Migration to Oracle Weblogic 12c and Clustering

Weblogic 12c has been a great revision to the oracle fusion middleware product application server and now we have had a chance to work with this can see just how good it really is.

Having covered a few migrations to 12c now can say the clustering across multiple nodes works really well having extensively performance tested this and compared with some older oracle application server / container based products it is a massive improvement. 12c supports java 8 and 64 bit server processing. And works nicely on oracle solaris 10 on sparc CPU's as well as solaris zones which is oracles version of unix containerisation for the os. Version 12.1.1 had many bugs which weve had the pleasure of helped Oracle identify many bugfixes 12.1.2 an later are much more stable and usable. Overall it is a massive improvement over 11g. For clustering 2 through to 16 nodes it runs great.

Oracle continue with there suite of integrations of there other products the list now is extensive along with the aquisitions these include products from ATG, Agile PLM, Endeca, HCM and E-Business suite.  

Weblogic Consultancy Services

Virtualisation and Application Servers

Now more an more everyone is trinyg to cut cost, become more efficient and get more done with less money.And what better way to do this than virtualise, it used to be the way that virtual machines , which by the way are noot a new idea (IBM came up with the concept many years ago for mainframes).
Virtual Machines were slow fragile and time consuming to set up , now vmware has matured to be the industry leader at time of writing with products like vmware fusion , vmware workstation , vmware esx server and vmwre player, it is now a brighter pleasant experience to work with for virtualising and cloning multiple servers , the phrase P 2 V you may hear repeatedly this means physical to virtual , they offer a tool that basically virtualises your real machine into a VM, and very good it is too.

Some of these technologies you can use for free, and now the marketplace has grown up there are many competitor products such as virtualcenter and Oracle VM Virtualbox,   KVM , Hyper-V

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_platform_virtual_machines

Performance tuning old JDK life past end of life?

Performance tuning a old system 32 bit  that is past end of life and still going on a old java JDK that is too cost prohibitive to re-code and too old to run a probe on (inconpatible) , canit be done?

This was the issue I had to work on in a recent project that I took on , and amazingly there is life in taking a old system and 'enhancing it'. Contact me if this is something that you are at as my last project the client was really stuck with no way in a seemingly impossible scenario, but we showed them the light and they are much better off for the experience.

We can help with :
Getting your old system upgraded to take full advantage of better more powerful hardware.
Tweaking & tuning to get every last bit of capacity out of it
Design to ensure it is best strucutred to suit your requirementso
The path toward enhancement in a cost effective way.

Especially with old java 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 an 1.4 JDKs
Especially with 32 bit architectures
Especially with performance bound systems

Weblogic lives on

Weblogic 12c is finally here!!! Just in time for 2012

Yes this launched on december 1st 2012

http://blogs.oracle.com/cloudappfoundation/entry/brand_new_oracle_weblogic_12c1

And for those of you that have not yet been able to get your hands on it here are some useful nuggets of info:

http://technology.amis.nl/blog/14436/weblogic-12c-questions-and-answers

The big WOW factor with this release of Weblogic is that it will fully support JEE ( java 6 )
And if you have been following the presentations by oracle over the last few months you will notice they are
stating it will have the following major benefits:

Optimisation of source code and Integration with the Hardware stack making it run - MUCH FASTER

Benefits of the Fusion product set and integration with THE CLOUD

Improved reliability, scalability and productivity.

http://blogs.oracle.com/cloudappfoundation/entry/oracle_weblogic_server_12c_launch

Now I have had 20 minutes first looks around this and it feels like classic weblogic from the backend but more refined and grown up from the front end user interfaces.

I do not see rapid adoption but rather a slow start move towards this version gaining pace as time gets more toward end of 2012 as there will be many out there running J2EE application servers on very old JDK's that over time will realise the benefits to moving to Java 6 JEE especially when they start to see others getting good results and more familier with the 1.6 JDK only then will they start to really leverage the BIG benefits it brings.

Weblogic Server Lives on in many forms...

Despite us being in a financial crisis, many older versions of weblogic continue to run successfully in many companies.

These include bea weblogic server 8.1 sp6
bea weblogic server 7.0
bea weblogic server 6.0
bea weblogic server 5.1

Old software often has end of life associated with it but many people continue to run older versions out of lifetime.
Knowing its nuances and after running with it for a teething period, this tends to work well once the application is mature
and stable and there is little to no reason or budget to move over to a newer version.

Newer versions can bring more features but at the same time more complexity , why re-invent the wheel when a older
simpler system works for your requirement.

Of course if you want to be on leading edge then you will go for oracle fusion middleware.
And if you want to be as near to leading edge but on a budget the choice is glassfish.

Till my next post
The Weblogic Guru

Cloud computing and weblogic....

July 20, 2009 - This was the day that oracle's grid architecture and weblogic server harmoniously came together.

From Oracle's website:

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/021490

Oracle announced the release of Oracle® Coherence 3.5.

A component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Coherence 3.5

This new version introduces Coherence Guardian, a safeguard that automatically detects and corrects service disruptions.

Oracle Coherence 3.5 provides native integration with Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle WebLogic Portal, dramatically boosting the performance and scalability of applications deployed on these products.

In addition, Oracle Coherence 3.5 also includes a significant performance boost in the Coherence*Web session management module.

 I quote  from oracle website :

"These new capabilities help organizations improve their online customer experience, simplify the management of large web deployments, and differentiate their Web presence for competitive advantage."

 

So if you have gotton your head  round clusters and scalability this is really the final up-scale afterwards.

Really for big organisations or heavy use websites requiring the top end of resiliance and scalability.

For now recognise that oracle is investing heavily in this area and cloud computing is here to stay.

I will write more on this topic in a future post

Oracle Weblogic 11g - first looks

Just had look at this wonderful piece of kit.

weblogic 11g oracle name oracle middleware is currently at weblogic version 10.3.1.0
and is made to be harmoniously SOA orientated, first looks show a new fresh looking admin console, and a whole load more features, however nothing in this version really jumps out from first impressions and is this really a minor revision to 10 rather than a whole new version?
Well by naming it 11g will bring more of a marketing and branding advantage than a technical one like the fantastic name there marketing dept has come up with ...only time will tell the value that 11g will really bring...I am looking forward to oracle weblogic 11g v2.