Domain home on a PV

The sample scripts demonstrate the creation of a WebLogic domain home on an existing Kubernetes PersistentVolume (PV) and PersistentVolumeClaim (PVC). The scripts also generate the domain resource YAML file, which can then be used to start the Kubernetes artifacts of the corresponding domain. Optionally, the scripts start up the domain, and WebLogic Server pods and services.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, read this document, Domain resource.

The following prerequisites must be met prior to running the create domain script:

  • Make sure the WebLogic Kubernetes Operator is running.

  • The operator requires a WebLogic image with Oracle WebLogic Server 12.2.1.3.0 with patch 29135930 applied, or Oracle WebLogic Server 12.2.1.4.0, or Oracle WebLogic Server 14.1.1.0.0. The existing WebLogic Server General Availability image, container-registry.oracle.com/middleware/weblogic:12.2.1.3, has this patch applied.

    NOTE: As of December, 2022, Oracle will continue support of WebLogic Server 12.2.1.3, for six months only, for PSUs and security patches. CPU images for WebLogic Server 12.2.1.3 will be published in the January, 2023, and April, 2023, CPU cycles.

    This sample uses General Availability (GA) images. GA images are suitable for demonstration and development purposes only where the environments are not available from the public Internet; they are not acceptable for production use. In production, you should always use CPU (patched) images from OCR or create your images using the WebLogic Image Tool (WIT) with the --recommendedPatches option. For more guidance, see Apply the Latest Patches and Updates in Securing a Production Environment for Oracle WebLogic Server.

  • Create a Kubernetes Namespace for the domain unless you intend to use the default namespace. Make sure the operator is watching the namespace. For more guidance, see Namespace management.

  • In the same Kubernetes Namespace, create the Kubernetes PersistentVolume (PV) where the domain home will be hosted, and the Kubernetes PersistentVolumeClaim (PVC) for the domain. For samples to create a PV and PVC, see Create sample PV and PVC. By default, the create-domain.sh script creates a domain with the domainUID set to domain1 and expects the PVC domain1-weblogic-sample-pvc to be present. You can create domain1-weblogic-sample-pvc using create-pv-pvc.sh with an inputs file that has the domainUID set to domain1.

  • Create the Kubernetes Secrets username and password of the administrative account in the same Kubernetes Namespace as the domain.

Please note the following important considerations about using persistent storage.

There are a number of different Kubernetes storage providers that can be used to create persistent volumes. Depending on which variant and version of Kubernetes you are using, there will be different steps required to create persistent volumes. You must use a storage provider that supports the ReadWriteMany option.

Many storage providers will create a file system on the persistent volume which is owned by the root user. In those cases, you will need to update the file permissions or ownership so that the oracle user (uid 1000) that is used in the standard WebLogic Server images can write to the file system in the persistent volume.

This sample will automatically set the owner of all files on the persistent volume to uid 1000. If you want to change that behavior, please edit kubernetes/samples/scripts/create-weblogic-domain/domain-home-on-pv/create-domain-job-template.yaml and edit or remove the initContainer section.

In some variants of Kubernetes (for example OpenShift), you may also need to configure your pods to run with user 1000 to make sure that the WebLogic processes can access the file system on the persistent volume.

Use the script to create a domain

Make a copy of the create-domain-inputs.yaml file, and run the create script, pointing it at your inputs file and an output directory:

$ ./create-domain.sh \
  -i create-domain-inputs.yaml \
  -o /<path to output-directory>

The create-domain.sh script and its inputs file are for demonstration purposes only; its contents and the domain resource file that it generates for you might change without notice. In production, we strongly recommend that you use the WebLogic Image Tool and WebLogic Deploy Tooling (when applicable), and directly work with domain resource files instead.

The script will perform the following steps:

  • Create a directory for the generated Kubernetes YAML files for this domain if it does not already exist. The pathname is /<path to output-directory>/weblogic-domains/<domainUID>. If the directory already exists, then its contents must be removed before using this script.
  • Create a Kubernetes Job that will start up a utility WebLogic Server container and run offline WLST scripts, or WebLogic Deploy Tooling (WDT) scripts, to create the domain on the shared storage.
  • Run and wait for the job to finish.
  • Create a Kubernetes domain resource YAML file, domain.yaml, in the directory that was created previously. This YAML file can be used to create the Kubernetes resource using the kubectl create -f or kubectl apply -f command:
$ kubectl apply -f /<path to output-directory>/weblogic-domains/<domainUID>/domain.yaml
  • Create a convenient utility script, delete-domain-job.yaml, to clean up the domain home created by the create script.

As a convenience, using the -e option, the script can optionally create the domain object, which in turn results in the creation of the corresponding WebLogic Server pods and services as well.

The usage of the create script is as follows:

$ sh create-domain.sh -h
usage: create-domain.sh -o dir -i file [-e] [-v] [-h]
  -i Parameter inputs file, must be specified.
  -o Output directory for the generated YAML files, must be specified.
  -e Also create the resources in the generated YAML files, optional.
  -v Validate the existence of persistentVolumeClaim, optional.
  -h Help

If you copy the sample scripts to a different location, make sure that you copy everything in the <weblogic-kubernetes-operator-project>/kubernetes/samples/scripts directory together into the target directory, maintaining the original directory hierarchy.

The default domain created by the script has the following characteristics:

  • An Administration Server named admin-server listening on port 7001.
  • A dynamic cluster named cluster-1 of size 5.
  • Two Managed Servers, named managed-server1 and managed-server2, listening on port 8001.
  • Log files that are located in /shared/logs/<domainUID>.
  • No applications deployed.
  • No data sources or JMS resources.
  • A T3 channel.

The domain creation inputs can be customized by editing create-domain-inputs.yaml.

Configuration parameters

The following parameters can be provided in the inputs file.

Parameter Definition Default
adminPort Port number of the Administration Server inside the Kubernetes cluster. 7001
adminNodePort Port number of the Administration Server outside the Kubernetes cluster. 30701
adminServerName Name of the Administration Server. admin-server
clusterName Name of the WebLogic cluster instance to generate for the domain. cluster-1
configuredManagedServerCount Number of Managed Server instances to generate for the domain. 5
createDomainFilesDir Directory on the host machine to locate all the files to create a WebLogic domain, including the script that is specified in the createDomainScriptName property. By default, this directory is set to the relative path wlst, and the create script will use the built-in WLST offline scripts in the wlst directory to create the WebLogic domain. It can also be set to the relative path wdt, and then the built-in WDT scripts will be used instead. An absolute path is also supported to point to an arbitrary directory in the file system. The built-in scripts can be replaced by the user-provided scripts or model files as long as those files are in the specified directory. Files in this directory are put into a Kubernetes ConfigMap, which in turn is mounted to the createDomainScriptsMountPath, so that the Kubernetes Pod can use the scripts and supporting files to create a domain home. wlst
createDomainScriptsMountPath Mount path where the create domain scripts are located inside a pod. The create-domain.sh script creates a Kubernetes Job to run the script (specified in the createDomainScriptName property) in a Kubernetes Pod to create a domain home. Files in the createDomainFilesDir directory are mounted to this location in the pod, so that the Kubernetes Pod can use the scripts and supporting files to create a domain home. /u01/weblogic
createDomainScriptName Script that the create domain script uses to create a WebLogic domain. The create-domain.sh script creates a Kubernetes Job to run this script to create a domain home. The script is located in the in-pod directory that is specified in the createDomainScriptsMountPath property. If you need to provide your own scripts to create the domain home, instead of using the built-it scripts, you must use this property to set the name of the script that you want the create domain job to run. create-domain-job.sh
domainHome Home directory of the WebLogic domain. If not specified, the value is derived from the domainUID as /shared/domains/<domainUID>. /shared/domains/domain1
domainPVMountPath Mount path of the domain persistent volume. /shared
domainUID Unique ID that will be used to identify this particular domain. Used as the name of the generated WebLogic domain as well as the name of the Domain. This ID must be unique across all domains in a Kubernetes cluster. This ID cannot contain any character that is not valid in a Kubernetes Service name. domain1
exposeAdminNodePort Boolean indicating if the Administration Server is exposed outside of the Kubernetes cluster. false
exposeAdminT3Channel Boolean indicating if the T3 administrative channel is exposed outside the Kubernetes cluster. false
httpAccessLogInLogHome Boolean indicating if server HTTP access log files should be written to the same directory as logHome. Otherwise, server HTTP access log files will be written to the directory specified in the WebLogic domain home configuration. true
image WebLogic Server image. The operator requires either Oracle WebLogic Server 12.2.1.3.0 with patch 29135930 applied, or Oracle WebLogic Server 12.2.1.4.0, or Oracle WebLogic Server 14.1.1.0.0. The existing WebLogic Server General Availability (GA) image, container-registry.oracle.com/middleware/weblogic:12.2.1.3, has this patch applied. NOTE: The example base images are GA images that are suitable for demonstration and development purposes only where the environments are not available from the public Internet; they are not acceptable for production use. In production, you should always use CPU (patched) images from OCR or create your images using the WebLogic Image Tool (WIT) with the --recommendedPatches option. For details on how to obtain or create the image, see WebLogic images. container-registry.oracle.com/middleware/weblogic:12.2.1.3
imagePullPolicy WebLogic Server image pull policy. Legal values are IfNotPresent, Always, or Never IfNotPresent
imagePullSecretName Name of the Kubernetes Secret to access the container registry to pull the WebLogic Server image. The presence of the secret will be validated when this parameter is specified
includeServerOutInPodLog Boolean indicating whether to include the server .out in the pod’s stdout. true
initialManagedServerReplicas Number of Managed Servers to start initially for the domain. 2
javaOptions Java options for starting the Administration Server and Managed Servers. A Java option can have references to one or more of the following pre-defined variables to obtain WebLogic domain information: $(DOMAIN_NAME), $(DOMAIN_HOME), $(ADMIN_NAME), $(ADMIN_PORT), and $(SERVER_NAME). -Dweblogic.StdoutDebugEnabled=false
logHome The in-pod location for domain log, server logs, server out, introspector out, Node Manager log, and server HTTP access log files. If not specified, the value is derived from the domainUID as /shared/logs/<domainUID>. /shared/logs/domain1
managedServerNameBase Base string used to generate Managed Server names. managed-server
managedServerPort Port number for each Managed Server. 8001
namespace Kubernetes Namespace in which to create the domain. default
persistentVolumeClaimName Name of the persistent volume claim. If not specified, the value is derived from the domainUID as <domainUID>-weblogic-sample-pvc domain1-weblogic-sample-pvc
productionModeEnabled Boolean indicating if production mode is enabled for the domain. true
serverStartPolicy Determines which WebLogic Servers will be started. Legal values are Never, IfNeeded, AdminOnly. IfNeeded
t3ChannelPort Port for the T3 channel of the network access point. 30012
t3PublicAddress Public address for the T3 channel. This should be set to the public address of the Kubernetes cluster. This would typically be a load balancer address. For development environments only, in a single server (all-in-one) Kubernetes Deployment, this may be set to the address of the master, or at the very least, it must be set to the address of one of the worker nodes. If not provided, the script will attempt to set it to the IP address of the Kubernetes cluster.
weblogicCredentialsSecretName Name of the Kubernetes Secret for the Administration Server user name and password. If not specified, the value is derived from the domainUID as <domainUID>-weblogic-credentials. domain1-weblogic-credentials
serverPodCpuRequest, serverPodMemoryRequest, serverPodCpuCLimit, serverPodMemoryLimit The maximum amount of compute resources allowed, and minimum amount of compute resources required, for each server pod. Please refer to the Kubernetes documentation on Managing Compute Resources for Containers for details. Resource requests and resource limits are not specified.

Note that the names of the Kubernetes resources in the generated YAML files may be formed with the value of some of the properties specified in the create-inputs.yaml file. Those properties include the adminServerName, clusterName, and managedServerNameBase. If those values contain any characters that are invalid in a Kubernetes Service name, those characters are converted to valid values in the generated YAML files. For example, an uppercase letter is converted to a lowercase letter and an underscore ("_") is converted to a hyphen ("-").

The sample demonstrates how to create a WebLogic domain home and associated Kubernetes resources for a domain that only has one cluster. In addition, the sample provides the capability for users to supply their own scripts to create the domain home for other use cases. The generated domain resource YAML file could also be modified to cover more use cases.

Verify the results

The create script will verify that the domain was created, and will report failure if there was any error. However, it may be desirable to manually verify the domain, even if just to gain familiarity with the various Kubernetes objects that were created by the script.

Note that the following example results use the default Kubernetes Namespace. If you are using a different namespace, you need to replace NAMESPACE in the example kubectl commands with the actual Kubernetes Namespace.

Generated YAML files with the default inputs

The content of the generated domain.yaml:

# Copyright (c) 2017, 2021, Oracle and/or its affiliates.
# Licensed under the Universal Permissive License v 1.0 as shown at https://oss.oracle.com/licenses/upl.
#
# This is an example of how to define a Domain resource.
#
apiVersion: "weblogic.oracle/v9"
kind: Domain
metadata:
  name: domain1
  namespace: default
  labels:
    weblogic.domainUID: domain1
spec:
  # The WebLogic Domain Home
  domainHome: /shared/domains/domain1
  # Set domain home type to PersistentVolume for domain-in-pv, Image for domain-in-image, or FromModel for model-in-image
  domainHomeSourceType: PersistentVolume
  # The WebLogic Server image that the operator uses to start the domain
  image: "container-registry.oracle.com/middleware/weblogic:12.2.1.4"
  # imagePullPolicy defaults to "Always" if image version is :latest
  imagePullPolicy: "IfNotPresent"
  # Identify which Secret contains the credentials for pulling an image
  #imagePullSecrets:
  #- name:
  # Identify which Secret contains the WebLogic Admin credentials (note that there is an example of
  # how to create that Secret at the end of this file)
  webLogicCredentialsSecret:
    name: domain1-weblogic-credentials
  # Whether to include the server out file into the pod's stdout, default is true
  includeServerOutInPodLog: true
  # Whether to enable log home
  logHomeEnabled: true
  # The in-pod name location for domain log, server logs, server out, introspector out, and Node Manager log files
  logHome: /shared/logs/domain1
  # serverStartPolicy legal values are "Never", "IfNeeded", or "AdminOnly"
  # This determines which WebLogic Servers the operator will start up when it discovers this Domain
  # - "Never" will not start any server in the domain
  # - "AdminOnly" will start up only the administration server (no managed servers will be started)
  # - "IfNeeded" will start all non-clustered servers, including the administration server and clustered servers up to the replica count
  serverStartPolicy: IfNeeded
  serverPod:
    # an (optional) list of environment variable to be set on the servers
    env:
    - name: JAVA_OPTIONS
      value: "-Dweblogic.StdoutDebugEnabled=false"
    - name: USER_MEM_ARGS
      value: "-Djava.security.egd=file:/dev/./urandom "
    volumes:
    - name: weblogic-domain-storage-volume
      persistentVolumeClaim:
        claimName: domain1-weblogic-sample-pvc
    volumeMounts:
    - mountPath: /shared
      name: weblogic-domain-storage-volume
  # adminServer is used to configure the desired behavior for starting the administration server.
  # adminServer:
    # adminService:
    #   channels:
    # The Admin Server's NodePort
    #    - channelName: default
    #      nodePort: 30701
    # Uncomment to export the T3Channel as a service
    #    - channelName: T3Channel
  # clusters is used to configure the desired behavior for starting member servers of a cluster.
  # If you use this entry, then the rules will be applied to ALL servers that are members of the named clusters.
  clusters:
  - clusterName: cluster-1
    replicas: 2
  # The number of managed servers to start for unlisted clusters
  # replicas: 1

Verify the domain

To confirm that the domain was created, use this command:

$ kubectl describe domain DOMAINUID -n NAMESPACE

Replace DOMAINUID with the domainUID and NAMESPACE with the actual namespace.

Here is an example of the output of this command:

$ kubectl describe domain domain1
Name:         domain1
Namespace:    default
Labels:       weblogic.domainUID=domain1
Annotations:  kubectl.kubernetes.io/last-applied-configuration={"apiVersion":"weblogic.oracle/v9","kind":"Domain","metadata":{"annotations":{},"labels":{"weblogic.domainUID":"domain1",...
API Version:  weblogic.oracle/v9
Kind:         Domain
Metadata:
  Cluster Name:        
  Creation Timestamp:  2019-01-10T14:50:52Z
  Generation:          1
  Resource Version:    3700284
  Self Link:           /apis/weblogic.oracle/v9/namespaces/default/domains/domain1
  UID:                 2023ae0a-14e7-11e9-b751-fa163e855ac8
Spec:
  Admin Server:
    Server Pod:
      Annotations:
      Container Security Context:
      Env:
      Labels:
      Liveness Probe:
      Node Selector:
      Pod Security Context:
      Readiness Probe:
      Resources:
        Limits:
        Requests:
      Volume Mounts:
      Volumes:
    Server Service:
      Annotations:
      Labels:
    Server Start State:  RUNNING
  Clusters:
    Cluster Name:  cluster-1
    Cluster Service:
      Annotations:
      Labels:
    Replicas:  2
    Server Pod:
      Annotations:
      Container Security Context:
      Env:
      Labels:
      Liveness Probe:
      Node Selector:
      Pod Security Context:
      Readiness Probe:
      Resources:
        Limits:
        Requests:
      Volume Mounts:
      Volumes:
    Server Service:
      Annotations:
      Labels:
    Server Start State:           RUNNING
  Domain Home:                    /shared/domains/domain1
  Domain Home In Image:           false
  Image:                          container-registry.oracle.com/middleware/weblogic:12.2.1.4
  Image Pull Policy:              IfNotPresent
  Include Server Out In Pod Log:  true
  Log Home:                       /shared/logs/domain1
  Log Home Enabled:               true
  Managed Servers:
  Server Pod:
    Annotations:
    Container Security Context:
    Env:
      Name:   JAVA_OPTIONS
      Value:  -Dweblogic.StdoutDebugEnabled=false
      Name:   USER_MEM_ARGS
      Value:  -Xms64m -Xmx256m
    Labels:
    Liveness Probe:
    Node Selector:
    Pod Security Context:
    Readiness Probe:
    Resources:
      Limits:
      Requests:
    Volume Mounts:
      Mount Path:  /shared
      Name:        weblogic-domain-storage-volume
    Volumes:
      Name:  weblogic-domain-storage-volume
      Persistent Volume Claim:
        Claim Name:  domain1-weblogic-sample-pvc
  Server Service:
    Annotations:
    Labels:
  Server Start Policy:  IfNeeded
  Web Logic Credentials Secret:
    Name:  domain1-weblogic-credentials
Status:
  Conditions:
    Last Transition Time:  2019-01-10T14:52:33.878Z
    Reason:                ServersReady
    Status:                True
    Type:                  Available
  Servers:
    Health:
      Activation Time:  2019-01-10T14:52:07.351Z
      Overall Health:   ok
      Subsystems:
    Node Name:     slc16ffk
    Server Name:   admin-server
    State:         RUNNING
    Cluster Name:  cluster-1
    Health:
      Activation Time:  2019-01-10T14:53:30.352Z
      Overall Health:   ok
      Subsystems:
    Node Name:     slc16ffk
    Server Name:   managed-server1
    State:         RUNNING
    Cluster Name:  cluster-1
    Health:
      Activation Time:  2019-01-10T14:53:26.503Z
      Overall Health:   ok
      Subsystems:
    Node Name:    slc16ffk
    Server Name:  managed-server2
    State:        RUNNING
  Start Time:     2019-01-10T14:50:52.104Z
Events:           <none>

In the Status section of the output, the available servers and clusters are listed. Note that if this command is issued very soon after the script finishes, there may be no servers available yet, or perhaps only the Administration Server but no Managed Servers. The operator will start up the Administration Server first and wait for it to become ready before starting the Managed Servers.

Verify the pods

Use the following command to see the pods running the servers:

$ kubectl get pods -n NAMESPACE

Here is an example of the output of this command:

$ kubectl get pods
NAME                                         READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
domain1-admin-server                         1/1       Running   0          1m
domain1-managed-server1                      1/1       Running   0          8m
domain1-managed-server2                      1/1       Running   0          8m

Verify the services

Use the following command to see the services for the domain:

$ kubectl get services -n NAMESPACE

Here is an example of the output of this command:

$ kubectl get services
NAME                                        TYPE        CLUSTER-IP       EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)           AGE
domain1-admin-server                        ClusterIP   10.96.206.134    <none>        7001/TCP          23m
domain1-admin-server-ext                    NodePort    10.107.164.241   <none>        30012:30012/TCP   22m
domain1-cluster-cluster-1                   ClusterIP   10.109.133.168   <none>        8001/TCP          22m
domain1-managed-server1                     ClusterIP   None             <none>        8001/TCP          22m
domain1-managed-server2                     ClusterIP   None             <none>        8001/TCP          22m

Delete the generated domain home

Sometimes in production, but most likely in testing environments, you might want to remove the domain home that is generated using the create-domain.sh script. Do this by running the generated delete domain job script in the /<path to output-directory>/weblogic-domains/<domainUID> directory.

$ kubectl create -f delete-domain-job.yaml

Troubleshooting

Message: status on iteration 20 of 20 pod domain1-create-weblogic-sample-domain-job-4qwt2 status is Pending The create domain job is not showing status completed after waiting 300 seconds.
The most likely cause is related to the value of persistentVolumeClaimName, defined in domain-home-on-pv/create-domain-inputs.yaml.
To determine if this is the problem:

* Execute `kubectl get all --all-namespaces` to find the name of the `create-weblogic-sample-domain-job`.
* Execute  `kubectl describe pod <name-of-create-weblogic-sample-domain-job>` to see if there is an event that has text similar to `persistentvolumeclaim "domain1-weblogic-sample-pvc" not found`.
* Find the name of the PVC that was created by executing [create-pv-pvc.sh](https://github.com/oracle/weblogic-kubernetes-operator/blob/release/4.0/kubernetes/samples/scripts/create-weblogic-domain-pv-pvc/create-pv-pvc.sh), using `kubectl describe pvc`. It is likely to be `weblogic-sample-pvc`.
* Change the value of `persistentVolumeClaimName` to match the name created when you executed [create-pv-pvc.sh](https://github.com/oracle/weblogic-kubernetes-operator/blob/release/4.0/kubernetes/samples/scripts/create-weblogic-domain-pv-pvc/create-pv-pvc.sh).
* Rerun the `create-domain.sh` script with the same arguments as you did before.
* Verify that the operator is deployed. Use the command:
$ kubectl  get all --all-namespaces

Look for lines similar to:

weblogic-operator1   pod/weblogic-operator-

If you do not find something similar in the output, the WebLogic Kubernetes Operator might not have been installed completely. Review the operator installation instructions.

Message: ERROR: Unable to create folder /shared/domains
The most common cause is a poor choice of value for weblogicDomainStoragePath in the input file used when you executed:

$ create-pv-pvc.sh

You should delete the resources for your sample domain, correct the value in that file, and rerun the commands to create the PV/PVC and the credential before you attempt to rerun:

$ create-domain.sh

A correct value for weblogicDomainStoragePath will meet the following requirements:

  • Must be the name of a directory.
  • The directory must be world writable.

Optionally, follow these steps to tighten permissions on the named directory after you run the sample the first time:

  • Become the root user.
  • ls -nd $value-of-weblogicDomainStoragePath
    • Note the values of the third and fourth field of the output.
  • chown $third-field:$fourth-field $value-of-weblogicDomainStoragePath
  • chmod 755 $value-of-weblogicDomainStoragePath
  • Return to your normal user ID.

Message: ERROR: The create domain job will not overwrite an existing domain. The domain folder /shared/domains/domain1 already exists
You will see this message if the directory domains/domain1 exists in the directory named as the value of weblogicDomainStoragePath in create-pv-pvc-inputs.yaml. For example, if the value of weblogicDomainStoragePath is /tmp/wls-op-4-k8s, you would need to remove (or move) /tmp/wls-op-4-k8s/domains/domain1.