Oracle BI Publisher High Availability Architecture

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15.2.2 Oracle BI Publisher High Availability Concepts

This section provides conceptual information about using Oracle BI Publisher in a high availability environment.

15.2.2.1 Oracle BI Publisher High Availability Architecture

Figure 15–12 shows an Oracle BI Publisher high availability architecture. Figure 15–12 Oracle BI Publisher High Availability Architecture In Figure 15–12 , incoming requests are received by the hardware load balancer, which routes them to WEBHOST1 or WEBHOST2 in the web tier. These hosts have Oracle HTTP Server installed. The Oracle WebLogic Server on which Oracle BI Publisher runs is installed on APPHOST1 and APPHOST2 in the application tier. The Administration Server on APPHOST2 is passive. The Administration Server can be made active on APPHOST2 if APPHOST1 becomes unavailable, as described in Chapter 3, High Availability for WebLogic Server. Oracle BI Publisher is deployed on the BI_SERVER1 and BI_ APPHOST2 APPHOST1 WLS Cluster Firewall Firewall Internet Load Balancer Administration Server Administration Server WEBHOST1 OHS - JMS - BI Publisher Repository - Reports Data - Scheduled Jobs Data - Enterprise Database Oracle RAC Database WEBHOST2 OHS BI_SERVER1 BI Publisher BI_SERVER2 BI Publisher VIP 0 VIP VIP 1 VIP 2 15-78 Oracle Fusion Middleware High Availability Guide SERVER2 managed servers on these hosts. These managed servers are configured in an Oracle WebLogic cluster that allows them to work in an active-active manner. Whole server migration is configured for the managed servers. The BI domain uses virtual hostnames as the listen addresses for the BI managed servers. You must enable VIP mapping for each of these hostnames on the two BI Machines, VIP1 on APPHOST1 and VIP2 on APPHOST2, and must correctly resolve the virtual hostnames in the network system used by the topology either by DNS Server or by hosts resolution. Section 15.1.12.21, Configuring Server Migration for the BI_SERVERn Servers provides more details on configuring server migration for the BI servers. In the data tier, shared external storage is set up to store Oracle BI Publisher Repository metadata such as record definitions, report layouts, and data models, as well as the Oracle BI Publisher JMS persistence store. An Oracle RAC database is used for reports data, and is also recommended for the enterprise database. Oracle BI Publisher supports an active-active high availability configuration. Each node acts as an independent server that shares a common repository and the scheduler database with the other Oracle BI Publisher nodes. The Oracle BI Publisher repository which contains all content, such as reports and data models is stored in the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog when BI Publisher is configured with Oracle BI EE, and it is stored on a shared file system when Oracle BI Publisher is installed by itself. The Oracle BI Publisher configuration folder must be on a shared file system. The shared repository stores the following Oracle BI Publisher artifacts: ■ Report definitions ■ Report templates ■ Data models ■ Oracle BI Publisher configuration The Scheduler database is a shared database that stores the following information: ■ Details about the reports parameters ■ Execution status ■ Execution history ■ Snapshots of previous report runs A hardware or software load balancer can be used as a front end to the Oracle BI Publisher nodes in a high availability environment. In a high availability deployment of Oracle BI Publisher: ■ Sticky sessions should be enabled for the load balancer. ■ Oracle BI Publisher depends on the WebLogic Server JMS failover mechanism. ■ All the Oracle BI Publisher instances in the cluster are independent. ■ Artifacts and configurations are stored in the shared repository, and each instance reads the repository independently.

15.2.2.1.1 Shared Files and Directories The Oracle BI Publisher shared files are the

shared repository and Scheduler database described in the previous section. Configuring High Availability for Oracle Business Intelligence and EPM 15-79

15.2.2.1.2 Cluster-Wide Configuration Changes The Configuration Folder contains all

configuration, security, and data sources that you set up with BI Publisher. When the Configuration Folder is on shared storage, any changes made will be applied to all nodes in the cluster.

15.2.2.2 Protection from Failures and Expected Behaviors