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The following sections describe how to access and use the WLS-VE distribution archive contents, and how to prepare a domain for virtualization:
For this release, WLS-VE is only available as a distribution archive and does not include a BEA product installer mechanism. You can download the WLS-VE distribution archive from the BEA web site.
After obtaining the WLS-VE distribution archive for WLS 10.0 MP1, follow these steps to unpack the archive.
server1001ve12.tar.gz.The BEA Home directory serves as a repository for your files that facilitate any future upgrades or installation of patches. If you already have a BEA Home directory on the local disk of the launcher machine, unzip the distribution archive in the existing directory.
| Note: | Optionally, you can also create your BEA Home directory on an NFS file server that is accessible to the WLS-VE installer through an NFS mount. For instructions on using an NFS file server, see the Creating and Sharing Directories section in the WLS-VE v1.0 Installation and Configuration Guide. |
If the BEA Home is not on an NFS share, to install update patches on the VM instance, you first need to install them on the local disk of the launcher machine, and then copy them to the local disk of each VM. For more information, see Moving a WLS-VE Domain to a Production Environment and Downloading and Applying Patches.
| Note: | The copy process is only necessary for installing update patches. |
The BEA Home directory can be considered a central support directory for all the BEA products installed on your system. For example, if you use WLS, WLW, and WLS-VE, you can maintain a single BEA Home directory for all products on the launcher machine. However, each WLS-VE instance has its own BEA Home directory, /bea, by default.
When you unpack the WLS-VE distribution archive on the launcher machine, the WLS 10.0 MP1 ISO image (wlsve1001.iso) is copied to the /server1001ve12 directory. The ISO image contains the LiquidVM and WebLogic Server classes that run on hypervisor software and host your Java applications. To give the ESX server access to these classes, you need to copy the ISO image to a datastore on each ESX server that will run WLS-VE. (See Figure 2-1.) A recommended best practice is to copy the ISO image to a SAN that can be accessed from each ESX server host.
| Notes: | Copying the ISO image to a physical disk that is local to the ESX server may disable some VMware functionality, such as VMotion. |
| Note: | If you are using an NFS share, datastores will experience degraded performance when booting WLS-VE. |
To copy the WLS-VE ISO image to a datastore on a local disk or SAN, you can use the following secure copy (scp) command syntax:scp -p source-file username@esxhost:/vmfs/volumes/datastore/path/
-p preserves modification times, access times, and modes from the original file.source-file is the relative or absolute path and file name of the WLS-VE ISO image file.username is the name of a user in your network who has write privileges on the hypervisor host machine.esxhost is the name of an ESX server host./vmfs/volumes/ is the directory within the VMware file system under which ESX Server stores datastores.datastore is the name of a datastore.path is one or more optional directory levels.| Notes: |
scp to copy ISO images. The Linux operating system includes an scp client. For Windows, you can install (or download for free) third-party utilities that include scp clients. Also note that scp is just one of many ways to copy the disk, depending on how you have configured your VMware environment. For example, in a Windows environment, the SAN disk could be an additional drive that is accessible to the ESX server; therefore, you can copy the ISO image to that drive using Windows Explorer.scp requires that the ESX server has been configured to allow user-login over SSH (which is off by default).
Be sure to record the pathname that you specify. When you use the LiquidVM Configuration Wizard to configure virtual machines, you will need to provide this location. Note that the syntax in ESX Server for specifying this path is:[datastore] /path/file
For example, you can use the following scp command to copy the WLS-VE ISO image from the current directory to the default storage1 datastore (VMware creates the storage1 datastore when you install ESX Server):
scp -p wlsve1001.iso myusername@myESXHost:/vmfs/volumes/storage1/
With the above example, the pathname that you specify in the LiquidVM Configuration Wizard is:[storage1] /wlsve1001.iso
Generally, upgrading and promoting virtualized domains requires the same steps used for upgrading and promoting non-virtualized domains. The main steps in this process are:
For detailed instructions on these steps, see Upgrading WebLogic Application Environments.
Due to its virtualized nature, when you upgrade to WLS-VE, depending on your required upgrade scenario, you will need to modify the standard upgrade procedure to address important virtualization issues. The changes you need to make are described in the following sections.
When you upgrade an application from a non-virtualized implementation of WLS 10.0 to WLS-VE 10, you need to make some modifications to the application code to ensure successful operation. See Preparing an Existing WebLogic Domain for Virtualization.
You cannot migrate an application directly to WLS-VE 10.0 MP1 v1.2 from an earlier version of WLS-VE (for example, version 9.2 v1.1). Instead, you need to follow the upgrade procedures outlined in Upgrading WebLogic Application Environments to upgrade your domain to a WLS 10.0 MP1 domain. Once you have done so, prepare the domain for virtualization as described in Preparing an Existing WebLogic Domain for Virtualization.
WLS patches can be installed on each WLS-VE instance separately without shutting down the entire domain or cluster. How WLS-VE is patched depends on where the issue occurs and how the WLS-VE instance is configured in your environment, as follows:
For information about upgrading your software with maintenance patches and service packs, if available, see Installing Maintenance Updates and Service Packs.
If you created your BEA Home on the local disk of the launcher machine, follow these steps:
NNN directory under the BEA Home, where NNN specifies the WLS release (for example, 1001 for 10.0 MP1).NNN directory into the instance’s /bea directory (where /bea is the BEA Home directory on your WLS-VE instance). If your server has configured a BEA Home on an NFS share, you can run the Smart Update tool from an ordinary OS that also has access to the same NFS share with the BEA Home on it. Smart Update will apply the patches and put them in the BEA Home on the NFS share. The next time you restart your WLS-VE instance the patches will get automatically loaded.
For more information on using NFS shares, refer to the Creating and Sharing Directories section in the WLS-VE v1.0 Installation and Configuration Guide.
If you want to apply a WLS service pack, a new CD-ISO-image must be acquired from BEA Product Support and uploaded to the ESX Server. You must also reconfigure your WLS-VE instance to use the service pack ISO instead of the previous CD-ISO.
After you have unpackaged the software and copied the ISO to the hypervisor host, you need to configure your environment, and create WLS-VE instances.
For specific information about this WLS-VE release, see the WLS-VE Release Notes.
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