Configuring the iPlanet as web tier for Oracle WebCenter Content (UCM)

If you are looking for configure the iPlanet as Web server/proxy to use with the Oracle WebCenter Content, you probably won’t found an specific documentation for that or will found some old complex notes related to the old 10gR3.

This post will help you out with few simple steps.

That’s the diagram of the test scenario, considering that you will deploy in production in an cluster environment.

 

First you need the software, for our scenario you will need:

- Oracle iPlanet Web Server 7.0.15+ (Installed)

- Oracle WebCenter Content 11gR1 PS5 (Installed)

- Oracle WebLogic Web Server Plugins 11g (1.1)

- Supported JDK (Using Oracle Java JDK 7u4 for the test)

- Certified Client OS

- Certified Server OS (Using Oracle Solaris 11 for the test)

- Certified Database (Using Oracle Database 11.2.0.3 for the test)

 

Then the configuration:

- Download the latest plugin:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/ias/downloads/wls-plugins-096117.html

- Extract the WLSPlugin11g-iPlanet7.0 in some folder, like <iPlanet_Home>/plugins/wls11

- Include the plugin reference to the magnus.conf:

If Unix (Solaris or Linux), include the line:

Init fn="load-modules" shlib="/apps/oracle/WebServer7/plugins/wls11/lib/mod_wl.so"

If Windows, Include the line:       

Init fn="load-modules" shlib="D:\\oracle\\WebServer7\\plugins\\wls11\\lib\\mod_wl.dll"

 

- Include the proxy reference to the obj.conf of each instance:

<Object name="weblogic" ppath="*/cs/*">

Service fn="wl-proxy" WebLogicCluster="wcc-node1:16201,wcc-node2:16202, wcc-node3:16203" 

</Object>

<Object name="weblogic" ppath="*/_dav/*">

Service fn="wl-proxy" WebLogicCluster="wcc-node1:16201,wcc-node2:16202, wcc-node3:16203" 

</Object>

<Object name="weblogic" ppath="*/_ocsh/*">

Service fn="wl-proxy" WebLogicCluster="wcc-node1:16201,wcc-node2:16202, wcc-node3:16203" 

</Object>

<Object name="weblogic" ppath="*/adfAuthentication/*">

Service fn="wl-proxy" WebLogicCluster="wcc-node1:16201,wcc-node2:16202, wcc-node3:16203" 

</Object>

If you are using an single node setup, change the Service fn=…. line to something like:

Service fn="wl-proxy" WebLogicHost=<wcc-server> WebLogicPort=16200

 

With these configurations, your should have the WebCenter Content UI working with the iPlanet, test it. [http://<web-server>/cs/]

With the UI working, the last step is to configure the WebDav:

- Go to the iPlanet Admin Console (usually https://<web-server>:8989)

- Go to Configurations >> [instance] >> Virtual Servers >> [Virtual Server] >> WebDAV:

- Click New

- Populate the URI with /cs/idcplg/webdav:

- Select “Anyone (No Authentication)”, the wc Content will take care of the security:

This will allow you to use the WebDav feature and the Desktop Integration Suite, including double-byte characters.

Another iPlanet tunes could be done, I can cover in the next post related to the iPlanet.

 

Cross-posted on the WebCenter A-Team Blog

 

Related posts:

- Using a Web Proxy Server with WebCenter Family

Using a Web Proxy Server with WebCenter Family

The use of a Web Tier is always recommended in a production environment, for security, performance and better control and load management, no matter if is a Intranet, internet or extranet environment.

The most common use for the Web Tier with WebCenter is acting as Reverse Proxy to forward all requests to a frontend WebCenter site to the application server (Figure A), but there’s to many ways to do an enterprise deployment with a web tier and many flavors of web servers and load balancing options.

Let’s start with the WebLogic plugin with supported webservers. You can found the standard plugins in your WebLogic instalation dir, that will something like “%WEBLOGIC_HOME%/server/plugin/%OS%/”, but I recommend you to download the latest plugin from Oracle’s OTN or eDelivery websites, you will found the Oracle WebLogic Server Web Server Plugins 1.1 or later. With the version 1.1 you will found plugins for Apache 2.2.x (32-Bits and 64-Bits) and for IIS 6+ and IIS 7+. Always confirm the OS support with the WLS Plugin Support Matrix. If you need support for iPlanet 6+ or 7+, you can use the version 1.0. Any throuble to found the files, try search or create to the Oracle support (Ref.: Doc ID 1111903.1).

Some times you do not want to use a separate web server, you can use the WebLogic as a Web Server by using a servlet, but this is subject for another post.

When you are deploying a WebCenter solution using a proxy server, you need to remember to proxy all your requests from all weblogics for Security, performance and Control and also all non-weblogic requests such as static files, WebCenter Content custom requests, Services, Portlets and 3rd Party.

Is common in intranet deployments you see calls direct to the application servers, calls to several different servers, like the Figure C.

Above you can see the same sample with all calls using the web server, for proxy forward, for reverse proxy, static files caching, even the use of Oracle Coherence is easy when you have a WebCenter Spaces + Content deployment.

We cannot forget to talk about the clustering and load balancers, Clustering is easy done by the WebLogic, you just need to follow the documentation. For Load balancing you need to choose what kind and what load balancer you will use.

LOAD BALANCING

You can do load balancing using the Web Proxy Server with WLS Plugin or a servlet as mentioned above or a External Load Balancer (Hardware) or Appliance.

Using the WLS Plugin you will need to remember to create a entry for WebCenter Server that are you using, that means that you need to create a entry for the /webcenter/ another for the /cs/, another for the “custom sitestudio” calls, for the portlets (If you do not create a parent folder for the portlets, you will need to create a entry for each portlet) and an entry for any other 3rd calls.

The configuration file for each entry will looks like this sample for IIS7:

# Changed by Oracle A-Team (Adao.Junior)
# Date: 07/31/2011
# WebCenter Content: CUSTOMER_WEB_SERVER
# WLSPlugin1.1-IIS6-IIS7-win64-x64
WebLogicCluster=192.168.100.101:8888,192.168.100.102:8888,192.168.100.101:8891,192.168.100.102:8891
ConnectTimeoutSecs=25
ConnectRetrySecs=5
KeepAliveEnabled=true
FileCaching=ON
SecureProxy=OFF
Debug=OFF
WLTempDir=C:\DEBUG\CONTENT

For a External Load Balancer (Hardware) you have many options, such as the f5 Big-IP, a guide to help you deploy with WebCenter could be found here.

There’s a option to use a hybrid configuration, with Hardware loadbalancers and Web Proxy to handle the web calls between the users and web farms, and web proxies and between the proxies and applications servers.