Different Types of Deployments in weblogic

Stage mode
                      The Administration Server copies the archive files from their source location to a location on each of the targeted Managed Servers that deploy the archive. For example, if you deploy a J2EE Application to three servers in a cluster, the Administration Server copies the application archive files to each of the three servers. Each server then deploys the J2EE Application using its local copy of the archive files.

Stage mode is the default mode when deploying to more than one WebLogic Server instance.

Nostage mode

                   The Administration Server does not copy the archive files from their source location. Instead, each targeted server must access the archive files from a single source directory for deployment. For example, if you deploy a J2EE Application to three servers in a cluster, each server must be able to access the same application archive files (from a shared or network-mounted directory) to deploy the application.
Nostage mode is the default mode when deploying only to the Administration Server (for example, in a single-server domain). You can also select nostage mode if you run a cluster of server instances on the same machine.

 External_stage mode

                                External_stage mode is similar to stage mode, in that the deployment files must reside locally to each targeted server. However, the Administration Server does not automatically copy the deployment files to targeted servers in external_stage mode; instead, you must manually copy the files, or use a third-party application to copy the files for you.

Weblogic supports following type of deployment unit

a) EAR file (Enterprise Archive)

b) WAR file (Web Archive)

c) JAR files, EJB (Enterprise Java Beans)

d) RAR (Resource Adapter/Connector )

e) Web Services (WAR/JAR)

f) J2EE Library

g) CAR (Client Application Archive)


Tools used to deploy/configure applications

1) weblogic.Deployer – command line interface

2) Administration Console – Web based interface

3) WLST(WebLogic Scripting Tool) – command line tool to automate deployment configuration and operation

4) Tool for developers (wldeploy, weblogic.PlanGenerator, API, autodeploy)

Refer the links

➤ How to deploy applications with wldeploy