Saturday, November 27, 2010

PRE INSTALLATION STEPS FOR ORACLE R12

This series of posts will cover a Vision install of Oracle Applications 12.1.1 on Linux. In this installment, I'll discuss requirements and acquiring the software. Subsequent posts will cover the installation of the software and actually using your shiny new E-Business Suite system.

Requirements
  1. A Linux machine (physical or virtual).
  2. At least 2GB of memory. 3GB would be better. If your machine is on the low end of this list, don't expect to use it for anything else while EBS is running.
  3. Lots of disk space. At least 290GB. set aside 400GB for other propose(like backup )
.
Recommendations
  1. Install on a version of Linux that is supported/certified for use with EBS. I'm going to be using Redhat Enterprise linux 4 or Oracle Enterprise Linux 5, Update 4 (64-bit) or (32-bit) for this install, but there are other options, listed in My Oracle Support Doc ID 761566.1: Oracle Applications Installation and Upgrade Notes Release 12 (12.1.1) for Linux x86-64 (32-bit Linux users can check out My Oracle Support Note 761564.1) It may be possible to install EBS on your favorite flavor of Linux, but that's not what this particular adventure is all about.
  2. Consider installing EBS in a virtual machine, using VMware or Virtualbox. There are serious advantages to doing this, in my opinion, particularly if, like me, you'll be installing on your primary workstation.
  3. Get familiar with some of the documentation while you're downloading the massive software distribution and building and/or patching your Linux environment to get up to spec. You'll find a reference list at the end of this post.
Preparing the OS
When laying out the disk space for your Linux server, allocate your preferred amount of space for swap and the operating system (I usually set aside about 10GB), 260-275GB for the /u01 partition (where we'll be installing the EBS software and database), and 50GB for the stage directory for the installer (I usually mount this to /mnt/R12stage). Needless to say, a production system's layout would be more refined/detailed, but if you're reading this guide as a roadmap to a production deployment, you need to stop immediately and have your head examined.

Install packages and set kernel parameters according to the appropriate section in the Release Notes referenced above. If you don't have access to My Oracle Support, you're in a bit of a tough spot, but here are some thoughts:
  • Version R12.1 of EBS comprises Oracle RDBMS 11.1.0.7, Oracle Developer 10g, and two versions of Oracle Application Server 10g (ahem, excuse me, Fusion Middleware): 10.1.2.3 and 10.1.3.4. Presumably, combining the installation requirements for those products will get you most of the way to a full set of required packages and kernel parameters.
  • Similarly, installing all the packages that come with your OS distribution should get you almost all of the installation requirements.
  • The oracle-validated RPM seems to cover many, but not all, of the software and kernel parameter requirements for Oracle Enterprise Linux.
  • One point that bears mentioning (and has been discussed pretty openly in the OTN forums, so it's not like I'm giving away any deep My Oracle Support secrets) is that an old version of openmotif libraries is required for this install. The name of the package varies by OS distribution, but the version number is what's important: it has to be version 2.1. If you go with the install-everything route, be sure to remove any competing openmotif packages.
Create two OS users, one to own the Oracle RDBMS software, and one to own the Apps software. Oracle recommends oraSID and applSID, respectively, where SID is all or part of the database SID that you designate during installation. For example, since we'll be doing a Vision install, it would be appropriate to create users oravis and applvis. It's a good idea to make sure that both users share the same primary group, usually the oinstall group. Also, create a dba group and assign it to the Oracle RDBMS software owner as an additional (not primary) group.

Acquiring and staging the software
E-Business Suite software can't be found on Oracle Technet (OTN). You can either purchase the media from the Oracle Store, or download it from Oracle's E-Delivery site. I'll assume you'll be downloading from E-Delivery. Two things worth noting here:

After logging in to E-Delivery, select "E-Business Suite" in the Product Pack dropdown, and select your desired installation platform (Linux x86 or Linux x86-64). Click Go to search, and click the "Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1 Media Pack" link to get to the downloads page. Don't pick the "Upgrade Media" link, unless you really intend to upgrade, in which case you really shouldn't be reading this.



You don't need to download all of the files listed on the page, but you're still going to be grabbing about 45GB. You might want to fix yourself a snack while you wait. The media is separated as if to be burned to DVD. For this exercise, however, we won't be burning DVDs. Be sure to grab all of the parts labelled:
  • "Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1 for Linux x86-64 Rapid Install Start Here"
  • "Rapid Install RDBMS - Disk 1" "Rapid Install Databases - Disk 1" through "Rapid Install Databases - Disk 9," inclusive
  • "Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1 for Linux x86-64 Rapid Install Tools - Disk 1"
  • "Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1 for Linux x86-64 Rapid Install APPL_TOP - Disk 1"
  • "Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1 for Linux x86-64 Rapid Install APPL_TOP - Disk 2"
When I sent these instructions to Chet, he did the smart thing and created a spreadsheet to track his downloads. He's been kind enough to share it on Google Docs. Note that your part numbers may be different if you decide to go with 64-bit Linux instead of 32-bit.

Once you have all of the media, unzip the files into the stage directory on your Linux server. When the unzip utility asks if you want to replace dvd.label or component.label files, answer yes. If you get any other errors from unzip, you may have a corrupt download, and should re-download that zip file. Don't assume you can work around it. Once you've unpacked all of the files, your stage directory should look like this:
[root@londo R12stage]# ls

oraAppDB  oraApps  oraAS  oraDB  startCD
  • At this point, you'll be ready to start the installation (finally!). Hopefully, by the time you're done building your Linux server and downloading and staging the EBS software, the next installment in this series will be up.

1 comment:

  1. I have never installed any application on Oracle and this is the first time I am trying to do so. After completely understanding the whole pre installation steps I am feeling bit relaxed as it now seems it is not so difficult as I was thinking. I will surely follow your post when installing the business suite.

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