[Editor Update May 21, 2008:  Nilesh has moved on to another team within Oracle and, sadly, is no longer an

active contributor to this blog.  Feel free to direct any questions

about his posted articles directly to Steven Chan, instead.]


Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 integrates many technology stack components with each other.  These components communicate with each other via a large number of ports, and preventing conflicts between port settings for various components can be a major deployment and management task.  For E-Business Suite sysadmins, this task is simplified by the use of port pools.  Understanding how port pools work is a key part of managing multiple E-Business Suite instances on the same physical server.

What’s a Port Pool?

Oracle Applications uses the concept of a port pool.  A port pool is a preconfigured set of unique port assignments for every E-Business Suite technology stack component that requires network connectivity. 

If you have multiple Release 12 environments on the same machine, you can configure each of them to use a different port pool, ensuring that these two environments can coexist without conflicts.  The screenshot above shows a scenario where the sysadmin is selecting Port Pool 14.

How are Port Pools Created?

At the time of installation the Rapid Install Wizard allows sysadmins to select the port pool that the environment will use.  Underlying the use of port pools is a mechanism for:

• Determining a default base value for each type of port

• Handling formatted values, which often contain multiple ports or a range of ports

• Determining a unique value for each pool

The net result of this is that there are 100 different port pools which are guaranteed to contain non-overlapping values.  Port starting values are preset, but you can specify the increment by selecting a number from the pull-down list. This increment will be added to each pre-set port number.

Selecting a Port Pool

The default value of the Port Pool set is zero, but you can customize it by selecting another value from the drop-down list in the Port Pool field.  For example, there are 100 port pool selections (0 TO 99).  If you select an increment of 3, the default values will increase by that value. The Database Port (1521) becomes 1524, the RPC Port (1626) becomes 1629, and so on.

Preventing Conflicts with Other Software

You also can add an extra level of sophistication by specifying individual port values to meet particular site-specific requirements, over and above the basic use of the Port Pool mechanism described above. For example, you might wish to avoid using a particular port for some reason, perhaps because it’s already assigned to other software already installed on the server. 

Comparing Port Assignments from Two Different Port Pools

The table below lists ports required for different components, comparing the default ports assigned using Port Pool 0 with new port numbers assigned after selecting Port Pool 4.

Sr. No	Components used this port	Default port (Port Pool 0)	New port value with Port Pool=4
1	Database Port	1521	1525
2	RPC Port	1626	1630
3	Web SSL Port	4443	4447
4	ONS Local Port	6100	6104
5	ONS Remote Port	6200	6204
6	ONS Request Port	6500	6504
7	Web Listener Port	8000	8004
8	Active Port	8000	8004
9	Forms Port	9000	9004
10	Metrics Server Port	9100	9104
11	Metrics Server Request Port	9200	9204
12	JTF Fulfillment Port	9300	9304
13	MCSA Server Port	10200-10205	10224-10229
14	MCSA Telnet Server Port	10200,10202,10204	10224,10226,10228
15	MCSA Dispatcher Port	10800	10812
16	Java Object Cache Port	12345	12349
17	OC4J JMS Port Range for Oacore	23000-23004	23020-23024
18	OC4J JMS Port Range for Forms	23500-23504	23520-23524
19	OC4J JMS Port Range for Home	24000-24004	24020-24024
20	OC4J JMS Port Range for Home	24500-24504	24520-24524
21	OC4J AJP Port Range for Oacore	21500-21504	21520-21524
22	OC4J AJP Port Range for Forms	22000-22004	22020-22024
23	OC4J AJP Port Range for Home	22500-22504	22520-22524
24	OC4J AJP Port Range for Home	25000-25004	25020-25024
25	OC4J RMI Port Range for Oacore	20000-20004	20020-20024
26	OC4J RMI Port Range for Forms	20500-20504	20520-20524
27	OC4J RMI Port Range for Home	21000-21004	21020-21024
28	OC4J RMI Port Range for Home	25000-25504	25520-25524
29	DB ONS Local Port	6300	6304
30	DB ONS Remote Port	6400	6404