1. Compelling Events for Automation
• Middleware Upgrades It’s great when new vendors
bring out new features - but often taking advantage of
them takes a good deal of time and effort to upgrade
the new infrastructure - and introduces risk. Automating
the upgrade project speeds it up, reduces the risk and
builds a more manageable platform in the future.
• Migrating off ‘Premium Product’ With the economy
as it is, more organizations are forced to tighten their
belts, and one area that has come under particular
scrutiny is the annual cost of maintaining installed
software. Some organizations have made the decision
to move less business critical applications off more
expensive middleware onto open-source platforms
such as JBoss and Tomcat. This type of project is
accelerated when it’s automated and an automation
tool makes managing hybrid or heterogeneous
environments much easier.
• Building a PAAS or a private cloud With pressure
on businesses to deliver more innovation to their
customers, faster, we see many of our customers
building Platforms As A Service and private clouds.
These are a lot faster and quicker to set up using an
automation tool, and a lot quicker to manage demand
once they are up and running.
• Core business application upgrades or migrations
Many of our customers occasionally need to upgrade
or even replace their core business applications - often
complex, multi-layered, integrated systems that have
evolved over time and have many integration points
and are absolutely critical to the minute by minute
operations of the business. Using an automation tool
can reduce the risk and time associated with such
a project.
• Platform migrations Sometimes it’s time to move
from one platform to another - for instance, customers
sometimes feel that a UNIX based platform will
WebLogic Insights
• WebLogic Application Server is a complex,
highly configurable product with literally
thousands of interrelated configuration items.
The RapidDeploy™ WebLogic plugins support
deployment of code (in the form of ear/war files)
and configuration to the WebLogic domain.
• The plugin includes tasks to install and patch
WebLogic binaries on target server.
• The plugin includes modules for snapshotting
all configuration items in a WebLogic domain for
comparison over time to highlight configuration
drift. The exported configuration may also be
templated and used as the basis to re-import to
this, or another, WebLogic domain. Snapshotting
may be achieved by either file based or
JMX methodologies.
• The plugin also includes modules for WebLogic
configuration and code deployment via a Python
scripting framework. This allows for an application,
its mappings and WebLogic configuration items
to be deployed in an idempotent way (The
deployment always brings the target up to the
desired state). All common configuration items are
supported in a simple to understand and use way.
• It is easy, for example, to set a cluster count and
topology with a couple of configuration lines, instead
of the (potentially) thousands of lines that would
be needed using an xml export definition. Then, to
create a package to increase the cluster count by
one cluster member on each node in the topology is
a single character change to the configuration file.
This will be rolled out and updated automatically on
the next deployment to this environment, along with
any other code and configuration changes bundled
into this package. Packages can be rolled forwards
and back as required.
RapidDeploy™ Plugin for WebLogic
RapidDeploy™TargetPlugin
RapidDeploy™ provides organizations with Application Release Automation capabilities
to reduce costs, improve productivity and time to value and assure compliance. There
is a range of plugins available to extend the core automation framework capabilities to
most available platforms and perform integrations throughout the DevOps toolchain.
This datasheet refers to the WebLogic plugin.
Plugins are downloaded through the Plugin Manager console in RapidDeploy™, or from the MidVision
website at www.midvision.com.

2. offer them performance advantages over an OS400
platform. But moving hundreds of middleware
applications might seem like a challenge too far -
without automation.
• Rearchitecting Change is a constant and businesses
need to continually evolve their IT infrastructure
and operations, build new environments for things
like Disaster Recovery and automating the build
and deployment of these new environments means
delivering them faster.
WebLogic Plugin Overview
The WebLogic plugin for RapidDeploy™ enables
you to automatically deploy and configure WebLogic
application servers and applications. You can, all without
the use of scripts:
• Take snapshots of your environments
• Detect configuration drift and compare environment
configurations
• Create templates from your snapshots
• Promote them to create further downstream
environments through which to deploy your EAR files
based on this initial “golden” environment
WebLogic Plugin Templates
A ‘Create New’ template is available for environment
creation from the edit/promote panel using the New
Environment Definition function. This template is a
great way to get started with the WebLogic Python
deployment framework as it will create a deployment
configuration file that you can either use straight away or
tailor for your own use.
The WebLogic Template is:
• WebLogic 11 Template - includes domain settings,
Admin Service configuration, Node Manager Machine
configuration, Managed Servers, Clusters, File stores,
JDBC stores and system Resources, JMS servers
and system resources, and of course the deployable
application(s) and their configuration
WebLogic Plugin Tasks
• WebLogicBinaryInstallTask - Deploy WebLogic binaries
• WebLogicBinaryPatchingTask - Patch
webLogic binaries
• WebLogicBinaryUnInstallTask - Uninstall
WebLogic binaries
• WebLogicDeploymentViaJythonTask - The Python
deployment framework task
• DeployFileViaJmxTask - Deploy an ear/war via JMX
• UndeployFileViaJmxTask - UnDeploy an ear/war
via JMX
• DeployConfigurationViaJmxTask - Deploying a
previously exported (via JMX) snapshot
• StartDomainTask
• StopDomainTask
• StartManagedServerTask
• StopManagedServerTask
• DeployConfigurationTask - Deploying a previously
exported (via file) snapshot
• OracleFusionMiddlewareFormsCompileTask
WebLogic Plugin Versions
The RapidDeploy™ WebLogic Plugin supports
WebLogic 11G.
If you use a version of WebLogic that is not listed here
and you would like to manage it using RapidDeploy™
please email sales@midvision.com with the details.
For future versions, we aim to have support within two
quarters of Oracle announcing general availability,
although customer demand can accelerate our
development roadmap.
Plugins ship with:
• A Library of commonly used tasks
• Wizards extensive help information
• Predefined automation library elements
www.midvision.com©MidVision2013.Allrightsreserved.RapidDeploy™TargetPlugin
Want this plugin? Getting hold of it’s easy - either:
1) Go to the Plugin Manager in your installation of RapidDeploy™ and pick your plugin from the list or
2) Go to www.midvision.com Support Downloads RapidDeploy Plugin Downloads and select your
plugin from there. If you have any problems, please call or email your MidVision Account Manager.
You must license your plugin separately - please speak to your MidVision Account Manager
or email sales@midvision.com. If you are an IBM Rational Automation Framework customer and
would like access to this plugin, please contact us at www.midvision.com.