This article is for System Admins who are new to Weblogic Administration.
The following are the day to day task of a Weblogic Server Administrators.
1. Setting up infrastructure ( Managed Servers, Cluster, Nodemanager)
2. Deploying Applications
3. Creating resources( JMS, JDBC, Security)
4. Monitoring
5. Performance Tuning
6. Troubleshooting
Setting up infrastructure ( Managed Servers, Cluster, Nodemanager)
This includes installing Weblogic Server , creating domains, domain templates.
You need to figure out the needs of the application/applications that the domain is going to host.
Do you need a distibuted setup with Weblogic Server running on multiple machines?
Do you need a cluster, is session replication necessary for your application or load balancing is enough?
Do you want to control ( start/stop) the managed server from the console or you’ll prefer scripts to do it for you?
What environment you are going to create, DEV, UAT, SIT, Production?
You will need answers to these questions before going ahead with setting up the infrastructure.
Deploying Applications
You will have to select the mode of deployment ( stage, nostage, external stage) of the application.
This is largely determined by the size of the application. Also before deploying the applications you will have to know the dependency of the applications. Does your application need a datasource configuration? Do you have MDB’s in your application?What Queues/Topics the application needs? Read the Create Configurations section.
Create resources
Your application might need datasources/ jms queues and topics. You need to configure them. Also check if your application is using J2EE security , does it rely on Application Server container authentication. If yes, you’ll have to create users and groups. In some cases you will have to configure external security providers.
Monitoring
In production usually third party tools ( that rely on SNMP) are available to do the monitoring. You can also use JMX and WLST to write your own monitoring tools.
Performance Tuning
This is a very important area. You need to know the number of concurrent users who will be accessing the application, what wil be the transaction per second. You need to tune the heap and work manager accordingly to cater to the load. There is a calculation that goes behind it and I will try to cover in a separate article.
Troubleshooting
Admins are expected to resolve issues starting from the initial phase of setting up the infrastructure till the application goes live. A lot of Weblogic related issues are covered in the troubleshooting section of wonders.