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

Installing Virtual Box and Creating Virtual Machines

This guide is built to support the effort to build our own Oracle EBS 12.1.3 SandBox (Vision Instance) system. Let’s start with downloading Virtual Box and Creating Virtual Machines.

First of all download Oracle Virtual Box or VM Ware Player. I have choosen Oracle Virtual Box as its Oracles and free.

Download Oracle Virtual Box - https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads and save the file based on your Host operating system. Mine is Windows so I got a version of windows.

Run the executable file and follow the steps on the coming windows to install it.

Installing E-Business Suite 12.1.3 Vision instance using Oracle VM Templates

Ever since I started working in Oracle application it’s been a dream to have my own environment installed with EBS. It really makes life much easier to learn something new or try some new solutions before proposing to client.

The time I started with EBS it was time of EBS 11i(11.5.10.2), which I installed on my system. When I tried for the first time it took me many days because of failures or issues that occurred while installation.

Later R12 is introduced and I tried installing Release 12.0.6, but it’s getting crashed very frequently. I don’t know the reason as I am not a DBA :(. Once I tried with 12.1.1 which is more stable it worked fine. But the time, pain and the pre-requisites in installing makes the task very difficult. Also on a normal Dual Core 3 Ghz, 4GB machine it barely runs. It takes 15-20 mins to start the database and application services. I also tried to have it on Virtual Machine and it worked well but lack of resource forced me to remove it from my system.

Today when world is going gaga over Virtualization and Cloud computing, more over getting a hardware is much more cheaper we can easily have virtualized system installed to work as EBS server. With the evolution of virtualization Oracle went a step further and now providing pre-installed virtual machine templates which really minimize the effort to install and new EBS 12.1.1 / 12.1.3 instance.

There are two methods which I know till date that can be used to have our own Vision Instance (SandBox) using Oracle Virtual Machine Templates (will be referred as VM Templates in this document)

• Method -1: Installing EBS R12.1.3 using Oracle VM Template with VM Server and VM Manager

The Method-1 also I call it as ‘The Oracle Way’ of using VM template. The process is little exhaustive and more resource consuming than the other method. Please use the below link to check out how to use VM template ‘The Oracle Way’

• Method -2: Installing EBS R12.1.3 using OracleVM Template without VM Server and VM Manager

Compared to first method this is less exhaustive and resource consuming on a long run. It also takes less time to have your own Vision instance.