System administration of WebLogic Server includes...
A WebLogic Server domain is a collection of WebLogic Server services designed for a specific purpose. For example, you might create one domain to provide an employee portal and another domain to provide business services to your customers.
Because the WebLogic Server management system is based on Java EE and other standards, it integrates with systems that are frequently used to manage other software and hardware components. In addition, WebLogic Server includes several of its own standards-based, extensible utilities. Alternatively, you can use APIs to create custom management utilities.
See also: Installation Guide.
| To do this... | Use this technology... |
|---|---|
| Create domains | The Configuration Wizard guides you through the process of creating or extending a domain.
You can automate the creation of domains using WLST You can create domain configuration XML files that conform to the WebLogic Server schema. |
| Migrate domains from development environments to production environments | Domain Template Builder's pack command archives a snapshot of a domain into a JAR file. The unpack command expands the archive and creates the necessary start scripts and certain security and configuration files. |
| Track changes in a domain's configuration | In environments that you allow configuration changes to active domains, WebLogic Server automatically maintains a versioned archive of configuration files.
To receive real-time notifications that a domain's configuration has been modified, enable the configuration auditing feature. For tightly controlled production environments, configure the run-time domain to be read-only You can change the read-only setting if you need to roll in changes that have been tested and approved in a staging environment, or you can modify and test your staging environment, and then use a Web server to re-route requests from your production environment to the staging environment. |
| Configure connections to Web servers | |
| Configure connections to databases or other systems | Within individual applications, you can define your own data sources or database connections using JDBC, or connect to external systems using resource adapters. When you deploy such an application, WebLogic Server creates the data sources and connections for you.
See also:
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| Manage the server life cycle | The Node Manager is a utility for remote control of Administration Servers and Managed Servers. It runs separately from WebLogic Server and lets you start up and shut down Administration Servers and Managed Servers. While use of Node Manager is optional, it provides additional life cycle benefits if your WebLogic Server environment hosts applications with high availability requirements.
To start Administration Servers or Managed Servers without using Node Manager, use the WebLogic Scripting Tool or scripts that WebLogic Server installs. |
| Modify or add services to an active domain | The WebLogic Server Administration Console or the WebLogic Scripting Tool |
| Monitor application server services and resources | Monitor the performance of services such as the EJB container, servlet container, and JDBC data sources from the WebLogic Server Administration Console.
If you use SNMP in your operations center, you can enable WebLogic Server to send SNMP notifications for run-time events that you define. |
| Deploy applications | The WebLogic Server Administration Console provides a series of Web-based deployment assistants that guide you through the deployment process.
To automate the deployment of applications, use the WebLogic Scripting Tool. You can also use the deployment API to write Java programs that deploy applications. |
| Modify applications in an active domain | To modify the configuration of a deployed application, use a text editor or IDE to modify the deployment descriptor. Then either redeploy the application or use the deployment API to upload the modified deployment descriptor and cause the application container to re-read the deployment descriptor. |
| Monitor activity within applications | Determine which data points you want to monitor and then instrument one or more beans to expose this data through JMX.
Alternatively, use the WebLogic Server Diagnostics Service to insert instrumentation code into a running application and monitor its methods or monitor transactions that involve the application. Use this technology to discover the cause of problems that cannot otherwise be discovered by scanning the available monitoring metrics. If you determine that the problem is within your application, you can prevent the problem from recurring by using JMX to expose attributes that indicate the application's health state is degrading. |
| Optimize the performance of your application and maintain service level agreements. | Work Managers configure how your application prioritizes the execution of its work. Based on rules you define and by monitoring actual run-time performance, WebLogic Server can optimize the performance of your application and maintain service level agreements. |
| Configure and secure administration communications | You can separate administration traffic from application traffic in your domain by enabling the Administration Port. In production environments, separating the two forms of traffic ensures that critical administration operations (starting and stopping servers, changing a server's configuration, and deploying applications) do not compete with high-volume application traffic on the same network connection.
The Administration Port only accepts communications that use SSL, and therefore secures your administrative requests. |
| Configure logging and view log files | Many WebLogic Server operations generate logs of their activity. Each server has its own log as well as a standard HTTP access log. These log files can be configured and used in a variety of ways to monitor the health and activity of your servers and applications.
By default, WebLogic Server uses the standard JDK logging APIs to filter and write the messages to log files. Alternatively, you can configure WebLogic Server to use the Jakarta Project Log4j APIs to distribute log messages. |
WebLogic Server includes several of its own standards-based, extensible utilities that you can use to create, manage, and monitor domains, or you can use WebLogic Server's management APIs to create custom management utilities.
Utilities that are included with WebLogic Server...
| Utility | Description |
|---|---|
| Administration Console | Web application hosted by the Administration Server used to manage and monitor an active domain. The management capabilities include:
Perform all WebLogic Server management tasks without having to learn the JMX API or the underlying management architecture. The Administration Server persists changes to attributes in the config.xml file for the domain you are managing. |
| WebLogic Scripting Tool | Command-line scripting interface that you use to manage and monitor active or inactive WebLogic Server domains. The WLST scripting environment is based on the Java scripting interpreter Jython. In addition to WebLogic scripting functions, you can use common features of interpreted languages, including local variables, conditional variables, and flow control statements. You can extend the WebLogic scripting language by following the Jython language syntax. |
| Configuration Wizard | Creates the appropriate directory structure for a WebLogic Server domain, a config.xml file, and scripts you can use to start the servers in your domain. The wizard uses templates to create domains, and you can customize these templates to duplicate your own domains.
You can also use the Configuration Wizard to add or remove services from an existing, inactive domain. You can run the Configuration Wizard through a GUI or in a text-based command-line environment. This command-line environment is called console mode—do not confuse this mode with the Administration Console. You can also create user-defined domain configuration templates for use by the Configuration Wizard. |
| Configuration Template Builder | Create your own domain templates, to enable, for example, the definition and propagation of a standard domain across a development project, or to enable the distribution of a domain along with an application that has been developed to run on that domain. The templates you create with the Configuration Template Builder are used as input to the Configuration Wizard as the basis for creating a domain that is customized for your target environment. |
| Apache Ant tasks | You can use two Ant tasks provided with WebLogic Server to help you perform common configuration tasks in a development environment. Ant is a Java-based build tool similar to Make. The configuration tasks let you start and stop WebLogic Server instances as well as create and configure WebLogic Server domains. When combined with other WebLogic Ant tasks, you can create powerful build scripts for demonstrating or testing your application with custom domains. |
| SNMP Agents | WebLogic Server includes the ability to communicate with enterprise-wide management systems using Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). WebLogic Server SNMP agents let you integrate management of WebLogic Servers into an SNMP-compliant management system that gives you a single view of the various software and hardware resources of a complex, distributed system. |
APIs that you can use to create your own management utilities...
| API | Description |
|---|---|
| Java Management Extensions (JMX) | Java EE solution for monitoring and managing resources on a network. Like SNMP and other management standards, JMX is a public specification and many vendors of commonly used monitoring products support it.
The Administration Console, WebLogic Scripting Tool, and other WebLogic Server utilities use the JMX APIs. |
| Java EE Management API | The Java EE Management APIs (JSR-77) enable a software developer to create a single Java program that can discover and browse resources, such as JDBC connection pools and deployed applications, on any Java EE Web application server. The APIs are part of the Java EE Management Specification, which requires all Java EE Web application servers to describe their resources in a standard data model. |
| Deployment API | The WebLogic Server deployment API implements and extends the JSR-88 deployment specification. All WebLogic Server deployment tools, such as the Administration Console and wldeploy Ant task, use the deployment API to configure, deploy, and redeploy applications in a domain. You can use the deployment API to build your own WebLogic Server deployment tools, or to integrate WebLogic Server configuration and deployment operations with an existing JSR-88-compliant tool. |
| WebLogic Diagnostic Service APIs | The WebLogic Diagnostic Service includes a set of standardized APIs that enable dynamic access and control of diagnostic data, as well as improved monitoring that provides visibility into the server. The interfaces are standardized to facilitate future enhancement and integration of third-party tools, while maintaining the integrity of the server code base. The service is well suited to the server and the server's stack product components and targets operations and administrative staff as primary users. |
| Logging APIs | By default, WebLogic Server uses the standard JDK logging APIs to filter and write the messages to log files. See
Alternatively, you can configure WebLogic Server to use the Jakarta Project Log4j APIs to distribute log messages. |