PeopleSoft Guy

The PeopleSoft Internet Architecture Virtualized and Simplified

2011-07-29T14:53:00.000-07:00

I have given a few presentations and this one continues to get attention. I figured that it deserved a blog post.

Background

First of all from a systems point of view you should always avoid uniqueness's. Why, because you will forget the uniqueness and it come back to haunt you down the road. Because of this I am a strong advocate of “Standardized Templates” that should be done at what my colleges and I refer to as “Platforms”. As a platform system engineer, I view myself as a steward of the university computer system. Of this system I have several points of expertise and ownership. One of these is ensuring the PeopleSoft platforms work with the universities system. In the PeopleSoft Platform we run multiple applications and other supporting applications that must work within our computer system.

My experience with PeopleSoft applications starts in early 2001. I first virtualized the webservers in late 2005 and the application servers in early 2007 and have been following this methodology for most of the time I have worked with PeopleSoft/Oracle and it was made easier when virtualizing.

Standardized Template

I choose to create a standardized template to install from. This template allows me to make sure everything is the same and if something needs to be changed it is on the same location on all of my servers. This allows patches/fixes and even upgrades to be scripted. With a template that is tools only I can bring into existence any system on the same tools release by coping down the application specific files and running some scripts to change things such as the database the application server and process scheduler are pointed at and the cookie name in the webserver. Replicating an environment now takes hours where it uses to take days or weeks and the human installation errors are mostly removed.

Steps

Install the Operating System

Whenever installing a new system it is good to check out PeopleSoft's performance red paper but be mindful to not use it religiously. I question anything that does not make sense or I do not understand. I also like to avoid complicating the system to much.

Some files to pay attention to are

/etc/sysctl.conf -- Depending on your setup peoplesoft numbers are overkill and other system defaults are higher and that is fine

/etc/security/limits.conf

Install PeopleSoft Required Software

• PeopleTools (The version you will be using)

• Webserver Software

• Database Client

• Tuxedo

• Cobol

• Other general items

o Do not yet install any PeopleSoft applications

We will now be able to use this image to create other images for every application that you have

Configure the following

• Avoid hardcoding hostname/ip. Use localhost or 0.0.0.0 wherever possible

• Application Server

• Web Server

• Batch/Process Scheduler Server

• Monitoring

Test the configuration to make sure you did things correctly. You may use any database with the same tools level even without the application files as long as you are not running application specific processes.

Break the image and delete log files

Add “Change me” or something that you can script or look for in the configuration files that may need to be changed. These may include

• Database name

• Cookie Name

• Number of certain processes such as application servers booted

• In more complex environments like prod you may want to change where the web is pointed

o In certain non-prod environments we may point the web to the local application server

o Have a config file that will tell it what processes should boot and only boot what you want to use

Installing an Image - Apply Application Specific Files

• Take the tools level image that you have after deploying/copying the image

• Install the application specific files

• Point to an application specific instance in the application and batch server

• Boot up and you’re good

• Repeat for each application or server that you need

Complex Systems

2011-07-29T09:11:00.001-07:00

Why is troubleshooting complex systems so complex, can’t you break it down to smaller parts? This question was posed to me last week and I thought I would bring up a great example here.

I was the proud owner of a 2000 Windstar for many years. It was a wonderful car, but got jealous when our family size went to 8 and it could only seat 7. We purchased a Honda Pilot and then the Windstar got very upset and the transmission went out. Due to a problem with our pilot the Windstar became out only vehicle again for several weeks. In that time it decided that life was not fair and no longer liked to drive. It would stall in the middle of the road, had problems starting and had a vehicle maintenance light that kept coming on. I took it in to our regular shop three separate times and the diagnosis was nowhere in sight. One thing they asked is what had changed just before it started having problems. This is what I told them.

• Changed the gas

• Brought it in to them for a safety inspection

• Took it into the dealership for warranty work

I was thinking it was a major tune up was needed or bad gas. I broke down and purchased another vehicle for my family and decided to fix and then sell the Windstar. It was a sad day. I took it into the Ford dealership and $1000 later T-Rex (my kids name for the Windstar) was good as new.

Now what system was broken? From my point of view it was my family transportation service in my family system. I knew the duration of the pilot being down was going to be weeks and the failure there was known. My Windstar problem was unknown, but Ford did a major tuneup (Plug, wires, etc), and then found something else that I cannot remember. My initial hunch was partly correct. In the end my short term solution was replacement as with 6 kids and places to be bicycles were not sufficient.

What about the auto shop that I first brought the vehicle to, they had three chances and did not solve the problem? They do a great job most of the time yet in specialized situations with complex systems sometimes specialists are needed. These are people that are much more familiar with the complex systems that others.

Each complex system is different and has many parts hence making it complex. Sometimes the signs of a problem are not the root. Having worked on automobiles for a short time and with my ever growing knowledge in the computer realm I can safely say that cars were less complex than the computer systems that I deal with today. Before these two major issues with my Windstar the main problems I had were sensors and the computer going out. It was the monitoring equipment for the system.

Usefull SQL

2009-01-20T14:26:00.000-08:00

General

I plan on adding to this post over time. I have started with process scheduler related queries.

Alter session - so you do not have to preface everything with user.table
alter session set current schema=;
Example: If I needed to access a table(booklist) under the js schema and I was logged in at mj I could do the following.

select count(*) from js.booklist;

alter session set current schema=js;
select count(*) from booklist;

Alter session works very well when you are working constantly in another schema like peoplesoft.

Load Specific

I use some oracle specific sql some times.

Process Scheduler

Rundates with the number of processes that were queued when an item was scheduled to run
select to_char(a.rundttm,'yyyy-mm-dd hh24:mi:ss') rundate, count(*) from ( select distinct rundttm from sysadm.ps_pmn_prcslist) a join sysadm.ps_pmn_prcslist b on a.rundttm between b.rundttm and b.enddttm group by a.rundttm;

How long processes are talking to run
select a.PRCSINSTANCE || ',' || a.PRCSNAME || ',' || (a.ENDDTTM-a.BEGINDTTM) * 1440 as ProcessIDProcessNameMinutesTaken from sysadm.ps_pmn_prcslist a where a.BEGINDTTM > sysdate-7;
select a.PRCSINSTANCE || ',' || a.PRCSNAME || ',' || floor(((((a.ENDDTTM-a.BEGINDTTM)*24*60*60)/3600)*3600)/60) as IdNameMinutes from sysadm.ps_pmn_prcslist a where a.BEGINDTTM > sysdate-7;

CSV export of the process scheduler table
select OPRID || ',' || PRCSINSTANCE || ',' || PRCSTYPE || ',' || PRCSNAME || ',' || to_char(rundttm,'yyyy-mm-dd hh24:mi:ss') || ',' || to_char(BEGINDTTM,'yyyy-mm-dd hh24:mi:ss') || ',' || to_char(ENDDTTM,'yyyy-mm-dd hh24:mi:ss') from sysadm.ps_pmn_prcslist;

Installing Oracle 10R2 on Fedora 10 32bit on a VM

2009-01-14T13:27:00.000-08:00

Why Did I Post This

I could not find a good guide online. I wanted to setup a fedora box for playing and this looked like a good first step.

General Information

I did this on a VM so there are a few things that I have listed here that may help people install vmware tools.

General Information
Fedora 10 32bit in a VM

Only installed the OS. No extra items like office productivity

Oracle user groups are dba,oper,asmadmin oracle, Oracle

I used a capitol "O" for kicks

I choose to install to /oracle

I have never been given a good reason for this u01 junk

VMWARE TOOLS

Initial Install
I installed the RPM version with a simple rpm -i XXXXXXXXXXX.rpm on the virtual cdrom

Needed Dependancy
yum install gcc kernel-devel

This allowed me to compile the vmware tools. It will also allow the installation of Oracle. Of course the command to finish the install was /usr/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl

Needed Dependancies for the Oracle Install

Oracle Specific (Page 33 - Oracle Database installation guide)
yum install binutills compat-db compat-libstdc++ control-center gcc-c++ libstc++ glibc-common libstc++-devel gnome-libs make pdksh sysstat xscreensaver setarch

Others that I found and think I needed.
yum install libaio-devel elfutils-libelf-devel unixODBC unixODBC-devel compat-libstdc++-33
Some of these gave me errors for not having them installed. Others I found a reference to when looking at something else.

Edited /etc/sysctl.conf Kernel Parameters

# Put here as part of the oracle pre-install pg41+ of the Oracle Database Installation Guide
kernel.shmall = 2097152
kernel.shmmax = 2147483648
kernel.shmmni = 4096
# semaphores: semmsl, semmns, semopm, semmni
kernel.sem = 250 32000 100 128
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65000
net.core.rmem_default=4194304
net.core.rmem_max=4194304
net.core.wmem_default=262144
net.core.wmem_max=262144

Security Limits

Edited /etc/security/limits.conf Pg 43
## Put here as part of the Oracle Database pre-install
Oracle soft nproc 2047
Oracle hard nproc 16384
Oracle soft nofile 1024
Oracle hard nofile 65536

Edit Pam (Failed-so I commented out)

Edited /etc/pam.d/login pg 43 (Breaks x. Commented out)
# Part of the Oracle Pre-install
#session required /lib/security/pam_limits.so
#session required pam_limits.so

As I use the system I may find out why Oracle thinks that this is needed. I installed without it.

SELINUX Disable (Not recommended, but Limits frustations)

Edited /etc/selinux/config Because it gets in the way (Requires a reboot)
SELINUX=disabled

To fool the os version check

Edited /etc/redhat-release (this so I can use the normal install)
redhat release 4

Create the folders and set the permissions

mkdir /oracle
mkdir /oracle/product
mkdir /oracle/product/10.2.0
mkdir /oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1
chown -R Oracle:oinstall /oracle
chown -R 775 /oracle
xhost +localhost
chmod -R g+w /oracle

Not so good oracle installation instructions

Go to the dvds you have/downloaded/etc
You need to get into the database folder
As Oracle run the runInstaller by cd to the directory and running ./runInstaller
Install, hopefully error free

After Install

Edit /etc/redhat-release
Fedora release 10 (Cambridge)

Error Documented

================================================================================
Exception String: Error in invoking target 'all_no_orcl ihsodbc' of makefile '/oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1/rdbms/lib/ins_rdbms.mk'. See '/oracle/oraInventory/logs/installActions2009-01-14_09-01-47AM.log' for details.
===============================================================================
Solution yum install compat-libstdc++-33

Creating a database issues

If you create the databases with lower case you will have to create a simbolic link for some things(like EM) to run properly.

PeopleSoft Cobol Woes on Unix/Linux

2008-09-11T12:06:00.000-07:00

Good Commands with Sample Output

cobrun
V4.0 revision 0 build 10/10/2 G; 14705. Run Time System RXCPR/AA0/00000D
cob -V
version @(#)cob.c 1.313
PRN=RXCPR/AAD:9i.T4.40.04
PTI=SP2
I see no work
cob -v
cob64 -C nolist -v
I see no work
/home/psoft
which PSRUN
Depends on your path

Testing your Cobol Environment (My notes are from HPUX)

Loggin to your system as the peoplesoft user or become the peoplesoft user
Setup the environment by calling the psconfig.sh in the peoplesoft home if you have multiple environments
Find PSRUN is in your path with which PSRUN. If it is not in your path you need to link your cobol (check your PS_HOME/setup/)
Run a test cobol with the following command "PSRUN PTPDBTST"
IT FAILED fails check your path variables. Example I needed to add these two on hpunix
export SHLIB_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib:$PS_HOME/bin:$SHLIB_PATH
Test again "PSRUN PTPDBTST"

Pray it works

A few things to be mindfull of. Cobol is very picky of the environment. Make sure you have double checked all of your environmental variables as well as someone else has doublechecked them.

I expect to be installing this on redhat 5 soon, so expect an update.