Setting up SOA Suite 10.1.3 with F5 load balancer and SSL

Published by Peter McLarty | Filed under Application Server, oracle, problems

I have been working a lot with Application Server of late and on of the tasks I had was to configure SOA Suite to use SSL for those web pages that are used such as the BPEL Manager, It seems a pretty straightforward task and I have instructions that were provided by what should have been a reliable source.
Simple enough it went, install SOA suite onto the application server taking into consideration that the F5 is part of the infrastructure. make it work as a http connection and then configure the Apache server so that it understands the virtual URL through the F5 is SSL which apparently took me to only have to add a few lines of VirtualHost entries to the httpd.conf and then restart the SOA Suite.
My initial plan was to run SOA Suite is running on non standard ports between 8000 and 8999, really only a few ports between 8000 and 8010. This site had a need to have some standardised way of running multiple instance on a single Application Server host system for different business units within the department.
This was to turn out to be a major failure as it seems there is a problem with the 8xxx ports particularly the 80xxx ports as the F5 it turns out has a bug
What do you have to do is pretty simple and if you do the following it will work straight away
1) Have the F5 configured by the networks team have you application servers placed into pools as required in the F5 config for load balancing
2) Add the following to your SOA Suite HTTP Server file

2.1) LoadModule certheaders_module libexec/mod_certheaders.so

NameVirtualHost *:7500

<VirtualHost *:7500>

ServerName F5virtualhost.department.qld.gov.au

Port 7500

ServerAdmin you@your.address

RewriteEngine on

RewriteOptions inherit

SimulateHttps on

</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:7500>

ServerName host.department.qld.gov.au

Port 7500

ServerAdmin you@your.address

RewriteEngine on

RewriteOptions inherit

</VirtualHost>

This then needs you to stop and start all components with opmnctl
Now you should be able to connect both direclty to the physical host via http and both SSL and non SSL via the F5. The non SSL may be determined by F5 settings.

The application server implementation has proven to have a number of challenges that have give me a whole new insight to the workings of middleware. This is a load balanced and highly available installation, it is however for Oracle’s thinking not high availability and it does lack in some parts, however they in no way affect the client and provide a way forward to a new infrastructure for Application Server 10g

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