation Assistant to install the OracleAS Metadata Repository in an existing database.


2. Second step to install Oracle Identity Management components

The installer prompts you to enter the connect information for the OracleAS Metadata Repository database and registers the OracleAS Metadata Repository with the newly created Oracle Internet Directory.

Ref Step by step Guide of "Installing Oracle Identity Management Components Only (Including Oracle Internet Directory)" in my earlier post.

Overview Shared Filesystems - Solutions Developed by Oracle

In this post I wanted to discuss few features about shared filesystems developed by Oracle as a solution to customers in a single plate.

OCFS has a GUI tool OCFSTOOL. Integrate well with RAC.Install 'fileutils-4.1-4.2-i386.rpm' for new cp and dd, even if on is using ASM can still use OCFS for trace files.

OCFS v1

-Open source project developed and maintained by Oracle
-Version 1 available for Windows and Linux
-Separate code tree for Windows and Linux
-A true cluster filesystem
-Only supports Oracle datafiles, logfiles, archive log files, RMAN backups
-Do not use as a general purpose filesystem!

OCFS v2

-Can be used a general purpose shared filesystem
-Is intended for shared operating system files and third party cluster apps
-Included in the mainstream Linux distributions

ASM

Repaclement for CFS (datafile,control and log files).Also useful for Non-RAC databases. A new instance type - ASM is introduces in 10g. ASM instance needs to start first to start any node and has no data dictionary.

-Disk Addition—Adding a disk becomes very easy. No downtime is required and file extents are redistributed automatically.
-I/O Distribution—I/O is spread over all the available disks automatically, without manual intervention, reducing chances of a hot spot.
-Stripe Width—Striping can be fine grained as in Redo Log Files (128K for faster transfer rate) and coarse for datafiles (1MB for transfer of a large number of blocks at one time).
-Buffering—The ASM filesystem is not buffered, making it direct I/O capable by design.
-Kernelized Asynch I/O—There is no special setup necessary to enable kernelized asynchronous I/O, without using raw or third-party filesystems such as Veritas Quick I/O.
-Mirroring—Software mirroring can be set up easily, if hardware mirroring is not available.


Third party solutions supported by Oracle:

Veritas (Supported by Oracle for Solaris, HP-UX, AIX)
CFS (True64) Supported by Oracle
GPFS (AIX) Supported by Oracle
Polyserve (Vendor support Linux, Windows)
Sistina (Vendor support - Linux)

Steps to create the OCR and voting disk on raw devices

When installing Oracle CRS, OUI will request the location of the OCR and voting disk. List the appropriate disk names as requested.

Oracle Database Release Notes 10gR2 for Linux based systems.

Prior to installing Oracle CRS, the raw devices that will keep the OCR and voting disk files, must be defined and initialized using the following procedure.

1. Determine which disk devices will be used store the OCR and voting disk file.

2. Execute cat /proc/partitions command on all nodes to verify that the selected devices are available on nodes of the cluster.

3. Run fdisk command to create and label a 200Mb partition for the OCR device and a 100 Mb partition for voting disk.

4. Re-run cat /proc/partitions to verify that the partitions are available.

$ cat /proc/partitions

For example, the /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdc1 will be used for OCR and for voting disk; respectively.

5. Initialize the devices using dd.
OCR disk device
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb1 bs=1M count=1
Voting disk
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc1 bs=1M count=1

6. On Linux systems, complete the following steps to bind the disk devices to raw
devices:

a. To determine what raw devices are already bound to other devices, enter the
following command:
/usr/sbin/raw -qa

Raw devices have device names in the form /dev/raw/rawn, where n is a
number that identifies the raw device.

b. Open the /etc/sysconfig/rawdevices file in any text editor and add a
line similar to the following for each device that you want to use for the voting and OCR disks. Note, Specify an unused raw device for each disk device.
/dev/raw/rawn /dev/sdb1
/dev/raw/rawn /dev/sdc1

c. For each raw device that you specified in the rawdevices file, enter commands similar to the following to set the owner, group, and permissions on the device file.

The OCR device must set initially to 660 and root:dba. The root.sh script will to reset to the appropriate permissions.
OCR
chown root:dba /dev/raw/rawn
chmod 660 /dev/raw/rawn

Voting disk
chown oracle:dba /dev/raw/rawn
chmod 660 /dev/raw/rawn

d. To bind the disk devices to the raw devices, enter the following command:
/sbin/service rawdevices restart
The system automatically binds the devices listed in the rawdevices file
when it reboots.

Note: At the time of installing Oracle CRS, OUI will request the location of the OCR and voting disk. I am going to cover this with screen-shot in my next post which include installtion of Oracle Enterpises Linux on VMWARE.

Collections of 10gR2 RAC Commands

Manual Cluster Start

Execute as user root
/etc/init.d/init.crs start
/etc/init.d/init.crsd start (10.1.0.3 and below)
init q

Manual Cluster Stop

Execute as user root
/etc/init.d/init.crs stop

To disable CRS
/etc/init.d/init.crs disable

Resource start and stop (10gR2)

The crs_start and crs_stop command can be used to start and stop CRS managed resources
$ crs_start resource-name -all (all resource)
$ crs_stop resource-name -all (all resource)
Does not stop the clusterware!

cluster commands

crs_relocate – change where resource is active
crs_stat – status queries
crs_start resource –all Start resources (10R2)
crs_stop resource –all Stop resources (10gR2)


Server Control Commands

srvctl start database –d database-name
srvctl stop database –d database-name
srvctl start asm –n node-name
srvctl stop asm –n node-name
srvctl start nodeapps –n node-name
srvctl stop nodeapps – n node-name

CLEAN removal of failed Oracle10gRAC R2 CRS installation on Linux systems

I saw people having difficulty in cleaning up failed CRS configuration. I just thought to write about it based on my practical experience.

Oracle, 10g RAC, provided its own cluster-ware stack called CRS. The main file components of CRS are the Oracle Cluster Repository (OCR) and the Voting Disk. Due to the nature of these files, they must be placed on shared devices; either on cluster filesystems or shared raw devices.

Step by Step Instructions on How to perform CLEAN removal of failed Oracle10gRAC R2 CRS installation on Linux systems

Follow these steps in the order given. Failure to follow may cause problems during subsequent CRS installation attempts.
1. Login as Root on node 1.
2. # /etc/init.d/init.crs disable
3. # /etc/init.d/init.crs stop
4. Remove *crs*, *css* and *evm* entries from /etc/inittab file.
5. # rm –rf /etc/init.d/*crs*
6. # rm –rf /etc/init.d/*css*
7. # rm –rf /etc/init.d/*evm*
8. rm –f /etc/oraInst.loc file.
9. #Rm –rf /etc/oracle direcotry.
10. Remove all oracle instance related entries from /etc/oratab file.
11. Remove oraInventory and CRS Home. Anything under Oracle_Base should be removed.
12. # chown oracle:dba /dev/raw/raw[n]
13. REBOOT
14. Re-initialize all raw devices if using ASM otherwise make sure OCFS came back up(/etc/fstab file should be updated for auto mount of OFCS). For raw devices use “ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/raw/raw[n] bs=1M count=10” to initialize.

Follow the same sequence on each node. Once you’re done rebooting all other nodes, you are at a clean, fresh starting point for a new CRS installation.

Oracle Applicaton Server 10g

I am blessed with a baby girl. I stopped writing on my blog due to busy schedule in office and home. I will write topic in future whenever i will get the time. I know it requires more time and effort to write a blog. But looking other blogs of my friends and IT professional. I will keep updating this blog.

Today I am going to discuss about Oracle Applicaton Server 10g.

Ref to Oracle Documents "Oracle Applicaton 10g is an integrated, standard-Based software platform that allows orgnizations of all sizes to be more responsive to changing business requirements. It provides all the middleware services you need to deploy and manage applications and web services,deliver personalized applications through enterprise portals and mobile devices,provide real-time business intelligence,integrate applications, and automate busisness processes".
Solution Areas:

J2EE & Web Services:

Oracle HTTP Server
OracleAS Container for J2EE
Oracle AS TopLink
OracleAS Web Services
OracleAS Forms Services
OracleAS Developer Kits

Portal:

OracleAS Portal


Wireless:

OracleAS Wireless

Caching:

OracleAS Web Cache
OracelAS Java Object Cache

Management & Security

Oracle Enterprise Manager
Oracle Identity Management

Content Managment

Oracle Content Management SDK

High Availability

OracleAS High Avaialbility

eBusiness Integration

OracleAS Integration
Oracle Workflow

Business Intelligence

OracleAS Reports Services
OracleAS Discovrer
OracleAS Personalization