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Announcement
June 10, 2019
Automate WebLogic image building and patching!
We are pleased to announce the release of the WebLogic Image Tool. The WebLogic Image Tool is an open source tool that allows you to automate building, patching, and updating your WebLogic Server Docker images, including your own customized images. This tool can be scripted and used in CI/CD processes. Find the WebLogic Image Tool GitHub project at https://github.com/oracle/weblogic-image-tool.
There are three major use cases for this tool:
- Create a customized WebLogic Server Docker image where the user can choose:
- The OS base image (e.g. Oracle Linux 7.5).
- The version of Java (e.g. 8u202).
- The version of WebLogic Server or Fusion Middleware Infrastructure (FMW Infrastructure) installer (e.g. 12.1.3, 12.2.1.3).
- A specific Patch Set Update (PSU).
- One or more interim or “one-off” patches.
- Patch a base install image of WebLogic or FMW Infrastructure.
- Patch and build a domain image of WebLogic or FMW Infrastructure using a WebLogic Deploy Tool model.
Using the Image tool, you can incorporate the use cases above into automated processes for patching all of your WebLogic infrastructure and applications running in Docker and Kubernetes.
The Image Tool leverages an important new capability built into My Oracle Support (MOS) that provides a REST API for specifying and downloading patches. The Image Tool automatically downloads all the one-off patches and PSUs you specify from My Oracle Support (MOS) using this REST API, including updates to OPatch, if required. The tool checks for patch conflicts invoking MOS APIs. You must provide the MOS credentials with the necessary support entitlements, and manually download the WebLogic or Java installers before invoking the tool. Patches and installers are cached to prevent having to download them multiple times.
The Image Tool follows Docker best practices to automatically build an image with the recommended image layering, following best practices, and performing cleanup to minimize image size. The tool ensures that the image remains patchable and only uses standard and publicly documented Oracle tools and APIs.
We have posted a YouTube video which demonstrates using the WebLogic Image Tool to create a customized WebLogic Server install image. If you are interested in learning about how to use these images to automate your CI/CD processes to deploy WebLogic domains in Kubernetes, please refer to our documentation and a demonstration YouTube video using Jenkins. Our future plans include new features and enhancements to the tool over time. Please stay tuned for more information. We hope this announcement is helpful to those of you seeking to patch, update, and deploy WebLogic Server Docker images, and look forward to your feedback.