Slides from OAUG Connection Point conference in Pittsburgh, July 2013. Presentation discussed how to create an EBS Vision instance in Oracle Virtualbox, using OVM templates to avoid some of the pain of installation and patching. Content based on this blog post: http://www.pythian.com/blog/build-ebs-sandbox-1hr/ , with some minor modifications: resulting EBS instance is single-node, not two-node, instance. Slides by themselves are of questionable value, since much of the presentation was a live demo. Still, I believe in sharing, so here they are. ;)

1. Apps Tech, Pittsburgh 2013 - Session #13305
E-Business Suite in an Hour:
Build a Vision Instance –FAST! – in Oracle Virtualbox
John Piwowar

2. Hi!
jpiwowar just about everywhere
(gmail, LinkedIn, Twitter, Slideshare, etc)
…except…
piwowar@pythian.com
Blogging at: http://only4left.jpiwowar.com
and http://www.pythian.com/blog/author/piwowar

3. About Pythian
1) Recognized Leader:
Global industry-leader in remote database administration services and consulting for
Oracle, Oracle Applications, MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server
Work with over 250 multinational companies such as Forbes.com, Fox Sports,
Nordion and Western Union to help manage their complex IT deployments
2) Expertise:
Pythian’s data experts are the elite in their field. We have the highest concentration of
Oracle ACEs on staff - 10 including 3 ACE Directors—and 2 Microsoft MVPs.
Pythian holds 7 Specializations under Oracle Platinum Partner program, including
Oracle Exadata, Oracle GoldenGate & Oracle RAC
3) Global Reach & Scalability:
Around the clock global remote support for DBA and consulting, systems
administration, special projects or emergency response

4. What’s my motivation?
Installing EBS Vision from scratch...
...is time-consuming

5. What’s my motivation?
Installing EBS Vision from scratch...
...is time-consuming
...is error-prone

6. What’s my motivation?
Installing EBS Vision from scratch...
...is time-consuming
...is error-prone
...requires patching to bring it to “present day” config

7. The solution
Oracle has done all most of the work for us

8. The “trick”
Oracle has done all most of the work for us
Oracle VM templates for EBS 12.1.3 can be used in Virtualbox

9. An hour, really? Suuuure...
1) Download OVM templates: 5 min work (longer elapsed)
2) Extract files: 1 min work (longer elapsed)
3) Convert templates to .vdi format: 1 min (longer…ok, you get it by now)
4) Create VM: 5 min
5) Boot in rescue mode: 3 min
6) Adjust config files: 5 min
7) Update kernel: 5 min
8) Configure database: 20 min
9) Configure applications: 15 min
Total Work time: 60 minutes!

10. Download
Recommendations
Check the digest values before unzipping
Script download with wget

11. Extract
jpiwowar$ time cat OVM_OL5U6_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.3_DB_VIS_PVM.tgz.* | tar xvz
x OVM_OL5U6_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.3_DB_VIS_PVM/
x OVM_OL5U6_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.3_DB_VIS_PVM/ebs1211db.img
x OVM_OL5U6_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.3_DB_VIS_PVM/System.img
x OVM_OL5U6_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.3_DB_VIS_PVM/vm.cfg
x OVM_OL5U6_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.3_DB_VIS_PVM/README.txt
real 84m53.974s user 12m44.096s sys 5m13.680s
jpiwowar$ time cat OVM_OL5U6_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.3_APPS_VIS_PVM.tgz.* | tar xvz
x OVM_OL5U6_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.3_APPS_VIS_PVM/
x OVM_OL5U6_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.3_APPS_VIS_PVM/vm.cfg
x OVM_OL5U6_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.3_APPS_VIS_PVM/ebs1211apps.img
x OVM_OL5U6_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.3_APPS_VIS_PVM/README.txt
x OVM_OL5U6_X86_64_EBIZ12.1.3_APPS_VIS_PVM/System.img
real 16m11.327s user 2m42.887s sys 1m11.960s

12. Convert
Virtualbox command-line utility, “vboxmanage”
vboxmanage convertfromraw <imgfilename> <VDI file name>
Example:
time vboxmanage convertfromraw ebs1211db.img /Volumes/Valen/OVM_1213/EBS121DB.vdi
Converting from raw image file="ebs1211db.img" to file="/Volumes/Valen/OVM_1213/
EBS121DB.vdi"...
Creating dynamic image with size 257706247680 bytes (245768MB)...
real 179m37.541s
user 1m7.138s
sys 11m38.353s

13. Live Demo

14. Live Demo
(What could possibly go wrong?)

15. Ingredients
1) At least 2.5GB of free memory
(tight fit for a 4GB workstation, but doable – barely)
2) A recent version of Oracle Virtualbox (http://www.virtualbox.org)
3) A lot of storage (700GB, some reclaimable afterward)
4) A Linux install ISO for rescue boot. (OEL5, update 6 highly recommended)
5) Patience (not much work, but there is a lot of waiting)
Nice-to-haves:
6) Understanding of basic Linux systems administration tasks
7) Familiarity with configuring storage and network options in Virtualbox
8) Familiarity with the EBS Rapid Clone (adcfgclone) utility
9) Ability to follow instructions closely, to offset lack of other nice-to-haves
10) Windows users: Cygwin for Unix tools like tar, gunzip, wget, etc.

16. 5 words about licensing
1) Please
2) Please
3) Please
4) Be
5) Careful
(6 more: I am not a licensing expert)

17. n words about support
“ ... “
(n=0)

18. Thanks!
(or, “Sorry!” depending on how the demo went)
Blog post w/ more details:
http://www.pythian.com/blog/build-ebs-sandbox-1hr/
Interested in an OVM sandbox?
http://www.pythian.com/blog/how-to-install-oracle-vm-manager-3-2-x-under-
dom0-hosts/
Email: jpiwowar@gmail.com with questions, comments, beer, chocolate, etc.