Installation guide

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The key step that coordinates the members of a farm is registration of all member
components with a common Metadata Repository.
In addition, OracleAS Cluster technology (based upon OC4J containers) is used to
“clone” application servers. These OracleAS clusters have built-in failover capabilities.
Load balancing is provided by the use of load balancing routers. These routers must be
capable of load balancing a variety of protocols, including TCP/IP, http, and LDAP.
The Infrastructure tier is split into three parts. The Single Sign On and Delegated
Administration Services are placed in a clustered middle tier setting. For additional
security, the middle tier is separated via a firewall from the remaining Infrastructure tier
components, which include Oracle Internet Directory and the Metadata Repository. The
Metadata Repository and the corporate database components are implemented within
Oracle Real Application Clusters. For the highest level of security, the Metadata
Repository for Applications and Security are placed on separate Real Application
Clusters.
Most real world deployments will not be this complex, or include this many servers.
However, all of the basic techniques for implementing an Enterprise class deployment are
illustrated. For Further information, see the Oracle document “Oracle Application Server
Enterprise Deployment Guide 10g Release 2 (10.1.2)”.