Deploying the Oracle BI Sample App (v207) on an Esxi server

In order for Prōject to demonstrate the latest features of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, we needed a demo system at the latest level. Oracle provides a pre-build system which has lots of demo data and objects already setup and is perfect for this requirement however it is provided as a Virtual Machine on oracle’s VM software – VirtualBox. AT Prōject most all of our virtual machines are run on Esxi as oppose to VirtualBox so this Blog article will describe the steps I took to get the VM running on a new host name in Esxi.

Download the VM from Oracle

The virtual machine is available to download from Oracle Technology Network:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-foundation/obiee-samples-167534.html

You need to download all 11 zip files for the virtual disks and the OVF file. This website also contains the documentation you need if installing on VirtualBox. I would recommend downloading this and reading through it to gain an insight to the method of deploying.

Once downloaded unzip the virtual machine to a suitable directory e.g. C:\SampleApp

Convert VirtualBox image to VMWare compatible image

In order to deploy onto an Esxi server the image needs to be converted into the correct format. This will expand the disks even more so I would recommend at least 55G of disk space to convert into (on top of the disk space used to unzip the VirtualBox files).

To convert the image you will need a copy of VMWare’s ovftool. This can be downloaded from the VMWare website:

http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/server/vsphere/automationtools/ovf

To convert the machine open a command prompt and change directory to the location of the ovftool executable:

cd c:\ovftool

Run the ovf tool using the -–lax parameter and specify the source OVF file and the destination vmc file e.g.

ovftool.exe --lax c:\sampleapp\SampleAppv207_OBI_BP1.ovf c:\sampleappesxi\SampleApp207.vmc

This will create the virtual disks and a Virtual Machine Configuration file (vmx) in the detination folder which is used in the next step.

Deploy the Virtual Machine in Esxi

Use the vmc file to deploy the virtual machine to your chosen Esxi server. I used VMWare vCenter Converter Standalone Client.

Follow the conversion wizard as per normal setting important details such as destination, server name, memory assignment (I would recommend at least 4Gig), whether you want the disks to be thin or not and how many CPU’s you want to assign to the VM.

The VM will be created with a  generic guest OS type of Other 32 bit. Change this in vSphere Client to be Oracle Linux 4/5 32-bit by editing the VM settings:

 While changing the Guest OS check the other settings for the VM are as you require them (e.g. memory, CPU etc).

Start the VM

Start the Virtual Machine in vSphere Client and monitor the Console. It is likely that it will error trying to start the X Windows system. To fix this follow the wizard in the console to automatically fix the setup.

Reconfigure Linux Server

Once the VM has started the various network settings can be reconfigured. I set server name, IP address, DNS server and default gateway to suitable values for our network which were supplied from our infrastructure team. This can be done either in the GUI front end as root (all username/passwords etc are in the deployment guide) or by using the system-config-network-tui command line tool.  

Change the hosts file to keep the loopback address but add the new name and domain for your server and add an entry to your server’s IP address e.g.:

# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1               obieesampleapp.us.oracle.com obieesampleapp BISampleV207.ourdomain.com BISampleV207 localhost.localdomain localhost
::1             localhost6.localdomain6 localhost6
10.10.121.100 BISampleV207.ourdomain.com BISampleV207

The last part of reconfiguring is to change the database listener to reflect the new server name. Backup the original listener.ora file (can be found in /home/oracle/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1/network/admin) and then change the server name e.g.:

# listener.ora Network Configuration File: /home/oracle/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1/network/admin/listener.ora
# Generated by Oracle configuration tools.
LISTENER =
  (DESCRIPTION_LIST =
    (DESCRIPTION =
      (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = IPC)(KEY = EXTPROC1521))
      (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = BISampleV207.ourdomain.com)(PORT = 1521))
    )
  )
ADR_BASE_LISTENER = /home/oracle/app/oracle

Install VMTools and restart

To help with maintenance I installed the VMTools as per any other Linux VM I create and then restarted the VM.

Start up the BI processes by following the details in the deployment guide. Once started you should be able to access the BI Sample App. (See deployment guide for access details).

 

 

13 Sep, 2012 by Robin Harris

Business Intelligence | Technical discussion