# Installation Guide

# Preparing for the Installation

The following sections describe actions to take before you run the installation program:

- Installation Overview and Roadmap
- Planning Your Virtualized Installation
- Downloading WLS-VE
- Understanding WLS-VE Installation Directories

## Installation Overview and Roadmap

WebLogic Server Virtual Edition (WLS-VE) combines WLS with LiquidVM, a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) that works with hypervisor software and provides only the set of operating system (OS) features that WLS needs to offer its full range of services.

Before installing WLS-VE, you should familiarize yourself with the basic concepts of LiquidVM provided in Understanding LiquidVM in WLS-VE Configuration and User Guide.

### Installation Modes

You can use the BEA Products installation program in one of the following modes.

- Graphical Mode — Graphical-mode installation is an interactive, GUI-based method for installing your software. It can be run on both Windows and UNIX systems. For installation procedures, see Starting in Graphical Mode for Windows platforms and Starting in Graphical-Mode for Linux platforms.
- Console Mode — Console-mode installation is an interactive, text-based method for installing your software from the command line, on either a UNIX system or a Windows system. For installation procedures, see Starting in Console Mode for Windows platforms and Starting in Console-Mode for Linux platforms.
- Silent Mode — Silent-mode installation is a noninteractive method of installing your software that requires the use of an XML properties file for selecting installation options. You can run silent-mode installation in either of two ways: as part of a script or from the command line. Silent-mode installation is a way of setting installation configurations only once and then using those configurations to duplicate the installation on many machines. For installation procedures, see Starting the Installation Program in Silent Mode.

### Main Installation Steps

The following steps summarize the overall process for installing WLS-VE.

Table 1-1 Main Installation and Configuration Steps
Step | Description
--- | ---
Plan your virtualized installation | Before you install WLS-VE, you need to: Ensure that your applications are suited for a virtualized environment. See Determining Appropriate Applications for WLS-VE. Ensure that your environment meets the WLS-VE requirements. See Planning Your Virtualized Installation Design your WLS-VE solution and determine your file storage solution and capacity requirements. Designing a File Storage Solution and Planning System Capacity. Obtain the WLS-VE software from the BEA download center or on DVD. See Downloading WLS-VE.
Install the WLS-VE software | Install the software on the launcher machine, specifying the local disk drive on the launcher machine as the location for the BEA Home directory, as described in Installing the Software.
Copy the ISO image to the ESX server | After you install WLS-VE, you must copy the ISO image containing the WLS classes and LiquidVM executables used to run WLS-VE from the launcher machine to the hypervisor host (VMware ESX server). See Post-Installation Information.
Configure and administer WLS-VE | After you have installed the software and copied the ISO to the hypervisor host, you need to configure your environment, create WLS-VE instances, and upgrade the evaluation license to a production license. See the WLS-VE Configuration and User Guide, which provides details for configuring, using, and administering WLS-VE.

## Planning Your Virtualized Installation

This section describes some aspects you should consider in planning your WLS-VE installation:

- Verifying That Your Environment Supports WLS-VE
- Determining Appropriate Applications for WLS-VE
- Understanding Machine Roles
- Using an NFS Share
- Designing a File Storage Solution
- Planning System Capacity

### Verifying That Your Environment Supports WLS-VE

Before planning any WLS-VE 9.2 v1.1. implementation, you must verify that your environment has a supported configuration of hardware, operating system, application server, and database. See the BEA Products Supported Configurations documentation.

Note: | LiquidVM itself is a 32-bit VM (meaning that it cannot have a Java heap larger than 4GB).

### Determining Appropriate Applications for WLS-VE

For most applications, deploying and serving from WLS-VE is indistinguishable from WLS; that is, WLS-VE is no more CPU-intensive, memory-intensive, or network-intensive than WLS. On the other hand, certain applications will not perform as well in a virtualized environment as in a non-virtualized one. Consider the following factors in deciding whether using WLS-VE is appropriate for your applications:

- A key feature of WLS-VE is that it frees applications from the need for an operating system. Consequently, WLS-VE is solely focused on pure Java applications. If your application requires execution of any non-BEA native code in order to work, it will not work in a virtualized environment.
- Memory-intensive applications that need a full physical machine to themselves are not good candidates to virtualize. As a general rule, any application that requires more than 3.5 GB (roughly) of heap is not a good candidate for virtualization. This is because WLS-VE is currently designed to run on 32-bit systems, which have a maximum physical memory of 4 GB. Since Java needs some memory for its native code and generated Java code, a heap of more than 3.5 GB might not leave enough memory for those processes, resulting in out of memory exceptions and system failure.
- Applications that launch startup scripts or classes that attempt to start additional processes on the same machine, but outside the JVM (such as, a database, a Perl script, or monitoring software), will not work in a virtualized environment. For example, you cannot start a Perl script by invoking `System.exec` from your WLS.
- Applications that require a local GUI will not run on WLS-VE as it does not provide a platform for displaying a window. If you need to run a GUI-based program in conjunction with an application running on WLS-VE (for example, one of the BEA JRockit Mission Control tools), you must run it on a separate machine running a normal OS.

### Understanding Machine Roles

Installing and using WLS-VE involves multiple machines. It is important to understand the roles and requirements of each.

- Launcher machine — The Windows or Linux machine on which you execute the WLS-VE installation program and initiate the creation of virtual machines on the VMWare ESX machine.
- VMWare ESX machine — The hypervisor machine with VMware installed and CPUs available for the creation of virtual machines. The LiquidVM launcher accesses the ESX server through the VirtualCenter.
- VMWare VirtualCenter machine — The primary controller for configuring and managing the virtual environment. Users can connect to the VirtualCenter server using the Virtual Infrastructure Client (VI Client).

For more detailed information, see Configuration Overview and Roadmap in the WLS-VE Configuration and User Guide.

### Using an NFS Share

WLS-VE v1.1 provides a virtual local disk for each virtual machine, which removes the dependence on NFS and provides faster and more secure file transfers. The local disk can be mapped to a SAN attached to the ESX server. Each virtual machine contains a `/bea` directory on the local disk, which serves as the BEA Home directory for that machine.

However, if you prefer to use an NFS file server as the location for the BEA Home directory, refer to the Creating and Sharing Directories section in the WLS-VE v1.0 Installation and Configuration Guide.

Note: | When using NFS, applications that use file stores extensively (or that frequently write files directly to the file system) could experience some performance degradation if you use a NFS file server for reading and writing files. Generally, input and output with a local disk is faster than with a file server.

### Designing a File Storage Solution

Because of the importance of non-local storage to WLS-VE, there are some critical questions you need to address before you can successfully run WLS-VE:

- How will the application and data be stored?
- What sort of storage solution—or combination of storage solutions—will best support your version of WLS-VE?
- What affect does running on VMware have on how you configured your storage?

This section describes WLS-VE's requirements for storage and offers ideas for successfully implementing these solutions.

#### Understanding the WLS-VE Storage Architecture

The underlying implementation in VMware is a large file. To the virtual machine (LiquidVM), however, VMware's underlying storage architecture looks like a normal physical disk drive and, therefore, it performs the corresponding I/O instructions necessary to write to a physical disk drive. VMware detects these I/O instructions and transforms them into corresponding writes to the large file. Since the representation of the virtual disk is a file, writes to this file will eventually be stored somewhere on the physical storage. The location of this storage is under the control of the VMware administrator. Similar to a typical OS case, the administrator has three choices: the ESX machine's physical hard disk, a disk-partition on a SAN (best practice), or a large file on a NAS.

#### Storage Requirements

Due to its virtualized nature, the storage requirements for WLS-VE somewhat differ from those you need to address for a non-virtualized WLS. The basic requirement is accessibility of storage locations: for some of its data storage activities, WLS-VE requires exclusive access, while for other activities, it assumes that other processes might access the data (as in a standard file system).

##### Storage for Exclusive File Access

WLS-VE requires exclusive access to a storage system for the following activities:

- To access the WLS-VE ISO image that contains the LiquidVM executables and WLS classes.

Note: | Because the ISO image is read-only, it can be stored on a SAN disk allowing multiple machines to have simultaneous access to the same ISO image without violating its exclusivity. See WLS-VE ISO Image Considerations.

- To write internal, temporary files that are used to maintain runtime state, caches, etc.
- If you are using a virtual local disk, files that contain domain and application configuration data.

To store its exclusive data, WLS-VE needs to use the virtual disk that is made available by the hypervisor layer. Generally, a SAN implementation is optimal for WLS-VE because it usually performs at a higher level than a NAS due to NAS requiring a higher protocol overhead than a SAN. Moreover, it is more expensive to reference a file somewhere in a NAS's potentially deep directory structure than it is to just access a certain block on a certain disk partition, as a SAN stores data. Finally, a SAN requires less state on the storage side than a NAS does.

##### Storage for Shared File Access

Optionally, you can use an NFS client for files that require or expect shared access; for example:

- Monitoring applications that want to read log files
- Files that contain domain and application configuration data

LiquidVM can access only (virtual) disk drives and (virtual) network cards, which are configured by the LiquidVM launcher when creating a WLS-VE instance.

Note: | If you are using an NFS share, the communication between the NFS client and the NFS server is not secure. The NFS client authenticates itself to the NFS server by using user-provided credentials, but this traffic is not encrypted, which makes it vulnerable to security breaches. Please refer to NFS Security Measures section in the WLS-VE v1.0 Installation and Configuration Guide for details on how to work around this situation.

#### WLS-VE ISO Image Considerations

BEA recommends that you store the WLS-VE ISO image on a SAN. The ISO image is a CD drive that appears as a large file in VMware. It also differs from normal local disks because it is read-only. This implies that no one can modify it; therefore, multiple machines can have simultaneous access to the same ISO image without violating its exclusivity, and thereby reducing disk footprint.

### Planning System Capacity

How much system capacity to plan for is greatly dependent on the applications you are running on WLS-VE. This section provides information that can help you make decisions about your minimal capacity requirements as they apply to WLS-VE. However, you will need to factor in the needs of your application to fully determine the appropriate amount of disk space, number of machines, and physical memory allocation.

- Determine Physical Disk Space Requirements
- Determine the Number of Physical Machines
- Determine Physical Memory Requirements

#### Determine Physical Disk Space Requirements

The amount of physical disk space that you need to configure on the ESX server depends upon the size of your application and the amount of data you anticipate processing. At a minimum, you need to provide enough disk space for writing images when hibernating an instance of WLS-VE, which is generally an amount equal to your Java heap plus some native memory (for a large application, 300MB should be a reasonable amount of native memory, but the amount of memory you should reserve is very workload dependent). In addition, you also need to plan for database requirements and other storage needs.

In addition, LiquidVM provides a virtual local disk for each virtual machine. The local disk can be mapped to a SAN disk attached to the ESX server. You specify the size of the disk by passing the diskSize parameter as a startup option to the LiquidVM launcher. By default, the size of the local disk is specified as 1GB (1024). BEA recommends that the amount of physical storage capacity, in MB, that you have available be equal to the size of the VM plus the size of the local disk. For instructions about specifying the local disk size, see Using the Virtual Disk in WLS-VE Configuration and User Guide.

If you are using an NFS share, be sure to reserve sufficient space for the domain on the NFS server. How much data the domain needs is very application-dependent. Before taking a server into production you should check the size of the domain in a development environment and make sure you have at least that much space left on the production server. Normally, the storage space requirements for most applications running on top of WebLogic Server are modest. The storage requirements for the domain are identical for normal WLS and WLS-VE.

#### Determine the Number of Physical Machines

Determining how many physical cores your implementation requires is based upon your actual system needs; that is, how many virtual CPUs does your environment require to handle your data load? By rule, you can only have one virtual CPU per logical core; for example, a hyperthreaded, dual core hardware can support four virtual CPUs or two virtual CPUs for each hyperthreaded core; were the cores not hyperthreaded, they would each support a single virtual CPU, or a total of two virtual CPUs on the hardware. Thus, if you believe you will need 50 virtual CPUs, you need to plan for 50 physical cores, in whatever combination is most appropriate for your budget and your physical layout.

#### Determine Physical Memory Requirements

Much like disk space requirements, physical memory requirements depend significantly on the applications you are running on the machine. Because WLS-VE is available only as a 32-bit application, the maximum amount of physical memory available to the virtual machine is 4 GB. Ideally, you should plan to allow enough heap space to run your application, without making it resort to swapping or paging during processing, plus some additional memory for native application code and generated Java code. If you don't allow enough space for Java to run, you will quickly encounter out of memory exceptions and system failure.

## Downloading WLS-VE

You can download WebLogic Server Virtual Edition from the BEA Web site at `http://commerce.bea.com`.

### DVD Distribution

If you purchased your software from your local sales representative, you will find the following items in the product box:

- DVDs containing the product software for Windows and Linux
- The following printed documents:

- BEA Software License and Limited Warranty pamphlet
- Customer Support Quick Reference and Other Important Information card
- A flyer that provides a list of URLs for the online documentation for each product

### Windows and Linux Installers

You can download an installer that runs on a Windows platform or one that runs on a Linux platform. The Windows installation program enables you to install WLS-VE, configure WLS domains, and configure and start WLS-VE appliances from a Windows machine. The Linux installation program enables you to complete these tasks from a Linux machine.

Regardless of which installer you download, WLS-VE always runs directly on a hypervisor platform (see Figure 1-1).

Figure 1-1 Utilities Run on OS, WLS-VE Runs on Hypervisor

## Understanding WLS-VE Installation Directories

The following sections describe details about the WLS-VE installation program and the files and directories that the installer creates:

- The BEA Home Directory
- The WLS-VE Product Installation Directory
- The Installation Directory for the WLS-VE ISO Image
- The WLS-VE Windows Shortcuts

#### The BEA Home Directory

The BEA Home directory serves as a repository for your BEA license file and other files that facilitate any future upgrades or installation of patches. During installation of your BEA software, the WLS-VE installer prompts you to choose an existing BEA Home directory or specify a path to create a new one. If you already have a BEA Home directory (either on the local disk of the launcher machine or on an NFS server), you can choose the existing directory. If you choose to create a new directory, the installation program automatically creates it at the specified pathname.

When you run the WLS-VE installer on the launcher machine, by default, WLS-VE installs the software into a BEA Home directory on the local disk of the launcher machine. When you create a local disk on a virtual machine (VM) instance, a BEA Home directory that is local to the VM instance (`/bea`) is also created.

Note: | Optionally, you can also create your BEA Home directory on an NFS file server that is accessible to the WLS-VE installer through an NFS mount. For instructions on using an NFS file server, see the Creating and Sharing Directories section in the WLS-VE v1.0 Installation and Configuration Guide.

If the BEA Home is not on an NFS share, to update the evaluation license to a production license or to install update patches on the VM instance, you first need to install them on the local disk of the launcher machine, and then copy them to the local disk of each VM. For more information, see Copying a Production License to the Virtual Machine in the WLS-VE Configuration and User Guide and Downloading and Applying Patches.

Note: | The copy process is only necessary for installing update patches and production licenses. Non-expiring evaluation licenses are included in the WLS-VE ISO image on each WLS-VE instance.

#### Sharing the BEA Home Directory on the Launcher Machine with Other BEA Products

The BEA Home directory can be considered a central support directory for all the BEA products installed on your system. For example, if you use WLS, WLW, and WLS-VE, you can maintain a single BEA Home directory for all products on the launcher machine. However, each WLS-VE instance has its own BEA Home directory, `/bea`, by default.

#### Structure of the WLS-VE BEA Home Directory

Table 1-2 describes the files and directories in the BEA Home directory.

Table 1-2 BEA Home Directory Description
Component | Description
--- | ---
`jrockit``<version>` directory | Contains the software for the BEA JRockit JDK installed with your software. The JDK provides the Java run-time environment (JRE) for the WLS-VE configuration, startup, licensing, and installation utilities.
`logs` directory | Contains a history file of installation and uninstallation for the BEA Home directory.
`modules` directory | Contains WLS components that are referenced by the `weblogic.jar` archive file, but which are included in separate modules. The `weblogic.jar` archive refers to the components in this directory from its manifest classpath.
`tools` directory | Contains the LiquidVM Configuration Wizard and WLS-VE startup utilities.
`utils` directory | Contains installation utilities. The `utils.jar` file contains code that supports the `UpdateLicense` utility.
`weblogic`<version> | Contains the BEA WebLogic Configuration Wizard and Template Builder, the Domain Upgrade Wizard, the WebLogic Scripting Tool, and other files that are used to support the WLS-VE configuration, startup, licensing, and installation utilities.
`license.bea` file | An XML file that contains the license keys for all the BEA products installed in the BEA Home directory. Licenses are release specific. You must have a valid license file for the version of BEA products you are using. When you install WLS-VE, an non-expiring evaluation license file is installed on your system, and copied into the ISO image. By default, WLS-VE uses the evaluation license so that you can start using the software immediately. To use your software in a full-scale production environment, you must purchase a production license. For more information, see Licensing.
Note: | Do not edit the `license.bea` file manually. Doing so may cause operating problems for the currently installed BEA products, or result in problems later when BEA products are installed for maintenance upgrades.
`registry.xml` file | A registry file that contains a persistent record of all BEA products installed on the target system. This registry contains product-related information, such as version number, patch or service pack number, and location of the installation directory.
Note: | Do not edit this file manually. Doing so may cause operating problems for the currently installed BEA products, or result in installation problems when future BEA products or maintenance upgrades are installed.
For more information about the BEA registry file, see "Using the BEA Registry API" in ISV Partners' Guide at the following URL: `http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E13179_01/common/docs92/isv/detect.html`
patch_weblogic`NNN` | This directory is created when BEA patches are installed after running Smart Update, where `NNN` specifies the WLS release (e.g., 922 for 9.2 MP2).

### The WLS-VE Product Installation Directory

The product installation directory for WLS-VE contains the BEA WebLogic Configuration Wizard and Template Builder, the Domain Upgrade Wizard, and the WebLogic Scripting Tool.

During installation of your BEA software, the WLS-VE installer prompts you to choose a product installation directory. Typically, you can locate this directory below the BEA Home directory, but you can specify any name and location on your system for your product installation directory; there is no requirement that you name the directory weblogic92 or create it under the BEA Home directory.

If you are using an NFS file server, you can also locate the product directory outside the BEA Home directory as long it is accessible to the WLS-VE installation, configuration, and startup utilities through an NFS or SMB mount. For more information on using NFS shares, refer to the Creating and Sharing Directories section in the WLS-VE v1.0 Installation and Configuration Guide.

#### Structure of the WLS-VE Product Installation Directory

Table 1-3 describes the files and directories in the WLS-VE product installation directory. By default, the directory itself is named `weblogic`<version>.

Table 1-3 Product Installation Directory Structure
This directory . . . | Contains . . .
--- | ---
`beehive` | Files used to support the BEA utilities in the product installation directory.
`common` | Scripts used for setting environment attributes for the utilities and template JAR files used by the Configuration Wizard and WLST offline when creating domains.
`javelin` | A 100% Java/JSP compiler that is used by the component products for compiling.`java` and other source files generated by development tools.
`platform` | Files used to support the BEA utilities in product installation directory.
`server` | Files used to support the BEA utilities in product installation directory.
Note: | This directory contains `weblogic.jar` because the JAR file contains classes that are used to upgrade domains and to assist with the installation of patches. While `weblogic.jar` also contains WLS classes, your WLS-VE license does not support running these WLS classes (instead, a WLS-VE license enables you to run the WLS-VE classes that are in the ISO image file).
`uninstall` | Code required to uninstall the BEA Products software
`workshop` | Files used to support the BEA utilities in product installation directory.

### The Installation Directory for the WLS-VE ISO Image

The WLS-VE ISO image (`wlsve922.iso`) contains the LiquidVM and WebLogic Server classes that you use to host your business applications. Each physical machine that hosts an instance of WLS-VE needs access to this ISO image file.

During installation of your BEA software, the installer prompts you to store the ISO image in the `/wlsve_iso` directory on the local disk of the launcher machine, but you can specify any directory you wish. After the installation process, you must copy the ISO file to the physical local disk of each WLS-VE host machine, or to a SAN or NAS that can be accessed from each WLS-VE host machine. See Post-Installation Information.

### The WLS-VE Windows Shortcuts

When you install your BEA Products software as an Administrator on a Windows system, the installation program offers to creates shortcut entries on the Start Menu. You can select from the following options:

- All Users Start menu folder

Selecting this option provides all users registered on the machine with access to the installed software. However, only users with Administrator privileges can create shortcuts in the All Users folder. Therefore, if a user without Administrator privileges uses the Configuration Wizard to create domains, Start menu shortcuts to the domains are not created. In this case, users can manually create shortcuts in their local Start menu folders, if desired. Press `ALT+Y` on the keyboard to select the All Users Start Menu.

- Local user's Start menu folder

Selecting this option ensures that other users registered on this machine will not have access to the Start menu entries for this installation. Press `ALT+N` on the keyboard to select the Local User's start menu.

Note: | The installer offers to create shortcuts only if you are performing an initial installation.

The BEA Products folder that the WLS-VE installer creates (Start > All Programs > BEA Products) contains the following shortcut files:

- Tools—contains shortcuts for the following utilities:

- Configuration Wizard—Creates new WLS-VE domains or updates existing ones. See Creating WebLogic Domains Using the Configuration Wizard.
- Domain Template Builder—Guides you through the process of creating custom domain and extension templates based on existing domains. See Creating Templates Using the Domain Template Builder.
- Domain Upgrade Wizard—Upgrades a domain from a previous release of WLS (such as WLS 8.1) to WLS-VE 9.2. You do not need to upgrade domains that are currently running on WLS 9.2. See Upgrading and Promoting Domains in WLS-VE Configuration and User Guide.
- LiquidVM Configuration Wizard—Provides the WLS-VE startup utility with the information it needs to connect to VMware Virtual Center and an ESX Server host. See Configuring LiquidVM Connection Parameters in WLS-VE Configuration and User Guide.
- WebLogic Scripting Tool—A command-line scripting interface that system administrators and operators use to monitor and manage WLS-VE instances and domains. See WebLogic Scripting Tool.

- Online Documentation—provides a link to the WLS-VE v1.1 online documentation on the e-docs Web site.
- Smart Update—launches the Smart Update program, which checks for any updates available for installed BEA products, and installs the updates as required. See Installing Maintenance Updates and Service Packs.
- Uninstall BEA Products—launches the uninstallation program. For more information, see Uninstalling the Software.