OBIEE, ODI, OBIA Semi-Silent Installations

I’ve written recently about doing OBIEE, ODI and OBIA installations here. A couple of days ago I tweeted about doing some more in a semi-silent manner, which saved loads of time. It took 1 day for the semi-silent approach compared to 3 days doing it the GUI way. I can’t talk about the process in detail, as I explained here, but I thought I would post an overview of the steps for those whose curiosity was peaked by my tweet.

  • DB Installation : Silent software-only installation of 12.1.0.2, as described here.
  • Database Creation : DBCA in silent mode to create a non-CDB instance, as described here.
  • WebLogic Installation : Silent installation of WebLogic 11g (10.3.6), including Java 7, as described here.
  • RCU : The first of two RCU install and runs. This one is similar to the silent install and run described in the OBIEE silent installation here.
  • OBIEE Installation : Silent installation of OBIEE 11g, as described here, but without the configuration stage, which is done later by OBIA.
  • ODI Installation : Silent installation of ODI 11g, as described here, but without the configuration stage, which is done later by OBIA.
  • OBIA RCU : We did this using the GUI because I’ve not had time to figure out the parameters to do it silently. It’s probably quite simple.
  • OBIA Installation : Silent installation of OBIA 11g using a response file we saved from the previous GUI installation.
  • OBIA Tech Patch : The command line instructions are with the patch, so we scripted it.
  • Patch Set Assistant : Three separate runs of this. We did it in GUI mode.
  • OBIA Configuration : Silent configuration of OBIA using a response file saved from a previous configuration.
  • BI Application Configuration : Silent configuration of OBIA using a response file saved from a previous configuration.
  • ODI Studio Configuration : We did this using the GUI.
  • Bundle Patch plus Extra Patches : On our version “opatch napply” wouldn’t work because of some version issues and conflicts, but we were able to apply the 8 patches in the bundle, plus an extra 3-4 patches. This was all scripted.
  • Additional Config : There were a bunch of manual fixes to files and admin console config, related known bugs.
  • That’s the end of the infrastructure part of the installation. At this point we handed it over to the functional folks to do their bit, which I know nothing about. 🙂

As you can see, we used a mix of scripted and manual steps. We are only doing 4 of these installations, so that approach seemed a reasonable compromise, rather than spending hours making it 100% silent. It’s a return on investment thing. 🙂

I’ve linked to examples on my website for the database, OBIEE and ODI stuff. I can’t say too much about the OBIA stuff, as I explained here, but most of that stuff is pretty straight forward if you use response files.

This stuff is all to support the link between Oracle Cloud Apps and our internal data warehouse. I’ll also be doing some OBIEE 12c and ODI 12c silent installations for our internal development, but these are simple and they are already on the website. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

PS. Don’t ask me for help with this stuff. I’m a noob and I just know enough to get my bit done. If what I’ve put on my website helps that’s great. If not, ask someone who knows more about this than me! 🙂

PXE Installations on RHEL6 / OL6

I spent yesterday neatening up a few old articles. For the most part it is a bit of a dull process, but it has to be done every so often.

With what’s going on at work, it seemed like a good idea bring my old Kickstart and PXE Installation articles up to date. My kickstart article was written in the RHEL3 era which needed bringing up to date. Nothing has really changed about the process, but some new screen shots from OL6 make it look a little fresher. My old PXE Installation article was written against RHEL5/OL5, so I figured things wouldn’t have changed much between that and RHEL6/OL6… Wrong! I ended up having to write a new article specifically for PXE Installations on RHEL6/OL6.

I think that’s enough of me pretending to be a Linux sysadmin for a while… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

PXE Network Installations…

I’ve been using Kickstart and network installations for a while now. I think the last time I wrote about it was in RHEL3 days (here).

Well I finally got round to having a look at PXE Network Installations, which just tags an extra bit onto the start to save you running round with boot CDs.

With the amount of installations I’ve been doing recently it’s really handy.

Cheers

Tim…

Installfest and Downsizing…

Installfest

Tod Trichler from OTN sent me a mail this morning about a new Installfest section on the Oracle Wiki. I’m always a bit dubious about putting links to my content on the Oracle Wiki because it seems like a shameless plug, but this section of the Wiki actively encourages it, provided the links are relevant. If you are into Oracle on Linux try and get involved. 🙂

Downsizing

As part of our continuing assimilation a whole bunch of projects at work are being downsized at the moment. Many will run in a limited capacity before being shut down completely in the near future. As a result, I’m in the process of moving several databases from large, expensive and power hungry hardware to commodity hardware running Linux. In a couple of cases, applications are moving from RAC to single node databases.

It’s quite good fun installing loads of little boxes and transferring the data. Sometimes, having lots of little jobs to tick off the list is quite rewarding, although I’m sure it will get very old very fast. 🙂

While sitting running some Red Hat updates I found myself saying, “I love Linux!”, to a colleague. I can’t tell you exactly why. It just has the right combination of ease of use and geek appeal all rolled into one. I work with Oracle a variety of platforms (Tru64, Windows, Linux) here, an I’ve used a whole bunch more in previous jobs, but I think Linux ticks most of the boxes for me.

Cheers

Tim…