One of the challenges an IT manager faces today is managing complex application configurations from development to production. This becomes a monster challenge with the proliferation of environments with multiple application and database tier nodes.

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i and 12 provide flexibility in laying out file systems via a Shared File System option. A Shared File System stores application tier files on a shared disk storage that can be accessed by multiple application tier nodes. Shared File Systems have the potential to lower your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by reducing your maintenance and hardware requirements.

Note: Shared File System is  not supported on MS Windows platform

New Features in E-Business Suite R12

Release 12 Shared File System configurations allow several deployment options. Some of the key features include:
  • The ability to have multiple nodes running each of the following service types:
    • Forms
    • Web – in a load balancing configured option
    • Concurrent Processing (Batch) – in a Parallel Concurrent Processing configured option
  • Read-only node implementation for Forms, Web, Concurrent processing
In addition, a new configuration option introduced in Release 12 has the potential to save significant time and resources for an Applications DBA:  the ability to share applications tier file systems across multiple database instances.

Sharing Applications Tier File Systems Across Multiple Database Instances

Release 12 customers can now install and configure the application tier file system on a central machine that is used by two or more database instances. This configuration option is useful in cases where you would like your test and development environments to share the same applications tier file system. 

Shared File System across DB:


Minimum Requirements
  1. This option is only valid for the Applications tier file system and not for the database tier file system

  2. All the database instances are patched up to the same level
References

For a walkthrough and other details required for this configuration and
deployment option,  see: [Editor: Sharing application tier file systems between multiple environments has the potential to reduce your overhead but is the IT equivalent of placing all of your eggs in a single basket.  If the shared file system goes down, multiple Apps environments are impacted.  Accordingly, prudent system administrators should put backup and recovery procedures in place for shared servers.]

Related Articles