High Availability with SFTP (SSH FTP) adapter

B2B SFTP adapter can also operate on HA topology like File and FTP adapters. Enabling SFTP adapter on HA environment is fairly simple and the process is as same as in File/FTP HA deployment.

Please refer the HA configuration guidelines for non-transactional transports here, http://www.b2bgurus.com/2008/02/high-availability-with-fileftp-adapter.html

Multiple Instances on the same box - RMI port conflict

Typically there is the RMI Port conflict when multiple instances of B2B are installed on the same box. Typically first instance will take the RMI Port as 5110 and hence the second instance is forced to take next available port which is 5111.

Even though this value is part of the tip.properties same is not updated in the web application.

How To Address this problem

1. Navigate to /ORACLE_HOME/j2ee/OC4J_B2B/applications/b2b/ip/WEB-INF. Take a backup of web.xml.
2. Identify the rmiport in the initParam, and edit the value to 5111 instead of 5110

In the web.xml file, alter the following

From
-----------
<init-param>
<param-name>rmiPort<param-value>5110</init-param>

To
---
<init-param>
<param-name>rmiPort<param-value>5111</init-param>

3. Make sure the same is reflected in tip.properties using
oracle.tip.adapter.b2b.RMIPort = 5110

4. Restart B2B

Oracle AS B2B DMZ setup

Instructions to setup and access B2B via DMZ.

This configuration is assumed to install B2B with in the firewall and standalone OHS in the DMZ and to obtain the firewall clearence for the Following port.

1. HTTP Port of OHS which sits in DMZ
2. HTTP Port of B2B which is with in the firewall.

Append the following lines to LoadModule section of standalone OHS
httpd.conf file

LoadModule proxy_module modules/mod_proxy.so (If it is already there then not required)
LoadModule proxy_http_module modules/mod_proxy_http.so

Add following lines to end of standalone Apache2.0 httpd.conf file

ProxyPass / http://:/
ProxyPassReverse / http://:/)

To work above configuration, HTTP port on which B2B listens should be opened on internal firewall.

Testing of DMZ setup
----------------------
Restart standalone Apache 2.0
Invoke the following URL from any machine in DMZ using browser
http://:/b2b/transportServlet

Above request initially goes to DMZ Apache and we have configured Apache to forward the request to B2B instance in intranet.It should display the
'transportServlet' parameters if everything goes well.

Above testing confirms that request is being passed from DMZ layer to Intranet layer but not from outside world to Intranet layer.

Testing from outside public network
-------------------------------------
Configure external firewall to accept the data for DMZ standalone Apache HTTP port.
Use the URL http://:/b2b/transportServlet
It should display the 'B2B server' parameters if everything goes well.

DMZ setup with load balancer
-------------------------------
Optionally you can configure Load balancer like 'BigIP' on external firewall to route the requests to DMZ layer.If you have DMZ layer front ended by load balancer then configure the load balancer to communicate with standalone HTTP server in DMZ.
In this case we expose the URL http://:/b2b/transportServlet to outside world to communicate with B2B .

Proxy configuration for B2B
-----------------------------
If you want to configure B2B to use proxy for all outgoing messages then read below.
Proxy server information needs to be provided in opmn.xml file of B2B midtier.

1) look for tag in opmn.xml
2) then look for tag 3) with in that tag make sure we should have
4) look for tag
5) then look for tag
6) with in that tag make sure we should have

In the above tag we also have some additional security attributes keep them as they are.

Now restart B2B and oc4j_b2b components or all components.

Refer the following documents for various High availability questions.

http://download-east.oracle.com/docs/cd/B14099_19/tru64.1012/install.1012/install/topo.htm#BABCFDBI

http://download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B14099_19/core.1012/b14003/mt_comp.htm

High Availability with File/FTP adapter

High availability in B2B is typically achieved by running muliple instance of B2B pointing to the same metadata repository, front ended by a load balancer such as web cache or any hardware load balancer. Always HA using File/FTP transport is very challenging due to the non transactional nature of the transport. We have come up with two properties to handle the same.

1. oracle.tip.adapter.b2b.inHAMode= true
2. oracle.tip.adapter.b2b.HAInstanceName=MyHost

Note that the setting for oracle.tip.adapter.b2b.HAInstanceName must be unique among the B2B instances using the same B2B repository.This is followed by running the script against b2b schema.

This feature allows the File/FTP to automatically detect which instance should poll and when the first instance stop polling (due to outages), the second instance will start polling by registering itself in the B2B_HA_REGISTRY after detecting the first instance is down. Even if there is a restart of the first instance it will not poll as the second instance is registered and active and acts as a Fail over instance, ready to take over in case of issue with second instance.
P.S

1. Please ensure to be on 10.1.2.3 patch.
2. Do not create the table manually and insert the instance related information, it should happen on its own if the patch is functional.
3. Need B2B restart after adding the above properties to tip.properties.