PeopleSoft Installation Using Deployment Packages (DPK's)

Installing PeopleSoft FSCM 9.2 / 8.55 using Deployment Packages on Native OS

In the earlier examples we have seen PeopleSoft installation process on personal desktop / laptop or we can say it was on premise. Installation on on-premise definitely needs many steps to perform, starting from OS installation to installation of individual components to manual configuration of app servers / web servers and process scheduler servers.

Since PeopleTools 8.55 DPK’s (deployment packages) have been introduced to simplify the installation and configuration process.

Through DPK’s not only we can install through the default settings but we can customize the configuration to reflect or organization requirements. For example, we want only mid-tier or only app server or only web server on a machine. Or, let’s say we want to have two app server domains on a single machines. DPK’s provides the facility to achieve all these things in a very systematic and effective way.

Following table summarizes the steps required in manual installation and installation through DPK’s, which clearly shows that using DPK’s will save time and efforts.

Steps	Conventional Method	DPK’s (Native OS)
Create a machine with supported OS installed	Yes	Yes
Install Oracle DB	Yes	No
Install Tuxedo	Yes	No
Install Weblogic	Yes	No
Install PeopleTools	Yes	No
Install PeopleTools patch if required	Yes	No
Install Application	Yes	No
Load Demo DB	Yes	No
Configure PSFT services	Yes	No
Install workstation	Yes	Yes

So, we can see the definitive benefits of using DPK’s which really reduces our time and efforts of installing a PeopleSoft system.

For the OS requirements we have used Red Hat Linux 6 on google cloud. This further reduces time as typical OS installation is not performed. Performing the installation on Windows OS is much more simpler and straight forward process.

We have distributed the installation into three parts -

1. Part 1 - Subscribe to Google Cloud Free Trial and deploy server with Red Hat Linux
2. Part 2 - Start the installation processes.
1. Download the required DPK’s
2. Invoke the bootstrap shell script.
3. Part 3 - Open PIA and database ports to access them over internet.

We will go through each one of these in details.

We will just not stop here, rather we will go further to apply PeopleTools patches and PeopleTools upgrade using DPK’s.

So, let’s start with installation first using DPK’s.

PeopleSoft Installation Using DPK's - Part 3

Till now, we have finished all the installations and started all the services.

To access the PIA we have to open firewall port 8000

Go to cloud console.  

In the target tags mention peoplesoft. This tag we will use on the instance also.

Click on create

We can see that new firewall rule has been created.

Again open the instance

Add peoplesoft to network tags.

Save the changes.


To access the PIA we will deactivate the default domain name.

Navigate to /home/psadm2/psft/8.55/webserv/peoplesoft/applications/peoplesoft/PORTAL.war/WEB-INF

Open file weblogic.xml

sudo vi weblogic.xml

Blank out the <cookie-domain> value

To modify the above file

sudo vi weblogic.xml

Press i

Apply the changes

Press Esc key

Type :wq and hit return key

Reboot the web server and access PIA

http://<ip address>:8000/psp/ps/?cmd=login

To access the database create a new firewall rule to open port 1522.

The steps will be same as we have done above to open http port 8000.

To establish connectivity from database and application designer, get the tnsentry from the vm instance.

Navigate to /home/psft/db

View the tnsentry.ora file

Copy the tnsentry contents and paste it to your local machine

Usually it should be under F:\app\oracle\product\12.1.0\client_1\network\admin\tnsnames.ora

Modify the host to reflect the IP address of you instance.

Login to application designer. So, you should have already installed PeopleTools client to you local PC.

Remotely Accessing the VM Instance

If you want to remotely connect to your VM instance from Putty or winscp etc. then perform the following steps.

Create a public - private key pair using puttykegen

Click on the Generate button and move the cursor on the space above.

Once done, click on “Save Public key” and “Save private key” to save the keys.

Copy the public key contents as highlighted below.

Open google cloud console, click on the instance and scroll down to add the above SSH key.

Save the changes.

Now, open putty.

Save the changes.

Now, go to SSH under Connection

Enter the private key file which we have saved above.

Save the changes.

Click Open to connect.

PeopleSoft Installation using DPK's - Part 2

Connect to the machine.

Download the required files.

Login to oracle support.

https://support.oracle.com

Open doc PeopleSoft Update Manager (PUM) Home Page (Doc ID 1641843.2)

Click on “Download.sh” and download the shell script.

Open the shell script and modify the highlighted parameters.

Now, go back to the cloud machine and create the following folders

/home/psft
/home/logs
/home/DPK_INSTALL

/home/scripts

Navigate to scripts folder and create a file wget.sh

sudo vi wget.sh

Press i and paste the contents of the wget.sh which we have downloaded and modified earlier.

Press ‘Esc’ button and type :wq and hit return

Now change the mode of the file wget.sh so that it can be executed.

We can see that executable mode is not present. So type the following command.

sudo chmod 777 wget.sh

Now, execute the shell script

You can open another session to monitor the downloads.

Download will take some time.

Once download is over, navigate to DPK_INSTALL folder and unzip the first zip file.

sudo unzip FSCM-920-UPD-024-LNX_1of10.zip

 
Now navigate to DPK_INSTALL/setup

Change the mode of psf-dpk-setup.sh to executable.

sudo chmod 777 psft-dpk-setup.sh

Now execute the script
sudo ./psft-dpk-setup.sh

Enter Y

Enter the base directory - /home/psft

It will now prompt for a list of questions. Enter them as per your requirement.

Enter N

Enter y

The script will continue for some time and will fail.

This is a delivered bug, To resolve this we need to mount the /tmp with exec options.

View file, /etc/fstab

cat /etc/fstab

Add the following line to the file.

tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,exec

After modifying the file should look like this.

Type the following commands.

sudo mount -o remount,rw,exec,nosuid /tmp

sudo mount -a

To verify the changes, type mount

 
Now, continue with the installation

cd /etc/puppet/manifests

sudo puppet apply site.pp --debug --trace

The process will fail during installation of tuxedo with error - Checking Swap Sapce: 0 MB available, 500 MB required. Failed

This error will occur with vm instances running on cloud, because by default swap space is not allocated. This should not be the issue with on-premise OS.

To resolve this issue
Check the swap space.

We can see that there is no free swap space.

We will now allocate swap space.

sudo fallocate -l 2G /swapfile
sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
sudo mkswap /swapfile -f
sudo swapon /swapfile
sudo swapon -s

Check the free space again.

2GB swap space has been allocated.

Resume the installation.

Once finished, login with user psadm2 and view the services that are running. For the first time, it will prompt to change your password.

cd $PS_HOME/appserv

psadmin

psadmin -c sstatus -d APPDOM (application server status)

psadmin -p sstatus -d PRCSDOM (Process Scheduler Status)

psadmin -w sstatus -d peoplesoft

We can see that all the services have been started.

In the next and final part we will see how to open the PIA and database ports so that both of them can be accessed over the internet.