We are delighted to announce the release of Oracle WebLogic Server (WLS) on the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Marketplace. This offer facilitates the deployment of Enterprise WebLogic applications to AKS.
The WebLogic on AKS Marketplace offer lets you embrace cloud computing by providing greater choice and flexibility for deploying your WLS domains and applications. The offer leverages the WebLogic Kubernetes ToolKit to automate the provisioning of WebLogic and Azure resources so that you can easily move WLS workloads to AKS. The automatically provisioned resources include an AKS cluster, the WebLogic Kubernetes Operator, WLS Docker images, and the Azure Container Registry (ACR). It is possible to use an existing AKS cluster or ACR instance with the offer if desired. The offer also supports configuring load balancing with Azure App Gateway or the Azure Load Balancer, DNS configuration, SSL/TLS configuration, easing database connectivity, publishing metrics to Azure Monitor as well as mounting Azure Files as Kubernetes Persistent Volumes.
After the offer performs provisioning and configuration of these resources, you can focus on deploying your WLS application to AKS, using DevOps tools with the WebLogic Kubernetes ToolKit. Find detailed documentation about WebLogic on AKS Marketplace in the WebLogic Kubernetes Operator documentation.
The WebLogic on AKS Marketplace offer integrates with the WebLogic Kubernetes ToolKit to automate the lifecycle management of WebLogic domains in AKS. The WebLogic Kubernetes ToolKit lets users migrate their existing domains and applications, create images containing applications, deploy them to Kubernetes, monitor and manage them, persist logs to logging services, and automate patching operations and application updates. The tools in the ToolKit are:
- WebLogic Kubernetes Operator – for management
- WebLogic Deploy Tooling – for migration and configuration
- WebLogic Image Tool – for image creation and patching
- WebLogic Monitoring Exporter – for monitoring in Prometheus
- WebLogic Logging Exporter – for logging in the Elastic Stack
The WebLogic Kubernetes Operator contains built-in knowledge about how to perform lifecycle operations on a WebLogic Server domain. Some of the operations performed by the operator are:
- Provisioning a WebLogic Server domain
- Managing WebLogic Server life cycle
- Updating domains and applications
- Scaling and shrinking WebLogic Server clusters
- Securing configurations by defining RBAC roles
- Creating Kubernetes services for communication between pods, and for load balancing requests across pods
WebLogic on AKS Marketplace automatically provisions the WebLogic Kubernetes Operator to the AKS cluster to facilitate the provisioning and lifecycle management of the WebLogic domain and application in AKS. To learn more about the WebLogic Kubernetes Operator you will find documentation WebLogic Kubernetes Operator and a sample of WebLogic on AKS.
The WebLogic Deploy Tooling (WDT) makes the migration WLS domains and applications into WLS on AKS easy. WDT creates a declarative, metadata model that describes the domain, applications, and the resources used by the applications. This metadata model makes it easy to provision, deploy, and perform domain configuration lifecycle operations in a repeatable fashion. You will find the documentation and samples in the WebLogic Deploy Tooling documentation GitHub project. The blog Make WebLogic Domain Provisioning and Deployment Easy! walks you through a complete sample.
The WebLogic Image Tool is an open-source tool that lets you automate building, patching, and updating your WebLogic Server Docker images, including your own customized images. After creating your patched WebLogic Server images, you can push them to the Azure Container Registry instance on Azure. Find the WebLogic Image Tool’s GitHub project. For more detailed information, read the blog Automate WebLogic Image Building and Patching.
WebLogic on AKS Marketplace supports the Model in Image domain home source type (pattern). The Model in Image pattern enables creating WebLogic Server Kubernetes configurations from Docker images that contain WDT model files and application archives. Using the WebLogic Image Tool, you generate a Docker image that contains the WebLogic binaries, the WDT model file, and the application archive for the Operator to retrieve before running the servers in Kubernetes pods, see Choose a Domain Home Source Type.
WebLogic on AKS Marketplace automatically provisions an Azure Application Gateway instance as the ingress controller for your WebLogic Server instances. This Application Gateway is pre-configured for end-to-end-SSL with TLS termination at the gateway using the provided SSL certificate and load balances across your cluster, see Overview of TLS termination and end to end TLS with Application Gateway. AKS Marketplace will create ingress path routings rules so that you can automatically connect to the WebLogic Administration Console or the WebLogic Remote Console to monitor your WebLogic domains and applications. WebLogic on AKS Marketplace enables you to provision a custom DNS name for the WebLogic Server Administration Console with DNS Configuration blade. To learn more about the WebLogic Remote Console read the blog The New WebLogic Remote Console and see the WebLogic Remote Console GitHub project.
WebLogic on AKS Marketplace Database blade enables you to automatically configure WLS Data Sources to connect to an existing database. You specify the configuration details to connect to any of the following database types:
- Oracle Database
- Azure Database for PostgreSQL
- Azure SQL
- Other
See the documentation to learn more about the details you need to specify so that your WebLogic Server instances can connect to an existing database.
Monitor the health of your deployments and resources through Container insights. Container insights gives you performance visibility by collecting memory and processor metrics from controllers, nodes, and containers that are available in Kubernetes through the Metrics API. The WebLogic Monitoring Exporter allows you to export WebLogic Server runtime metrics directly to Prometheus and through the integration between Container insights and Prometheus you can view WLS application and workload metrics and create custom alerts, dashboards, and detailed analysis. For a detailed end-to-end sample of how to use and deploy the WebLogic Monitoring Exporter see the documentation under the GitHub project. A WebLogic cluster can be scaled based on WebLogic runtime metrics by creating rules in Prometheus. If you have interest in a sample on how to auto scale WebLogic clusters running in Kubernetes please read the blog Using Prometheus to Automatically Scale WebLogic Clusters on Kubernetes.
If you are interested in learning more about Azure Kubernetes Service, see the documentation Azure Kubernetes Service. The WebLogic Server on AKS Marketplace offer can be found here. Our future plans include the ability of users to bring their own domain configuration, automatically provision the WebLogic Monitoring Exporter to export WebLogic metrics to Container insights, supporting automated patterns for updates to applications and WebLogic domain configuration. If you want to engage directly with the engineering team developing the offer, please fill out the short survey and we’ll get in touch with you. We hope you find this information useful and look forward to your feedback.