Getting Started with System and Server Administration

This chapter provides an overview of system and server administration and discusses system and server administration implementation.

Click to jump to parent topicSystem and Server Administration Overview

This section discusses:

Click to jump to top of pageClick to jump to parent topicPSADMIN

You use PSADMIN for managing application server domains, PeopleSoft Process Scheduler domains, integration server processes, search domains, and so on. PSADMIN also enables you to configure and manage the behavior of servers with respect to a wide range of PeopleTools infrastructure elements, including:

You launch and run PSADMIN using a command line interface.

See Also

Using the PSADMIN Utility

Using PSADMIN Menus

Setting Application Server Domain Parameters

Click to jump to top of pageClick to jump to parent topicAnalytic Servers

The analytic server framework provided by PeopleSoft is a general server infrastructure designed to meet the needs of PeopleSoft products that process large amounts of data in memory. It provides a stateful model of client/server connectivity that these products require to be part of the PeopleTools system, by keeping track of configuration settings, transaction information, and other data for a session. For example, client software could request that an analytic model or optimization model be recalculated in one transaction, then retrieve the results of the calculation on that model at a later time. A server process handles these requests, and maintains the model state and calculated data in memory between the requests. Additional transactions can then modify the model and perform recalculations on it without shuffling all of the data between the client and the server or dumping all the data to a database, thus preserving in-memory performance.

When a program doesn't “maintain state” or when the infrastructure of a system prevents a program from maintaining state, it’s known as a stateless program or system. It can’t take information about the last session into the next session, such as settings the user makes or conditions that arise during processing. All session state is maintained by the client and is transferred to the server with each request. As long as an application server is up and running, a user’s session remains active and functional, and any application server can perform requested transactions.

However, with some products, such as PeopleSoft Analytic Calculation Engine or PeopleSoft Optimization Framework, running a calculation on a multi-dimensional model is likely to produce far more data than is reasonable to shuttle between a client and server to maintain a stateless connection. For performance reasons, the calculations are performed completely in memory. If these calculations were to be synchronized and stored in the database so that a stateless connection could be maintained, performance would suffer significantly.

Click to jump to top of pageClick to jump to parent topicWeb Servers

PeopleSoft supports Oracle Application Server, BEA WebLogic, and IBM WebSphere web servers, which all provide the same basic functionality to support PeopleSoft Pure Internet Architecture, including a console interface, secure sockets layer (SSL), and reverse proxy servers (RPS).

Each web server has its own way of accomplishing its functionality, and each adds its own extra features that you might find useful to your PeopleSoft system. This PeopleBook provides supplemental information about configuring and administering Oracle Application Server, BEA WebLogic, and IBM WebSphere where it has particular relevance to PeopleSoft.

Note. The information in this PeopleBook is not intended to replace any Oracle Application Server, BEA WebLogic or IBM WebSphere documentation. Always refer to the manufacturer's documentation for detailed information about your web server.

See Also

Working with BEA WebLogic

BEA WebLogic Managed Server Architecture

Working with Oracle Application Server

Click to jump to top of pageClick to jump to parent topicSearch Indexes

A search index is a collection of files that is used during a search to quickly find documents of interest. You build a search index to enable searching on a given set of documents. The set of files that make up the index is a collection. This collection contains a list of words in the indexed documents, an internal documents table containing document field information, and logical pointers to the actual document files.

Fields contain metadata about a document. For example, Author and Title might be fields in an index. VdkVgwKey is a special field that identifies each document and is unique to all of the documents in the collection.

Every search index can be modified by changing the configuration files that are associated with the index. These configuration files are known as style files and reside in the style directory under the database directory. A typical configuration of style files define fields for a particular index.

PeopleSoft software supports these types of search indexes:

See Also

Configuring Search and Building Search Indexes

Click to jump to top of pageClick to jump to parent topicPeopleSoft Configuration Manager

PeopleSoft Configuration Manager is a Microsoft Windows application that simplifies workstation administration by enabling you to adjust PeopleSoft registry settings from a central location. You can set up one workstation to reflect the environment at your site, then export the configuration file, which can be shared among all the workstations at your site. You can also define separate profiles for connecting to different PeopleSoft databases.

Note. The PeopleSoft Configuration Manager applies only to development environment workstations, such as workstations used to launch Application Designer on Windows.

PeopleSoft configuration parameters are grouped on the Configuration Manager pages according to the function, feature, or tool that they control, including:

See Also

Using PeopleSoft Configuration Manager

Click to jump to top of pageClick to jump to parent topicPeopleTools Utilities

The PeopleTools utilities are a set of miscellaneous configuration and administration tools that serve as a browser-based complement to PeopleSoft Configuration Manager. These utilities, most of which are available through the PeopleTools Utilities menu, provide the ability to configure, maintain, or launch a wide range of features, including:

See Also

Using PeopleTools Utilities

Click to jump to top of pageClick to jump to parent topicTracing and Debugging

You can use the PeopleCode Debugger to interactively debug a PeopleCode program's configurations of a two-tier connection to the database or a three-tier connection to the database. You can temporarily override the PeopleSoft Configuration Manager trace settings for PeopleCode and SQL programs.

See Also

Configuring Trace and Debug Settings

Click to jump to top of pageClick to jump to parent topicJolt Configuration Options

With BEA Jolt, PeopleSoft provides the options of configuring load balancing, session pooling, and (for some special configurations) Jolt Internet Relay. Load balancing enables you to route requests to servers according to the ability of a server to handle a given request load. Powerful, dedicated servers can take a higher load while less powerful servers can take a lighter load. Session pooling enables user sessions to share web server connections, which is a more efficient use of system resources. Jolt Internet Relay enables you to route connections from one web server to another, perhaps through a fire wall, for specific configuration or security needs.

See Also

Working with Jolt Configuration Options

Click to jump to top of pageClick to jump to parent topicEnvironment Replication

Environment replication involves taking a working, well-tested environment, and copying the PeopleTools binary and configuration files to a new location to create a new environment by making minor modifications to the new copies.

To further define the term “environment”, there are three separate components that can have multiple environment configurations: the web server, the application server, and PeopleSoft Process Scheduler server. You replicate each of these elements using procedures that are appropriate to its architecture.

See Replicating an Installed Environment.

Click to jump to top of pageClick to jump to parent topicTimeout Settings

This appendix lists the delivered default timeout settings for the web server, application server, PeopleSoft Process Scheduler, search servers, and PeopleSoft Internet Architecture (PIA).

See Also

PeopleSoft Timeout Settings

Click to jump to parent topicSystem and Server Administration Implementation

The functionality of system and server administration for your PeopleSoft applications is delivered as part of the standard installation of PeopleTools, which is provided with all PeopleSoft products.

Several activities must be completed before you administer the system and servers for your implementation:

  1. Install your web server software according to the documentation provided with that product.

  2. Install your PeopleSoft application according to the installation guide for your database platform and application.

  3. Establish a user profile that gives you access to PeopleSoft Application Designer and any other tools and processes that you'll use.

    See Administering User Profiles.

Other Sources of Information

In addition to implementation considerations presented in this section, take advantage of all PeopleSoft sources of information, including the installation guides, release notes, and PeopleBooks.

See Also

System and Server Administration Preface

Enterprise PeopleTools 8.49 PeopleBook: Getting Started with PeopleTools