Integrating Hardware Load Balancer with E-Business Suite

This blog covers integrating Hardware Load Balancer also known as Network Load Balancer with Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS).

Hardware Load Balancers are relatively easy to install, integrate and maintain.

In this particular blog, we will be considering a Load Balancer with a Single Web entry point, which means users are accessing EBS Application via a single web URL. This web URL is a load balancer URL that is pointing to EBS Application servers 1 and 2.

For other types of Load Balancer setups, refer to Oracle Doc Id 1375686.1

Hardware Load Balancer can be set up by Network Team. We have to provide the Application server’s hostname (appNode1.domain.com, appNode2.domain.com) and port that will act as Pool Members to the Load Balancer.

Context Variable Name	Context Variable Description	Old Context Value	New Context Value
s_webentryurlprotocol	Protocol to use web entry url	http	https
s_webentryhost	Name of the host that receives the first HTTP request	appNode1 on Application Server 1 appNode2 on Application Server 2	ebsapps
s_webentrydomain	Domain name of the host that receives the first HTTP request	example.com	domain.com
s_active_webport	Port on the web server or load balancer that listens for HTTP requests	<port>	443
s_login_page	URL used to access the Applications logon page	http://appNode1.domain.com:<port>/OA_HTML/AppsLogin on Apps Node 1 http://appNode2.domain.com:<port>/OA_HTML/AppsLogin on Apps Node 2	https://ebsapps.domain.com/OA_HTML/AppsLogin
s_external_url	URL that third party tools use to connect to the Oracle E-Business Suite System.	http://appNode1.domain.com:<port>/ on Apps Node 1 http://appNode2.domain.com:<port>/ on Apps Node 2	https://ebsapps.domain.com

Steps to implement SSL-based load balancer :

1. Stop the EBS application in all nodes.
2. Take backup of existing CONTEXT_FILE on all the nodes.
3. Change the above context value on all nodes respective to your environment.
4. Run autoconfig in all the nodes.
5. Start the Application.
6. Access the EBS application from Load Balancer URL.