Installing EBS R12.1.3 using Oracle VM Template without VM Server & Manager (Part 1 of 4)

Let’s start with installing EBS R12.13 instance using Oracle VM Template. Using the guided steps any one will be able to have its own vision instance. The prerequisites will take most of your time (I would say 80-90%), otherwise the installation will take just an hour or so. This is divided into 5 sections.

• Section 1 –  Hardware and Software Pre-requisites
• Section 2 –  Downloading software and making it available to use
• Section 3 –  Configuring Database Tier Template
• Section 4 –  Configuring Application Tier Template
• Section 5 –  Using Oracle Applications 12.1.3

Section 1 – Hardware and Software Pre-requisites

It’s a best to have two different machines to (one for database server and another for application server), but spending on two physical machines is very costly and just to practice and use oracle application I don’t think any once is willing to pay much. So I thought of using virtualization and used Virtual Box to install oracle application.

I have used my personal laptop to implement this guide and it works fine. My laptop runs on Windows 7, I used virtual machines inside my Host OS to install EBS 12.1.3 visions instance. We can use this guide even we have Host Operating System as Linux, just we need to install the Linux version of Virtual Box / VM Ware.

Hardware Requirement

Recommended configuration

Processor	Intel Dual Core / Core2Duo 2.5 Ghz
RAM	6 GB of RAM (we can live with 4 GB but that will be too tight fit)
HDD	500 GB of HDD (We need extra 300 GB of HDD to convert VM template image to Virtual Box readable format)
Network	Network adapter

Used configuration

Processor	Intel Core i5 2.5 Ghz
RAM	8 GB
HDD	500 GB internal HDD + 500 GB external HDD
Network	Network adapter

Software Requirement

Virtualization	Oracle Virtual Box / VM Ware Player
Operating System	Oracle Enterprise Linux Release5 Update6
EBS Software	R12.13 OVM Template
Other Software	CygWin, Unzip Utility

Section 2 – Downloading software and making it available to use

§ Downloading Software

Download the Oracle virtual machine template form Oracle Software delivery could (https://edelivery.oracle.com/linux). Make sure to select ‘Oracle Linux/VM’ from Cloud Portal LOV on the right hand side.

Login to Oracle software delivery cloud Delivery portal using your credentials and search for ‘Oracle VM Template’, select your platform. I opted for 64 bit as to extract maximum performance out of my hardware.

a – OVM Templates

From the list select Oracle VM Templates for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3 Vision Media Pack for x86 (64 bit) and download all the 11 files under it (V25323-01 to V25330-01 for database server and V25331-01 - V25333-01 for application server).

b – Oracle Linux Release5 Update6

Also down Oracle Oracle Linux Release 5 Update 6 Media Pack for x86_64 (64 bit) ISO disk from oracle software cloud. We need this to first boot the virtual machine and configure the operating system provided by oracle in template. We could have done with later releases but I don’t want to take a chance as OVM templates are built on Oracle Linux Release 5 Update 6.

c – CygWin

Download and install Cygwin from internet (http://cygwin.com/install.html)

§  Extracting Template files

Unzip OVM Templates - Unzip all the 11 files we download. We can use any window tool like winzip / winrar to perform this activity or we can down load CygWin to create unix like environment under Windows and use unzip command to unzip the files. I have used CygWin to perform the extraction.

Upon completion we will get two set of files (one for db template and one for apps template) like this –

OVM_OL5U6_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.3_DB_VIS_PVM.tgz.0-7 (8 Files – Database tier)

OVM_OL5U6_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.3_APPS_VIS_PVM.tgz.0-2 (3 Files – Application tier template)

Concatenate and decompress OVM Template files– Once done the unzip we need to concatenate the files which are in .tgz format along with decompressing it. Oracle splitted entire DB and APPS image into smaller chunks and compressed it. I browsed to the directory where files were place or you can provide the path as well.

[root@ultimatix]# cat OVM_EL5U3_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.3_APPS_VIS_PVM.tgz.0 \

OVM_EL5U3_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.3_APPS_VIS_PVM.tgz.1 \

OVM_EL5U3_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.3_APPS_VIS_PVM.tgz.2 | tar –xz

[root@ultimatix]# cat OVM_EL5U3_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.3_DB_VIS_PVM.tgz.0 \

OVM_EL5U3_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.3_DB_VIS_PVM.tgz.1 \

OVM_EL5U3_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.3_DB_VIS_PVM.tgz.2 \

OVM_EL5U3_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.3_DB_VIS_PVM.tgz.3 \

OVM_EL5U3_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.3_DB_VIS_PVM.tgz.4 \

OVM_EL5U3_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.3_DB_VIS_PVM.tgz.5 \

OVM_EL5U3_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.3_DB_VIS_PVM.tgz.6 \

OVM_EL5U3_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.3_DB_VIS_PVM.tgz.7 | tar -xz

This will create 2 directories-

‘OVM_EL5U3_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.1_DB_VIS_PVM’ (2 Image files, 1 config file and 1 readme file)

‘OVM_EL5U3_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.1_APPS_VIS_PVM’ (2 Image files, 1 config file and 1 readme file)

Convert the disk to Virtual Machine readable format – To use the .img files that we got after concatenating and decompressing we need to convert them into some readable format that can be read by Virtual machines. The native file format of Virtual Box is ‘.vdi’ but I opted to convert the files into .vmdk (VM Ware native format) since Virtual Box supports .vmdk files and if I wish I can use it in VM Ware as well.

Before proceeding with guide please follow the below link to understand how to download and install Oracle Virtual Box

Installing Virtual Box and Creating Virtual Machines

Virtual Box provides a utility called ‘VBoxManage’ that will be used to convert the file format. We can find the utility inside the installation folder where Virtual Box is installed. To make use of it either we can browse inside the directory or we can add the path into environment variables. To do this goto -> System Properties

Click on Environment Variables to update the path:

Select the Path and click on Edit…

Add the directory path of Virtual Box installation where VBOXManage.exe is located

Now covert the .img files to .vmdk files. While converting I have changed the names of the files so that I can easily identify it.

Apps Server Files

=================

VBoxManage.exe convertfromraw g:\OracleVM\Apps-VM\ebs1211apps.img d:\OracleVM\Apps-VM\EBIZ12.1.3_APPS_VIS\ebs1213apps.vmdk

VBoxManage.exe convertfromraw g:\OracleVM\Apps-VM\System.img d:\OracleVM\Apps-VM\EBIZ12.1.3_APPS_VIS\ebs1213appsroot.vmdk

DB Server Files

===============

VBoxManage.exe convertfromraw g:\OracleVM\DB-VM\ebs1211db.img d:\OracleVM\DB-VM\EBIZ12.1.3_DB_VIS\ebs1213db.vmdk

VBoxManage.exe convertfromraw g:\OracleVM\DB-VM\System.img d:\OracleVM\DB-VM\EBIZ12.1.3_DB_VIS\ebs1213dbroot.vmdk

*** Above steps are performed on Windows system, you can find equivalent command for other Operating System if your HOST Operating System is different.

Please follow the below link to understand how to Create Virtual Machine in Virtual Box

Installing & Creating Virtual Machine in Oracle Virtual Box

Configuration for Virtual Machines

Database Server		Application Server
Processor/CPU	1	Processor/CPU	1
RAM	3 GB	RAM	1.5 GB
Operating System	Oracle Linux 64bit	Operating System	Oracle Linux 64bit
Boot Order	CD-ROM, Hard Disk	Boot Order	CD-ROM, Hard Disk
Storage	Oracle Linux R5U6 ISO, IDE Controller to attached two .vmdk files	Storage	Oracle Linux R5U6 ISO, IDE Controller to attached two .vmdk files
Network	1-Host-Only Adapter, 1-NAT Adapter	Network	1-Host-Only Adapter, 1-NAT Adapter

Data Base Server & Application Server Virtual Machine Final Configuration

Once we done with creating pre-requisites and virtual machine creation now we will move to next section.

Next -: Section 3 –  Configuring Database Tier Template