Oracle WebLogic Server: Remote Monitoring and Management

Raastech, Inc.
2201 Cooperative Way, Suite 600
Herndon, VA 20171
+1-703-884-2223
info@raastech.com
Oracle WebLogic Server:
Remote Monitoring and Management
October 13, 2015

© Raastech, Inc. 2015 | All rights reserved. Slide 2 of 58@Raastech
About Us
 Ahmed Aboulnaga @Ahmed_Aboulnaga
 18+ years Oracle experience
 OCE (SOA Foundation Practitioner)
 Oracle ACE
 Harold Dost III @hdost
 7+ years of Oracle Fusion Middleware experience
 Co-author of “Oracle SOA Suite 12c Administrator’s Handbook”
 Oracle ACE Associate
.

About Raastech
 Small systems integrator founded in 2009
 Headquartered in the Washington DC area
 Specializes in Oracle Fusion Middleware
 Oracle Platinum Partner – 1 in 3,000 worldwide
 Oracle SOA Specialized – 1 in 1,500 worldwide
 Oracle ACE – 2 of 500 worldwide
 100% of consultants are Oracle certified
 100% of consultants present at major Oracle conferences
 100% of consultants have published books, whitepapers, or articles

Agenda
1. Monitoring and Managing Oracle WebLogic Server
2. Manual via Consoles
3. Automated via Tools
4. Custom via Scripts
5. Remote Options

 Application servers (i.e., middleware) reside between the frontend and the backend
 The mostly (but not always) host and execute web application code and web services
 Oracle WebLogic Server is one such application server
Middleware

Introducing Oracle WebLogic Server
 Obtained through acquisition of BEA Systems in 2008
 Latest version is Oracle WebLogic Server 12c (12.1.3)
 Industry’s best Java EE application server
 Oracle marketing stuff:
 New features for lowering cost of operations, improving performance, enhancing
scalability
 Provides flexibility between on-premise and third-party clouds
 Increases developer productivity with mobile application development and maven
support
 Optimized for Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud
 Provides extreme cloud performance, scalability, and elasticity, unmatched integration
with Oracle’s Database 12c including multi-tenant database support

 WebLogic Server is the core foundation of all Oracle Fusion
Middleware products (and applications)
OEM Grid
Control
OBIEE
Access
Manager
SOA Suite
WebCenter
Portal
Data
Integrator
Oracle WebLogic Server
Clustering – JNDI – Resource Adapters – JDBC – Security – Self Tuning
WebLogic Server: Foundation for Fusion Middleware

Monitoring versus Management
 Monitoring involves being aware of the state of the system
 View real-time state of the environment
 Obtain historical metrics for analysis purposes
 Receive notification and alerts
 Management involves the ability to take action somehow
 Turn on/off services and components
 Modify configuration settings
 Execute jobs (e.g., purge, backup, queues, etc.)
 Issue a garbage collection

Key Areas of Monitoring and Administration
 We want to monitor/administer key areas in WebLogic Server, such as:
 Managed servers
 Persistent stores
 JMS servers
 JMS destinations (i.e., queues, topics)
 Work managed (i.e., threads)
 Java applications
 Clusters
 Data sources and connection pools
 Security realms (i.e., users)
 Logs

Monitoring Approaches
 Several monitoring approaches exist:
 Manual (via the consoles)
 Automated (via monitoring tools)
 Custom (via custom scripts)

WebLogic Server Administration Console
 Indispensable
 All administration
performaned through
here
 View real-time state of
environment
 Does not have to be
running for your
applications to run, but
highly recommend

DMS Spy Servlet
 The DMS Spy Servlet is available with WebLogic Server
 Provides real-time metrics of your environments at this URL:
 Can be invoked via command line as well for scripting purposes
http://<adminhost>:7001/dms/Spy

Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
 OEM Cloud Control 12c is the ideal tool for monitoring WebLogic Server (as
well as your entire infrastructure)
 Perform administration, schedule jobs, correlate events, receive email
triggered alerts, and much, much more
 Be prepared to spend some money on this

VMware vFabric Hyperic
 Was a decent monitoring tool, though less comprehensive than OEM
 Very cost effective (at least before VMware acquired them)
 Many other 3rd party tools on the market exist as well (e.g., AppDynamics, etc.)
* We are not endorsing any product over another; just merely demonstrating the availability of 3rd party monitoring tools

Agents
 All monitoring tools require an “agent” to be installed on
the target server
 Usually employ a “push” concept
Advantages
 Agents can
continue collecting
even if there is no
connectivity to the
management server
 Powerful features
and capabilities can
be built into the
agents
Disadvantages
 Becomes painful if
trying to install /
upgrade hundreds
or thousands of
agents
Management
Server
Target
Target
Target
Target
Agent
Agent
Agent
Agent

WLST (WebLogic Scripting Tool)
 WLST is WebLogic Servers’s preferred scripting language
 Common among administrators from a BEA background
 WebLogic Server centric
 Uses Jython (which allows Python scripts to be executed)
 Scripts can be developed cross-platform, requiring little to no changes
 Example of starting up a managed server using WLST:
$WL_HOME/common/bin/wlst.sh
wls:/offline> connect('weblogic', 'welcome1', 't3://adminhost:7001')
wls:/soa_domain/serverConfig> start('soa_server1' , 'Server')

WLST Example: Managed Server State & Heap Size

WLST Example: JDBC Connection Pool Information

WLST Example: JMS Destination Message Information

WebLogic RESTful Management Service
 Oracle WebLogic Server 11g introduces the RESTful Management Services
 The monitoring resources are hosted by an internal web application
 This is a feature that must be enabled
 It provides access to key metrics easily accessible via REST (i.e., essentially
another API into WebLogic Server metrics)
 They are generally accessible via a URL, for example:
http://<adminhost>:7001/management/tenant-monitoring/servers

WebLogic REST Service: Servers

WebLogic REST Service: Managed Server

WebLogic REST Service: Clusters

WebLogic REST Service: The “full format” option

HTML, JSON, and XML Formats
 Data can be retrieved in HTML, JSON, and XML formats

Disadvantages of the RESTful Management Service
 No historical metrics (only real-time, similar to the DMS Spy Servlet)
 No administrative capabilities (monitoring only)
 Limited to the following object types:
 Servers
 Clusters
 Applications
 Data Sources

Remote Monitoring
 Our definition of remote monitoring:
 “Not-at-your-desk monitoring”
 Could be through:
 Emails
 Web-based console
 Mobile app
Only alerts, but
cannot view adhoc
Difficult if VPN
access required first
Ideal scenario

Remote Management
 Our definition of remote management:
 “Issue commands when away from your desk”
 Could be through:
 Parsed email replies
 Web-based console
 Mobile app
Was cool back
in 2004
Difficult if VPN
access required first
Ideal scenario

Raastech Mobile Manager
 “Raastech Mobile Manager for Oracle Fusion Middleware 1.0.0”
 Developed by Raastech
 Beta launch in October 2015
 The world’s only mobile monitoring and management solution for
Oracle Fusion Middleware

Mobile App
 Support for iOS and Android
 Must connect to a backend management server

Designed with UX and CX in Mind
 Emphasis placed on usability
 Extremely responsive UI, even when viewing huge data sets
 Focuses on top 20% core features
 Management requests are instantaneous
 Can literally get up and running within minutes

True Mobile Monitoring and Management

Remote Management
 Runs on GlassFish Server or
WebLogic Server, with a
backend MySQL database
 Relies on cloud service for
notifications
 The 3 components are:
 Raastech Mobile Manager
 Raastech Management Server
 Raastech Notification Server

Customizable Views
 Display data as:
 Raw
 Percent bar
 Line graph
 Time bar
 Framework allows the ability
to dynamically add additional
metrics to monitor

Historical Metrics
 Hourly
 Daily
 Weekly
 Monthly (6 months max)

Agentless Architecture
 No “agent” required on target servers
 Employs a “pull” concept
 Intended to simplify provisioning
 Simply enter host, port, username, and password!
Management
Server
Target
Target
Target
Target

Management & Administration
 Start and stop managed servers
 Start and stop JMS servers
 Start and stop data sources
 Start and stop JMS resources such as topics and queues
 Dump thread stacks
 Garbage collect
 Logs

Complete Oracle Fusion Middleware
 Current:
 Oracle WebLogic Server
 Near term:
 Oracle SOA Suite
 Oracle Service Bus (OSB)
 Oracle Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)
 Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE)
 Oracle Data Integrator (ODI)
 Oracle Access Manager (OAM)
 Oracle Internet Directory (OID)
 Future:
 TBD

Features and Differentiators

Summary
 Monitoring approaches:
 Console-based
 Tool-based
 Custom-based
 Poor remote monitoring and management options
 No mobile app solution by any vendor (except for Raastech Mobile
Manager), likely due to complexity
 They’re missing the point, the key is to narrow focus to the most
widely used areas

Q&A

Contact Information
 Ahmed Aboulnaga
 Technical Director
 @Ahmed_Aboulnaga
 ahmed.aboulnaga@raastech.com
 Harold Dost III
 Principal Consultant
 @hdost
 harold.dost@raastech.com

Oracle WebLogic Server: Remote Monitoring and Management

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