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Implementing Oracle WebCenter in Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Oracle WebCenter is the center of engagement for business. It is a suite of tools (WebCenter Portal, Content, and Sites) that helps people work together more efficiently through contextual collaboration tools that optimize connections between people, information, and applications and ensures users have access to the right information in the context of the business process in which they are engaged. Oracle Tech can implement this amazing platform in AWS, one of the most popular and full-featured cloud website hosting solutions available. Through AWS, Oracle Tech can provide businesses, non-profits, and governmental organizations with a flexible, highly scalable, and low-cost way to deliver their WebCenter-based web applications.

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The approach

awsWe use Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) to host WebCenter as a suite of multi-tier web applications. Amazon VPC allows us to strictly enforce access and security restrictions between the front-end OHS tier webservers, the WebLogic application tier servers, and Oracle database data tier servers. OHS webservers are launched in a publicly accessible subnet while WebLogic application servers and databases are launched in non-publically accessible subnets. The application servers and databases can’t be directly accessed from the Internet, but they can still access the Internet via a NAT instance for maintenance purposes. Access between the servers and subnets is controlled using inbound and outbound packet filtering provided by network access control lists and security groups.

Webservers are scaled dynamically using Amazon Elastic Load Balancing and auto-scaling groups. Application servers can be vertically scaled by simply switching to a higher powered amazon Machine Image (AMI). Using Amazon’s command-line interface tools, entire WebCenter environments, or their components, can be brought up or down with a single mouse click.

Thoughts on “Implementing Oracle WebCenter in Amazon Web Services (AWS)”

  1. Interesting. That’s exactly what I had started looking for. Does Oracle already have am AMI out there, or should I create one. I see an AMI “Oracle AS 10gR3 Webcenter 32-bit – OVM – ami-567f813f” in AWS, owned by Oracle. Have they already done it ? It is an older version, am going to give it a try tonight.

  2. Not able to use that AMI .. doesn’t allow in VPC, and no matching / supporting instance configuration available on EC2 .. anybody else tried this ?

  3. Andre McMillan Post author

    Amazon has a set of Oracle Linux AMIs, they can be found here
    http://aws.amazon.com/oracle/. You’d download WebCenter and all prerequisite/supporting software, and install on instances made from one of these AMIs. I also supposed you could use one of the RedHat AMI’s instead of Oracle’s. I am not aware of any WebCenter AMI already configured to run in a VPC. You have to build it yourself, but it can be done. Good Luck!

  4. is it possible to horizontally scale the application servers instead of vertically using auto-scaling ? how can that be achieved ?

  5. Andre McMillan Post author

    Good question.

    I haven’t scaled the application servers horizontally using auto-scaling. On the surface, it seems like it would be a tricky thing to do as the AMI would have to be configured to know which machine to start up as is in the WebLogic domain, and/or know how to automatically extend the domain.

    One thing I’ve done that works is create all the necessary EC2 app server instances ahead of time for the given WebLogic domain, but only start the ones I need, leaving the others shutdown. Moving forward, I stop and start EC2 instances (albeit manually) to achieve my horizontal scaling. I suppose I could script something to trigger the automatic startup / shutdown of the EC2 instances to get AWS auto-scaling like functionality, but I haven’t taken it that far.

    Good Luck!

  6. I am Oracle Hyperion Essbase user .I need information on Essbase in Cloud- Amazon Web Services.

    Could you please let us know the feasibility of Essbase into cloud and also let us know the required-licensing, software, pre-requisite etc.

    We are currently using Essbase 11.2.2.1 version.

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Andre McMillan

Andre McMillan is a Lead Technical Consultant within the Oracle Technology Group at Perficient, Inc. where he is responsible for the technical architecture, design, implementation, and customization of Oracle middleware based solutions for Perficient clients, with a focus on WebCenter Portal, WebCenter Content, and Oracle Cloud.

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