WebLogic domain migration made easy by WLST

Huge migrations will be done in short time with wise WLST tricks. Now every one thinking about visualization of Cloud computing, that impacts on Oracle FMW components and also on WebLogic components. When there is hundreds of servers in build and deploy for a business there must be best practices that includes WLST automation with templatizing is must. This strategy will save lot of time, which consumes for configuring each system resource, user-defined resource on the WebLogic domain. The customized WebLogic domain templates can be used for the following situations:

This new feature is introduced from WebLogic 9.x onwards, we have wonderful options in WLST.
1. Default template to customized domain template
2. Existing Domain to customized domain template then domain
3. Domain Template from WebLogic 9.x to WebLogic 10.x domain and also supports this from WebLogic 10.x to WebLogic 11g migration process.
4. WebLogic Domain migrations from one machine to another

WebLogic Domain migration with WLST

Let me explain my current experiment on creating new WebLogic 11g Domain from existing WebLogic 9.2 domain which we did successfully in UAT, staging and finally in live too. The basic steps I followed in offline are as :
1. creating template: readDomain() from the existing WebLogic 9.2 and create a domain template with writeTemplate().
2. configuring new domain: go to the destination machine and readTemplate(), writeDomain()
3. updating for new domain: readDomain() and then modify the ListenAddress, ListenPort, security settings, and Log details for the domain
4. after making all required changes use updateDomain()


Big Advantage of Domain Templates using WLST

This will reduce the pain of creating
1. DataSource
3. Multi DataSource
4. JMS module
5. Persistence store
6. Start scripts
7. Domain environment automatically updated

Configure new domain templates

A domain configured from an existing development server to new machine. all the domain files are hoped to new machine, but certain parameters dependent on the local configurations. Such as listen address for the admin server, here is the need of WLST in offline mode to rectify the current environment. readDomain() is the WLST command that gives the access to current configuration and reproduce that domain template with writeTemplate().

Source machine:

readDomain('/home/domains/olddomain')
writeTemplate('/home/templatepath/olddomain.jar')
closeDomain()

Configuring new Domain on migrating machine

Now you can copy this template olddomain.jar file to destination machine and copy to the destination location. Execute following offline command sequence as follows:

createDomain('/olddoamin/path/template.jar’,’domainPath’,’user’, ‘passwd’)

Extending a Domain with WLST

To an existing domain you can change the few parameters regularly this you can give in a separate properties file. Create a simple script when you run the WLST script it will impacted in the new domain for extending with new properties this could be a best practice. For further updates you need to update one of the parameter that will make all the environment scripts updated for this new domain with new environment, So don't forget to update one of these following values:

readTemplate('/home/templatepath/olddomain.jar')
writeDomain('/home/domains/newdomain')
closeTemplate()
readDomain('/home/domains/newdomain')
ls()
cd('Server')
ls()
cd('AdminServer')
set('ListenAddress','hostname.com')
set('ListenPort',10300) # Changing Admin Server ListenPort
set('Name','newAdmin') # Changing Admin server name

cd('/Server/newAdmin/Log/newAdmin')
set('FileName','/home/instances/newAdmin/logs/newAdmin.log')
updateDomain()
closeDomain()

Change to Production Mode
One of the situation that where you start working on developing complete platform designing for a Weblogic based environment such as SOA or WebCenter or some other. You might get situation where you need to change development mode to production mode. If your pre-production environtment is made exaactly simula of production then the only one thing you need to change that is Production Mode. This Production mode will give more security than development mode for WebLogic domain. Using WLST you can do this very easy to modify this

connect(adminUser,adminPassword,adminURL)
edit()
startEdit()

cd('/')

####################################################################################
# DOMAIN LEVEL CONFIGURATIONS
###################################################################################
print ' ******* SETTING DOMAIN LEVEL CONFIGURATIONS *********** '

domMode = getMBean('/')
domMode.setProductionModeEnabled(true)

domLog = getMBean("/Log/"+domainName)
domLog.setFileName(''+domainHome+'/logs/bea/'+domainName+'.log')

secCon = getMBean("/SecurityConfiguration/"+domainName)
secCon.setEnforceValidBasicAuthCredentials(false)

print ' ******* DOMAIN LEVEL CONFIGURATIONS SET SUCCESSFULLY *********** '
save()
activate(block="true")

disconnect()

The properties file be look like this:

adminUser=weblogic
adminPassword=weblogic123$
adminServerName=admin_cldom
adminServerListenaddr=localhost
admlistenport=7100

OverwriteDomain=true
domainName=cldom
domainHome=/wldomains/cldom

After running above script, you need to stop all the servers in the domain with the current domain configuration start the AdminServer first then start remaining managed servers. This will show the impact of change mode. One of my online buddy asked me is there any chance to migrate from non-WebLogic Application server(such as JBoss/WAS/OCJ4 etc) to WebLogic. Right now it is not available from Oracle, If Oracle give similar way of templates  for migrating from OCJ4 Application Server migration, Websphere migration, JBoss migration and TCat server migration templates then it is more easy life for migrating from any J2EE server to any other. This is a very marketing strategy because it can make more revenue for Oracle and it is easy for customers and WLA to migrate JEE applications to Oracle WebLogic Server. What do you say dear blog reader?? Keep writing your suggestions, comments.

Mail from WLST when abnormal state for Server

In most of production environments there could be possibility of a WebLogic server instances go on overload and crash or it could reach to a non RUNNING state due to many reasons. But if we know the state of that WebLogic server instance then we can act immediately for further harm to be predicated and confidently control that could happen  in that WebLogic domain.

Python network library smtplib in WLST

WLST supports multiple the network libraries such as

1. ftplib 
2. poplib 
3. imaplib 
4. smtplib 
5. telnetlib 

these are  network capabilities in their process, scripting we need to import the libraries and you can use the built-in functions. Before using this smtp libraries you need to check the SMTP service enabled on the machine.

Here I am trying to send the alert mail message when one of the WebLogic Managed Server goes to SHUTDOWN state or UNKNOWN state or some other state which is not RUNNING.

-->

Assuming that your machine have SMTP mail service must enabled. Check before creating this script on the box. Here in the following script you can replace the 'To' address value given as  pavanwla@MAILSERVER.com with mailing address of your supporting WebLogic Administrators (WLA) list by comma separation.

#======================================================
# Script File : StatusMail.py
# Author      : Pavan Devarakonda
# Updated on  : 29th April 2010
#======================================================
import smtplib
import time

From = "wla@WLSERVER.com"
To   =["pavanwla@MAILSERVER.com"]
Date = time.ctime(time.time())
URL='t3://'+get('ListenAddress')+':'+str(get('ListenPort'))

def getServerNames():
   domainConfig()
   return cmo.getServers()

def mailing(name, stat):
    serverRuntime()
    serverConfig()
    if stat == 'SHUTDOWN':
        Subject = ' major: '
    else:
        Subject= 'Critical:'
    Subject= Subject + 'The Weblogic server instance ' +name + ' is ' + stat

    Text='The Server ' +name +'   in the '+ stat+'  Listening at URL ' + URL
    Msg = ('From: %s\r\nTo: %s\r\nDate: \%s\r\nSubject: %s\r\n\r\n%s\r\n' %(From, To, Date, Subject, Text))
    s = smtplib.SMTP('YOURSMTP.DOMAIN.COM')
    rCode = s.sendmail(From, To, Msg.as_string())
    s.quit()

    if rCode:
        print 'Fail to send message...'

def serverStatus(server):
    cd('/ServerLifeCycleRuntimes/' +server)
    return cmo.getState()

def checkStatus():
    try:
        connect('username','******','t3://adminIP:AdminPort')
        serverNames= getServerNames()
        domainRuntime()
        for name in serverNames:
            print name        
            serverState = serverStatus(name)
            if serverState == "SHUTDOWN": 
                mailing(name, serverState)
            elif serverStat == 'UNKNOWN':
                mailing(name, serverState)
    except:
        mailing('AdminServer','Connection Fail')

if __name__== "main":
    redirect('./logs/status.log', 'false')
    checkStatus()
    print 'done'

To make you more comfortable here you need to update few lines 7, 8 10, 27, and 40. Hope you have idea what need to replace in these lines! for your environment.

Cronjob schedule

If you need this script need to run for every 30 mins you can schedule the following line into a shell script. map the shell script to crontab by giving the -e option. If got any trouble please write back to me :)

To test run this script in UNIX/Windows/MacOS/anyother...

prompt> java weblogic.WLST StatusMail.py

Keep posting your valuable comments and suggestions on this post.

References:

1. http://docs.python.org/library/smtplib.html
2. http://uthcode.sarovar.org/pyconindia2010/presentation.html