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.

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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

#237 – Approaches to PIs



This week on the podcast, Dan and Kyle talk about some older frameworks in PeopleSoft and why they didn’t catch on. Then Kyle shares some approaches to manage your PIs and why each solution might be a fit for you.

Show Notes

#215 – Unified Navigation and Networks


This week on the podcast, Dan and Kyle announce registration for psadmin.conf 2020 and debate if the Frozen II sound track is better than the first. Then Kyle discusses how Unified Navigation communication can be confusing and how network topologies can impact Unified Navigation.

Show Notes

#209 – Speed Up PeopleSoft Images


This week on the podcast, Dan explains how he made the PeopleSoft Images run much faster and shares the code he used to make it happen. Dan and Kyle also talk about the advantages (and disadvantages) of using shared cache in your production environment.

Show Notes

#58 – Pagelets and Complaints

This week on the podcast, Dan and Kyle talk about a ransomware attack, load balancer health checks, applying POC patches and complain about minor annoyances in Change Assistant. Kyle shares a story about a misbehaving pagelet and how he investigated the issue.

We want to make this podcast part of the community discussion on PeopleSoft administration. If you have comments, feedback, or topics you’d like us to talk about, we want to hear from you! You can email us at podcast@psadmin.io, tweet us at @psa_io, or use the Twitter hashtag #psadminpodcast.

You can listen to the podcast here on psadmin.io or subscribe with your favorite podcast player using the URL below, or subscribe in iTunes.

Podcast RSS Feed

Show Notes

8.55 – Build PeopleSoft Images with DPKs (Part 3)

As we have discussed in part 1 and part 2 of this discussion, Oracle is now shipping PeopleSoft Images with 8.55 and Deployment Kits(DPKs). Dan and I have talked quite a bit about our experiences using these DPKs with VirtualBox and NativeOS installments on Windows, so naturally Linux is up next. This is the OS that I spend most of my time in, so I have been excited to give it a try.

To get started, I took another read through the PeopleSoft Deployment Packages for Update Images Installation guide. Again, this can be found under Installation Documentation on the PUM Home Page. In this document it clearly states that Oracle Linux is supported for this installation. I normally don’t run Oracle Linux, so I was curious if it would work on other flavors. I gave it a try on both SuSE and Ubuntu without success. The bootstrap script basically fails right away, and I didn’t dig any further. So, I spun up a fresh lab install of Oracle Linux 7.2 and used that instead.

As with the other styles of DPK, the first step after you download the Linux .zip files is to extract the first file. Once extracted, you will find a setup directory which contains the bootstrap script psft-dpk-setup.sh. Before running this script, you will need to enable execution by running sudo chmod +x psft-dpk-setup.sh. After that, execute the bootstrap script and you are off and running.

I ran into a few issues with the installation, all related to dependencies(Update: More info here.). I ended up having to install all these packages to get past the issues:

sudo yum install libc.so.6 libgcc_s.so.1 libselinux.so.1 libxml2.so.2 libcrypto.so.10 libdb-5.3.so libffi.so.6 libgdbm.so.4 libncurses.so.5 libncursesw.so.5 libreadline.so.6 libssl.so.10 libtinfo.so.5 ruby rubygem oracle-rdbms-server-11gR2-preinstall

After getting these installed, it was time to give it another try. Running the bootstrap script again was not needed for this. Instead, I simply ran puppet apply site.pp which needed to be executed from the /etc/puppet/manifests directory. This time everything ran to success.

I chose the default initialization process, but you may want to make a few changes in your deployment. The changes you are most likely to make are related to security. By default the DPK will create 4 local user accounts: psadm1, psadm2, psadm3 and oracle2. This may not fit in with your security polices, so changing this could be crucial. In the installation guide, search for Task 6-1, which will walk you through the changes needed in your psft_customization.yaml file. If you do choose the defaults, then take a look at Task 7-1. This will cover all the default installation directories, as well as the default users and how they are used.

As always, if you ran into any other issues or have other observations related to the Linux NativeOS install, please let us know about it in the comments below!

Update: If you want to learn more about the DPK, check out our new PeopleSoft DPK QuickStart course. This free course will introduce you to the DPK, show you how to use the DPK with PeopleSoft Images, and show you how to customize the DPK for your servers.

 

#17 – PI’s and DPK’s (Part 2)

Kyle and Dan continue the discussion of DPK-based PeopleSoft Images. Dan shares a few frustrations with the new PI’s, we both learn a new way to generate trace files, and brainstorm how to manage the DPK’s YAML files.

We want to make this podcast part of the community discussion on PeopleSoft administration. If you have comments, feedback, or topics you’d like us to talk about, we want to hear from you! You can email us at podcast@psadmin.io, tweet us at @psa_io, or use the Twitter hashtag #psadminpodcast.

You can listen to the podcast here on psadmin.io or subscribe with your favorite podcast player using the URL below, or subscribe in iTunes.

Podcast RSS Feed

Show Notes

Fix NativeOS DPK Issues on Windows (Part 2)

In Part 1, Fix NativeOS DPK Issues on Windows, we covered the service changes and TNS Listener change to resolve issues with the NativeOS DPK. But, I realized today that I approached the TNS Listener issue the “old way”. We are working with DPK’s now and there is a different method to manage configuration changes: Puppet and Hiera.

In the new 8.55/DPK setup, configuration changes are handled in the psft_customizations.yaml Hiera file. psft_customizations.yaml overrides the default configuration provided by the DPKs. So, if we want to change the Oracle Listener port, let’s add it the YAML file.

psft_customizations.yaml

---

db_port:               1521

Don’t forget the --- at the top of the file. The --- is a file delimiter; you can include more than one YAML “file” inside a physical .YAML. file.

Copy the file to C:\ProgramData\PuppetLabs\Puppet\etc\data or /etc/puppet/data.

Fresh Install v. Existing Install

The theory behind Puppet (and the DPK’s) is that you describe your configuration and Puppet does the implementation. In our case above we have changed the configuration of db_port. If this was an existing installation of the DPK (e.g, you’ve already build HR 9.2 Image 16 using the DPK), we should be able to change that value. Unfortunately, the Puppet providers for PeopleSoft aren’t that robust. (I hope that is a feature that will be released). If you have already installed your PeopleSoft Image, you can make the change above, but when you run puppet apply site.pp the listener port is not updated.

But, if you are installing a NativeOS-based PeopleSoft you can include this change. When you run the bootstrap script, you are presented with the question “Do you want to continue the default initialization process?”. Answer No. (This [poorly worded] question means: Do you want to change any configuration?)

At this point, the bootstrap script will stop and you can copy your psft_customizations.yaml file into the data folder. Once your change is in place, we just start the Puppet process using puppet apply site.pp

You need to run the puppet apply site.pp command from C:\ProgramData\PuppetLabs\Puppet\etc\manifests or /etc/puppet/manifests.

#16 – PI’s and DPK’s

This week, Kyle and Dan talk about the new DPK-based PeopleSoft Images and the two options for building a PeopleSoft Image. Dan shares how to get Drop Down Navigation in 8.55 and why that’s a good thing, and Kyle finds a unreleased feature in Change Assistant.

Pasted image at 2016_02_12 01_34 PM

We want to make this podcast part of the community discussion on PeopleSoft administration. If you have comments, feedback, or topics you’d like us to talk about, we want to hear from you! You can email us at podcast@psadmin.io, tweet us at @psa_io, or use the Twitter hashtag #psadminpodcast.

You can listen to the podcast here on psadmin.io or subscribe with your favorite podcast player using the URL below, or subscribe in iTunes.

Podcast RSS Feed

Show Notes

#4 – Demo’s, PUM and PI

In episode 4, Dan and Kyle talk about Demo environments and why the traditional need for Demo’s may change, the PeopleSoft Update Manager, and how to manager PeopleSoft Images. We also discuss the recent WebLogic vulnerability, and ask for input on our upcoming Tools and Documentation podcast.

We want to make this podcast part of the community discussion on PeopleSoft administration. If you have comments, feedback, or topics you’d like us to talk about, we want to hear from you! You can email us at podcast@psadmin.io, tweet us at @psa_io, or use the Twitter hashtag #psadminpodcast.

You can listen to the podcast here on psadmin.io or subscribe with your favorite podcast player using the URL below, or subscribe in iTunes.

Podcast RSS Feed

Show Notes