PeopleSoft Update Image as a Service - Proof of Concept

Together with PeopleSoft 9.2, Oracle announced the new Continuous Delivery model for delivering patches, based on PeopleSoft Update Manager. The new model allows customers to choose which fixes or enhancements they are interested in, and then just extract the objects related to them and their prerequisites.

The following diagram outlines the process of applying an update using this new delivery model:

In order to apply a change in your Development environment, you would to follow these steps:

1. Download the latest Update Image from My Oracle Support. The latest images have a size of around 35 Gb for PeopleSoft HCM and for FSCM.
2. Run a script to unzip the downloaded files and combine them into a single virtual appliance file (.ova).
3. Import the .ova file into Virtual Box in order to create the virtual machine.
4. Start the virtual machine and follow the installation steps so it can be used.
5. Using PeopleSoft Change Assistant, upload your environment information into PeopleSoft Update Manager.
6. Connect to the virtual machine environment in order to choose which patches or enhancements are going to be applied. The selected patches conform an Change Package.
7. Run the source steps in the Change Package against the Update Image.
8. Run the target steps included in the Change Package against the target environment.

Many customers find that the first 4 steps in the process take too much time, particularly when the intention is to apply a single regulatory update or enhancement. In the past, the customer would just download the patch and its prerequisites (which in many cases, for regulatory patches, were already applied) and starts the updating process. The new process requires to invest at least a day in downloading, uncompressing and installing the virtual machine.

On top of the time issues, the virtual machine can only run in a physical box with certain prerequisites. In these times when many organizations have moved to virtualization, it is not always easy to allocate the needed hardware to host the virtual machines.

BNB has conducted a successful Proof of Concept for one of our customers to install the latest Update Image on an Amazon EC2 server and use it to apply the latest patches.

Initially, we had some concerns about if this idea could work with a good performance. After our first real run, we can conclude that the performance is more than acceptable. The new Change Assistant in PeopleTools 8.54 is helping a lot, as it allows to run source and target steps separately. In this way, the source steps can be run in a Windows Amazon EC2 server sitting close to the Update Image, with the obvious performance gains. Still there will be some connectivity needed between your site and the Amazon EC2 servers, mainly to:

• Upload target environment information from your server into the Update Image.
• Download the Oracle Database and PeopleTools clients.
• Download the Change Package once the source steps are finished.

We also faced some challenges in converting the Virtual Box delivered virtual machine into an Amazon EC2 hosted machine. We could eventually solve them and now we have created an AMI to quickly deploy new instances for other PeopleSoft customers. We have also tested the conversion steps multiple times, so we should now be able to have the AMI available just one day after the Update Image is made available by Oracle.

Note: Since the introduction of PeopleSoft 8.55 and DPK, it has become considerably easier to deploy Update Images in cloud infrastructure. Please check this blog post for more information on this.

PeopleSoft's paths to the Cloud - Part III

In my previous posts on this series, I have covered how cloud computing could be used to reduce costs and maximize the flexibility of PeopleSoft Development and Production environments. In both cases, I focused on one specific area of cloud computing, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

Today I will explain what kind of benefits can be expected by using another important area: Database as a Service (DBaaS). Instead of using an IaaS provisioned server to install and maintain your database, DBaaS providers take responsibility for installing and maintaining the database.

There are many players in this market, including Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle. The service features may differ, but in a nutshell, they normally offer these capabilities:

• Backups: the database backups are automated, and you can decide to restore point-in-time backups at any moment. You can also decide when to take a snapshot of your database, which may be eventually be used to create another database instance (for example, to copy your Production database into the User Acceptance environment).
• High Availability: while some IaaS provider do not support high-availability database solutions such as Oracle RAC (for instance, it is not supported by Amazon EC2), many DBaaS providers include high availability by default.
• Contingency: some providers maintain a standby copy of your database in another data center. This allows you to quickly restore your system in the case the original data center's services are lost.
• Patching: although you can decide when to apply a database patch, the DBaaS will do that for you. In many case, you can turn on automatic patching, in order to make sure your database engine is always up to date.
• Monitoring: providers give the system administrators access to a management console, in which they can monitor the database behavior and add or remove resources as needed.
• Notifications: in order to simplify the monitoring effort, you normally have the possibility of setting up notifications to be received by email and/or SMS upon a list of events, which may include CPU usage, storage availability, etc.

Under my point of view, these services offer significant advantages for PeopleSoft customers, particularly if your current architecture does not support all the previously mentioned services or you do not have the right DBA skills in-house. Even if your organization does not fall in these categories, the scalability and elasticity of DBaaS providers is very difficult to match by most internal IT organizations.

In any case, if you are interested in using Database as a Service for your PeopleSoft installation, make sure you correctly evaluate what each provider can give you.

PeopleSoft's paths to the Cloud - Part II

In my previous post, I've covered some ways in which cloud computing features could be used with PeopleSoft, particularly around Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and non-Production environments. Now, I'm going to discuss how cloud technologies bring value to PeopleSoft Production environments.

Gain Flexibility

Some of the advantages of hosting PeopleSoft Production environments using an IaaS provider were also mentioned in the my past article as they are also valid for Non Production environments:

• Ability to adjust processing power (CPU) and memory according to peak usage.
• Storage may be enlarged at any time to cope with increasing requirements.
• Possibility of replicating the existing servers for contingency purposes.

In terms of cost, hosting the Production environment in IaaS may not always be cheaper than the on premise alternative (this needs to be analyzed on a case by case basis). However, the possibility to add more CPU, memory and storage on the run gives IaaS solutions an unprecedented flexibility. It is true that you can obtain similar flexibility with in house virtualized environments, but not many in-house data centers have the available horsepower of Amazon, IBM or Oracle data centers, to name a few.

Be Elastic

Adding additional power to the existing servers may not be the best way to scale up. An alternative way is to add a new server to the PeopleSoft architecture. This type of architecture is called elastic (actually, Amazon EC2 stands for Elastic Computing), as the architecture can elastically grow or shrink in order to adapt to the user load.

Many PeopleSoft customers use Production environments with multiple servers for high availability purposes. You may have two web servers, two application servers, two process schedulers, and so on. This architecture guarantees a better system availability in case one of the nodes fails. Using an elastic architecture means that we can add, for instance, a third application server not only to increase redundancy, but also the application performance.

In order to implement an elastic architecture, you need to fulfill two requirements:

1. You should be able to quickly deploy an additional instance of any part of the architecture. 
2. Once the instance is created, it should be plugged in the rest of the components, without disrupting the system availability.

The first point is easily covered by creating an Amazon AMI which can be instantiated at any moment. I've discussed the basics about AMIs in my previous post, but there is plenty of information from Amazon.

The second point is a bit trickier. Let's assume we are adding a new application server instance. If you do not declare this application server in the web servers configuration.properties file, it will not be used.

Of course you can do this manually, but my suggestion is that you try to automate these tasks, as it is this automation which will eventually bring elasticity to your architecture. You need to plan the automation not only for enlarging the architecture, but also for potential reduction (in case you covered a usage peak by increasing the instances and then you want to go back to the original situation).

At BNB we have built a generic elastic architecture, covering all layers of a normal PeopleSoft architecture. If you are planning to move to a cloud infrastructure and you need assistance, we would be happy to help.

Coming Next...

In my next post on this topic, I will cover how Database as a Service could be used to host PeopleSoft databases and what value it brings to PeopleSoft customers.

PeopleSoft's paths to the Cloud - Part I

Nowadays, all paths seem to lead to cloud computing. In the business applications world, Oracle is pushing hard to position the Oracle Cloud Applications in an increasingly competitive market. The reasons that favor Software as a Service (SaaS) applications over their on premise counterparties are significant, even though there are still a good number of circumstances under which the latter should normally be the preferred option.

Our beloved PeopleSoft (yes, I like PeopleSoft, so what?) is clearly not a SaaS application. Still, my point of view is that we can still benefit of many cloud computing features without migrating to another application.

On this post, and a few more to come, I will focus on the aspects of cloud computing could be incorporated to your PeopleSoft application.

Infrastructure as a Service

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a provision model in which an organization outsources the equipment used to support operations, including storage, hardware, servers and networking components. The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible for housing, running and maintaining it. The client typically pays on a per-use basis.

Probably the best known service in this category is Amazon EC2, but there are many other providers with similar features. We have installed PeopleSoft quite a few times under Amazon EC2, and the advantages are visible immediately:

• CPU, memory and disk space can be dynamically allocated. This is particularly useful when facing system usage peaks, for instance close to the evaluations submission deadline when using the PeopleSoft ePerformance module.
• Servers can be seamlessly cloned, which enormously reduces the time needed to set up new environments.
• The instance cloning can also take place between different geographical areas, providing a perfect solution for contingency environments.
• As mentioned before, the allocated servers are paid on a per-use basis. The only exception is storage, for which you will get charged even if the server is down (and assuming you still keep the storage space busy for the next time the instance is booted).

Use Case: Development Environments

One of the most typical uses of IaaS with PeopleSoft is for non-production environments. In many cases, these environments do not need to be up and running 24x7, so the solution provided by Infrastructure as a Service is not only more flexible, but also normally more cost effective.

The flexibility of IaaS is major advantage when a sandbox environment is needed. Cloning any existing environment just takes a few minutes allowing the developers to build prototypes on a new and isolated environment that is out of the migration path.

Use Case: Test a New Release

Another functionality of IaaS is the ability to use templates that could be rapidly be used to create a new instance based on it. The Amazon name for these templates is AMI. In the past, Oracle used to provide AMIs for PeopleSoft 9.1, so if you wanted to test that release, it was just a couple of minutes away.

However, currently there are no AMIs provided by Oracle for PeopleSoft 9.2. Luckily, you may still contact consulting companies like BNB to provide you the AMI, as long as you have a valid PeopleSoft license (the Oracle provided AMIs are under a trial license, so even if you are not currently a PeopleSoft customer you can use them).

Note: An alternative way to test a new release is to download the latest PeopleSoft Update Manager image, but it takes considerable time to do it due to the size of the files (over 30 Gb).

Use Case: Training

IaaS can also be used to quickly deploy PeopleSoft instances for internal user training. We actually use this approach at BNB for training our consultants. We have created an AMI for each course, so before the training session starts, we create one instance per student, so they have a completely isolated environment to learn and play with.

Coming Next...

In the next post, I will cover the value that cloud computing brings to PeopleSoft Production environments. But that's not the end of it, so stay tuned.