WebLogic Feature Pack and listen ports: what you should know
WebLogic Feature Pack helps you consolidate servers in ways that are unprecedented when using WebLogic by itself, specifically:
- With WebLogic Feature Pack, you can run multiple versions of WebLogic on the same application node.
- WebLogic Feature Pack can deploy multiple WebLogic domains—whether configured for the same WebLogic version or different versions—on the same application node.
The next illustration shows how a tier might be configured to run three versions of WebLogic and several services. Which services are actually deployed on any node at any time is determined by your SLAs—the key here is that the nodes in the managed server tier are capable of running all of your services, in any combination (as required by your SLAs and as your deployment constraints allow—more about these later in the main article).
All of this multiplicity has implications for how you assign listen port numbers to your WebLogic domains.
WebLogic ports
Each WebLogic domain uses ports for several kinds of connections. The two ports I am concerned with for this discussion are the listen port for the domain and the node manager port.
Listen port for the domain
In a standard WebLogic implementation you can use different ports for the admin server, each managed server, and the cluster (when applicable) in a WebLogic domain. WebLogic Feature Pack, however, requires that each domain use a single listen port.
- Make sure you assign the same listen port number across your WebLogic domain.
- Make sure you don't use the same listen port for more than one domain within your Cassatt Active Response environment.
If you use https listen ports, follow the same rules as you followed for the port on which the domain is running.
Node manager listen ports
Each WebLogic version supports one, and only one, instance of the node manager—with one port—on an application node at one time. For that reason, you need to follow two rules when assigning node manager port numbers:
- For each domain running the same version of WebLogic, assign the same node manager port number.
- Do not re-use this node manager port number for domains running other versions of WebLogic. (They each need their own node manager port number.)
WebLogic Feature Pack enforces both of these node manager port compatibility rules. Nonetheless, it is most efficient to track node manager port numbers and avoid errors during service configuration.
An easy naming convention, and an easy way to track node manager port numbers, is to replace the last three digits with the WebLogic Server version and service pack /maintenance pack number. For example, for a domain that uses WebLogic Server version 8.1, service pack 3 (SP3), assign 5813 as the node manager port. The next illustration shows several WebLogic services that use various versions of WebLogic, and how you would assign port numbers using this numbering scheme.
WebLogic 9.2: If you are not using SSL, you have to change the SecureListener value from true to false in the nodemanager.properties file. Otherwise, your domains may not work as expected. For more information on use of the nodemanager.properties file in WebLogic 9.2, see Reviewing nodemanager.properties