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Evolution of Oracle E-Business Suite VM Virtual Appliance

Have you ever wondered, as an Oracle E-Business Suite Developer or a Functional Consultant, how you can setup your own Oracle E-Business Suite R12 environment, where you can perform all your POCs, which you can’t perform on a client environment, otherwise? Are you an Oracle Database Administrator, wondering where you can perform a test upgrade of your Oracle EBS environment? If yes, then this blog post is for you.

Implementing Oracle E-Business Suite environment, from scratch, can be a challenging task. It requires a lot of resources, in terms of hardware [ disk space, CPU, memory, etc ], and a team of developers, functional consultants, testers and of-course DBAs to configure and implement the environment. The life-cycle of the project can take months and involve a lot of complexities.

Well, Oracle has a solution to this. Using Oracle’s VirtualBox and Oracle VM Server, you can now configure a test on-premises EBS R12 environment within a few hours. Oracle has released a number of EBS R12 virtual appliances over the years. These appliances are available for download from the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud. You can use these appliances to create Oracle E-Business Suite Vision demo instances on single, unified virtual machines containing both the database tier and the application tier. Some of the available versions of the Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2.X is shown in the table below, along with their announcement dates. There is also a Release 12.1.3 VM Virtual Appliance available for download.

Oracle E-Business Suite Virtual Machine Version	Announcement Date
EBS R12.2.10	January 14, 2021
EBS R12.2.9	October 21, 2019
EBS R12.2.8	February 4, 2019
EBS R12.2.7	February 20, 2018
EBS R12.2.6	May 5, 2017

In this blog, I’ll demonstrate the steps involved in getting an Oracle EBS R12.2.9 environment up and running. If you want to setup any other version, the steps are pretty much similar. 

Note: This virtual appliance is for on-premises use only. If you’re interested in running Oracle E-Business Suite on Oracle Cloud, see Getting Started with Oracle E-Business Suite on Oracle Cloud (MOS Note 2066260.1) and Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Cloud for more information.

EBS Technology Stack Components for Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2.9 VM

The Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2.9 VM virtual appliance delivers the full software stack, including the Oracle Linux 6.10 (64-bit) operating system, Oracle E-Business Suite, and additional required technology components.

The embedded technology components and their versions are listed in the table below

Technology Component	Version (and associated MOS Doc ID if applicable)
RDBMS Oracle Home	12.1.0.2
Application Code Level	Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2.9 Release Update Pack (MOS Note 2495027.1) R12.AD.C.Delta.11 and R12.TXK.C.Delta.11 (MOS Note 1617461.1) Consolidated technology patches for database and application tier technology stack components (MOS Note 1594274.1) Oracle E-Business Suite Data Removal Tool (DRT) patches (MOS Note 2388237.1)
Oracle Forms and Reports	10.1.2.3
WebLogic Server	10.3.6.0
Web Tier	11.1.1.9
JDK	JDK 1.7.0_231
Java Plugin	J2SE 1.7
Critical Patch Update (CPU)	July 2019 (MOS Note 2555452.1)

So, let’s take a deep dive and see how you can setup your own EBS R12.2.9 environment.

Basic Systems Requirements

• A 64-bit Desktop or Laptop running Oracle Virtual Box.
• At least 6 GB RAM.
• At least 500 GB of disk space.

Steps

1. Download Oracle VM Virtual Appliance for Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2.9

Search for Oracle VM Virtual Appliance for Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2.9 from the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud, select Linux x86 64 bit as the Platform and click on Continue.

Read and Accept Oracle License Agreement and click on Continue.

The file download window opens. Oracle VM Virtual Appliance for Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2.9 is shipped through 18 different zipped files ( 63.0 GB ). Click on Download. This process may take a while, depending on your internet speed.

2. Unzip and Merge the Unzipped files.

2.1. Unzip the files: Once all the files are downloaded, the next step is to Unzip all these files in a single folder. This would require an additional storage space of around 70 GB. It is recommended that you use 7-zip to unzip the files. This is because using Winzip sometimes causes the files to get corrupted, because of the file size. Once unzipped, these are the list of OVA part files that you will see in the folder.

2.2. Merge or Concatenate the Unzipped files: The next step is to merge the OVA part files into a single .OVA file. In order to do that, open up a command prompt, navigate to folder containing the OVA part files, and copy and paste the following command.

type  Oracle-E-Business-Suite-12.2.9_VISION_INSTALL.ova.00 Oracle-E-Business-Suite-12.2.9_VISION_INSTALL.ova.01 Oracle-E-Business-Suite-12.2.9_VISION_INSTALL.ova.02 Oracle-E-Business-Suite-12.2.9_VISION_INSTALL.ova.03 Oracle-E-Business-Suite-12.2.9_VISION_INSTALL.ova.04 Oracle-E-Business-Suite-12.2.9_VISION_INSTALL.ova.05 Oracle-E-Business-Suite-12.2.9_VISION_INSTALL.ova.06 Oracle-E-Business-Suite-12.2.9_VISION_INSTALL.ova.07 Oracle-E-Business-Suite-12.2.9_VISION_INSTALL.ova.08 Oracle-E-Business-Suite-12.2.9_VISION_INSTALL.ova.09 Oracle-E-Business-Suite-12.2.9_VISION_INSTALL.ova.10 Oracle-E-Business-Suite-12.2.9_VISION_INSTALL.ova.11 Oracle-E-Business-Suite-12.2.9_VISION_INSTALL.ova.12 Oracle-E-Business-Suite-12.2.9_VISION_INSTALL.ova.13 Oracle-E-Business-Suite-12.2.9_VISION_INSTALL.ova.14 Oracle-E-Business-Suite-12.2.9_VISION_INSTALL.ova.15 Oracle-E-Business-Suite-12.2.9_VISION_INSTALL.ova.16 > Oracle-E-Business-Suite-12.2.9_VISION_INSTALL.ova

Once you type this command and hit enter, the merge process is kicked off. The process takes around 45-60 mins or more, based on your CPU speed and RAM.

When the merge process is complete, a single .OVA file will be generated. At this point, the OVA part files can be deleted to free up hard drive space.

3. Import VM Appliance to Virtual Box and environment setup.

3.1. Import the VM Appliance to Virtual Box: Open Virtual Box and click on File > Import Appliance.

Click on Expert mode and edit the Virtual Disk Image path to point to a location with at least 300 GB of disk space. If there is not enough space, then the process will abort.

Locate and select the source file system ( the .ova file which was created after the merge ).

Click on Import.

This kicks off the process to import the virtual disk.

When the import process completes, the virtual machine will be listed in the Virtual Box Manager.

3.2. Configuring the Virtual Machine.

Select the newly imported Virtual Appliance and click on Settings.

The settings window pops up. Click on System. For Boot Order settings in the Motherboard tab, move Hard Disk to the top and un-check Floppy and Optical.

Adjust Base Memory.

Navigate to the Processor tab.

Navigate to the Display settings and go to the Remote Display tab, un-check the Enable Server checkbox.

Navigate to the Recording tab and un-check the Enable Recording checkbox.

Navigate to the Network settings and select Host-Only Adapter. This will enable SSH client and the browser to access the Appliance.

Note: This post assumes that you are configuring an on-premises EBS R12 environment. If you want to integrate your EBS Server to applications hosted on different servers, you have to chose a different Network Adapter. More on different Network Adapters for VirtualBox can be found here.

3.3. Starting the Virtual Machine.

Click on Start.

A red progress bar is displayed at the bottom of the page. At the end of the boot process, the login prompt is displayed.

3.4. Resetting passwords.

The next step is to reset the passwords for root, oracle and applmgr, when prompted.

This will kick off the post installation processing.

All <PRODUCT>_TOP(s) are installed. This process may take a while.

3.5. VISION Application Installation.

At the end of the post-installation process, the system prompts whether you want the VISION Demo instance to be configured. Enter VISION and hit Enter.

Once the VISION Demo Instance is configured, issue the ifconfig command. Note down the host.

Also issue the hostname command and note down the hostname.

3.6. Starting up the services

At this point, the environment is already configured. Now you need to start up the services for both database and application tiers. For doing this you can use putty and login to the environment using the oracle user.

Then navigate to the directory /u01/install/APPS/scripts/ and execute the shell script startdb.sh, using the command ./startdb.sh

This will start the database tier services.

With the database services up and running, start the application tier services by executing the startapps.sh script.

3.7. Changing host file in your computer/laptop

With both the DB tier and APPS tier up and running, the environment is ready to be accessed. You just need to amend the hosts file in your computer, so that you can access the environment through the browser. Hence, in your laptop/computer, locate the hosts file and add the IP address of your newly configured environment and hostname. On Windows machines, this file is present in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc directory.

Congratulations!!! You are now all set to login to your newly configured Oracle E-Business Suite R12.2.9 environment. Open any browser ( preferably Internet Explorer ) and type in

http://apps.example.com:8000/OA_HTML/AppsLogin

The first login should be done through SYSADMIN user. If you need to change the SYSADMIN user password, you can change it through the enableSYSADMIN.sh script. And if you need to change any of the DEMO users, then use the enableDEMOusers.sh script.

Once you login, try to open a form. Voila!!!

I hope you find this post helpful. If you do like this post, please let me know in the comments section below. In case you get stuck or have any queries with the steps, please feel free to reach out and I’ll try my best to get back to you as soon as possible.

Accessing the Application Tier using Putty

Open a Putty session, provide the IP address of the newly configured environment and ssh port [default is 22] and connect.

Connecting to EBS Database from SQL Developer installed on the host

Open SQL Developer, provide the hostname [apps.example.com], port [1521], and SID [EBSDB], username [ APPS ] and password [ default password is ‘apps’].

References

• Oracle VM Virtual Appliance for Oracle E-Business Suite Deployment Guide, Release 12.2.9 (MOS Note 2580936.1)
• Oracle VM Documentation Library
• Oracle VM VirtualBox
• Hardware Certification List for Oracle Linux and Oracle VM Hardware Certification List for Oracle Linux and Oracle VM
• Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2 Information Center (MOS Note1581299.1)

Related Articles

• EBS 12.2.9 VM Virtual Appliance for On-Premise Now Available
• EBS 12.2.8 VM Virtual Appliance Now Available
• EBS Release 12.2.7 VM Virtual Appliance Now Available
• Oracle VM Virtual Appliance for E-Business Suite 12.2.6 Now Available
• Oracle EBS R12.2.X Instance On VirtualBox