Building a PeopleSoft Image – OCI Marketplace

In this video we will build a new PeopleSoft Image to check out some of the newer features. We will use OCI to host our image because the PeopleSoft team provides us with images that are ready to build. We just need to provide some passwords and away we go.

YouTube player

OCI Marketplace Images

The OCI Marketplace is where you can find pre-packaged software ready to deploy on OCI. Each new image release, the PeopleSoft team pushes a new build for each application. For this demo, we will use Finance Image 46.

There are a few benefits to the OCI Marketplace-based PeopleSoft Images over other methods.

  • No need to download DPK files to a server
  • They come with Elasticsearch and Kibana pre-packaged
  • They are updated each release and easy to build for developers
  • Doesn’t require Cloud Manager or MOS Download rights

There are a few drawbacks to using these images though.

  • They don’t support the new VM.Standard Flex shapes
  • You need an OCI account and privileges to create a new instance (and virtual cloud network)

Boot Volume

When building a Marketplace-based Image, you must increase the boot volume to at least 200GB. This will ensure there is plenty of space to extract the DPK files and install PeopleSoft.

Generate Passwords

You can enter these by hand – it’s a JSON string – but there are different requirements for each password. You can use the sample JSON below for reference, but let’s take a quick tangent and I’ll show you how I generated my passwords.

The secret is psst

To run psst, you need Python and Git installed:

For Windows you can use Powershell and Chocolatey to install these:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; 
iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

choco install python3 -y
choco install git -y

For Linux and macOS:

yum install git -y
yum install python3 -y

The psst tool is hosted on Github and you can clone the code to run it:

git clone https://github.com/psadmin-io/psst.git

cd psst
pip install .
psst secrets generate -oci

{
    "connect_pwd": "eu9P3HCj6WwI95vj498JX6Yzjk6VGS",
    "access_pwd": "hsRqmDFjyrntMEJ74fMBBwMKi",
    "admin_pwd": "0WkAoB531GXr#2AtvpNo9SZ5u-_gEh",
    "weblogic_admin_pwd": "#ma1Q4%7SrIyKmpfIT3iS!&1Q22o$x",
    "webprofile_user_pwd": "xSFb74gd2YeyvkXjh1s9tI7wDK9Dew",
    "gw_user_pwd": "xtc4IxtBkDiNpJCMT04wRXGUNHG4bQ",
    "domain_conn_pwd": "G2rxzYThC2BTKq5DfHc",
    "opr_pwd": "78rN8StJt8rvSaUwB1FAWgEMK"
}

You can copy the JSON and paste it directly into the OCI Console’s “cloud-init” section.

Host File

Our instance is created with a public IP address, but the DNS name is private to your OCI Cloud Network. To translate between the two, we will add a hosts entry to our computer. Grab both the Public IP and Internal FQDN values from the Instances page.

For Linux and macOS

echo "<ip address> <fqdn>" | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts

For Windows, add this line to the end of the file c:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

<ip address> <fqdn>

For example, my hosts entry looks like this:

129.213.146.185 fscm046.subnet12081732.vcn12081732.oraclevcn.com

SSH Key

Linux, macOS, and WSL Users:

chmod 600 ~/Downloads/ssh-key-2022-12-08.key 
ssh -i ~/Downloads/ssh-key-2022-12-08.key opc@<IP>

PuTTY for Windows

  • Convert SSH Key to Putty Format with PuTTYGen
  • Connect with PuTTY

Ingress Rules in OCI

  1. PIA Rule

    • CIDR Block: 0.0.0.0/0
    • Destination Port: 8000
  2. Kibana Rule

    • CIDR Block: 0.0.0.0/0
    • Destination Port: 5601
  3. TNS Rule (Optional – Required for App Designer or SQL access)

    • CIDR Block: 0.0.0.0/0
    • Destination Port: 1521

(Optional) Add firewalld Rule for TNS

sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-port=1521/tcp
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

#333 – Opensearch and PeopleTools 8.60 w/ Sasank Vemana

This week on the podcast, PeopleTools Strategy Director Sasank Vemana joins us to talk about the upcoming switch to Opensearch, Configurable Search, Redwood UI, and some of his favorite features in PeopleTools 8.60.

The PeopleSoft Administrator Podcast hosted by Dan Iverson and Kyle Benson

Show Notes

#332 – PeopleTools 8.60

This week on the podcast, Kyle and Dan discuss PeopleTools 8.60 and the great features that were released. Dan also shares his thoughts on using Cloud Manager to upgrade environments to 8.60.

The PeopleSoft Administrator Podcast is hosted by Dan Iverson and Kyle Benson.

Show Notes


#331 – psst

Dan and Kyle are back and this week they discuss SSH tips, playing Minecraft, and Kyle’s new PeopleSoft Secrets Tool (psst).

The PeopleSoft Administrator Podcast is hosted by Dan Iverson and Kyle Benson.

Show Notes


#330 – New to 9.2

The PeopleSoft Administrator Podcast hosted by Dan Iverson and Kyle Benson

This week on the podcast, Kyle and Dan talk about building a nightly refresh environment and the benefits of automating the process, and Dan talks about upgrading to PeopleSoft 9.2.

Show Notes

  • 9.2 Go-Live @ 1:45
  • Oracle MERGE command @ 13:30
  • Sandbox Refreshes @ 17:30

#329 – RTI Maintenance

The PeopleSoft Administrator Podcast hosted by Dan Iverson and Kyle Benson

This week on the podcast, we talk about the PeopleTools RTI Maintenance job, fixing the systemd scripts from the DPK, and using the OCI-AutoScale project.

Show Notes

#328 – psadmin.conf 2022 Recap

The PeopleSoft Administrator Podcast hosted by Dan Iverson and Kyle Benson

This week on the podcast, Dan and Kyle recap the psadmin.conf 2022 conference.

Show Notes

  • Getting the Most Out of PeopleTools @ 2:30
  • Kibana Lab @ 10:15
  • Monday Open Lab @ 13:00
  • Automating Maintenance Windows @ 15:00
  • Journey to the Cloud @ 16:30
  • OCI Migration @ 18:45
  • Environment Validation Lab @ 21:30
  • Tuesday Open Lab @ 25:00
  • Securing PS with Apache Rules @ 27:00
  • PeopleTools Platform Overview @ 29:45
  • Lightning Talks @ 33:00
  • Real-Time Indexing @ 41:30

#327 – HAProxy and OCI Load Balancer

The PeopleSoft Administrator Podcast hosted by Dan Iverson and Kyle Benson

This week on the podcast, Kyle and Dan talk about mapping remote client IPs to PeopleSoft logs and tables, and then discuss the benefits of load balancing with HAProxy and the OCI Load Balancer as a Service.

Show Notes

#325 – psadmin.io Themes

The PeopleSoft Administrator Podcast hosted by Dan Iverson and Kyle Benson

This week on the podcast, Kyle and Dan talk about the new psadmin.io Themes for PeopleTools 8.59 (and 8.58), using the OCI Auto Scale project to save money on OCI, and the benefits of blogging.

Show Notes

#323 – patchBot

The PeopleSoft Administrator Podcast hosted by Dan Iverson and Kyle Benson

This week on the podcast, Dan discusses his experience running a DR test in Oracle Cloud. Dan and Kyle also talk about patchBot, a tool to get notifications about new patches on Oracle Support, and some updates to their Rundeck OCI Node Classifier.

Show Notes