Tag: virtualbox

Oracle 11gR2 RAC on Oracle Linux 6.1 using VirtualBox…

It’s all a bit last minute, but today I decided to do an Oracle 11gR2 (11.2.0.3) RAC installation on Oracle Linux 6.1 using VirtualBox. The 11.2.0.3 patch has fixed all of the installation issues related to RAC on OL6.1, so it was pretty smooth. The procedure can be seen here.

As noted in the article, the screen shots of the GI and DB installers are from an 11.2.0.1 article. I’ll update these screen shots when I get back from OpenWorld. Like I said, it was all a bit last minute. 🙂 Normally I wouldn’t put an article like this live (and you can see it’s not on the homepage yet), but I get lots of questions about this subject, so I thought I would make it available to make my life easier.

Cheers

Tim..

PS. There is no suitable oracle-validated package available for this at the moment, so the prerequisites have to be done manually.

VirtualBox Cloning: A minor warning…

The cloning feature in VirtualBox was a welcome addition, but there are a couple of fringe issues to be aware of:

  • If you use the cloning feature to clone a VM that has shared disks (like in a VM RAC setup), the shared disks are also cloned, so you end up with a new VM that is not accessing the original shared disks, but has a new set. I’ve put a note about this in my VirtualBox RAC articles and suggested you still use the old method of cloning the virtual hard disk manually. I guess for most people this is not a big deal.
  • The virtual disks of a clone get placed in the default location. Once again, not a big deal unless you try to spread your virtual disks onto different spindles to get better performance.

Like I said, these are very edge-case issues and not a reason for most people to avoid the cloning feature.

Cheers

Tim…

11gR2 RAC on Windows 2008 using VirtualBox…

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve kinda ignored the fact that any operating system other than Linux (specifically Oracle Linux) exists. It’s quite easy to do when you are working with Oracle products and you get to choose your own environment. 🙂

As a vague nod to the fact that Windows does actually exist, I’ve finally got round to updating my Windows virtual RAC article.

Windows 2008 is an unusual operating system in some respects. The RAC installation is pretty simple really, but finding some of the config dialogs is a complete nightmare. Chains of menus, dialogs, buttons and hyperlinks to get you to the dialog you need. What’s worse, some of the menus are hidden unless you remember to “Alt” or “Alt+N”. Crazy! If I was using Windows on a regular basis I think I would just memorize all the dialog program names and start them directly from the Run menu. It’s got to be easier than traversing that nightmare. I remember when Windows was considered the easy option. It doesn’t feel like the case anymore. 🙂

In related news, yesterday I got an invite from Jeremy Schneider to help out at RAC Attack at OOW 2011. That should be fun. See you there! 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

VirtualBox 4.1 Released…

Hot on the heels of the VirtualBox 4.0.12 maintenance release, shipped a few days ago, comes VirtualBox 4.1. It contains loads of new features, explained here and in the changelog.

The upgrade went smoothly on my MacBook Pro, but on my Fedora 15 servers I had to uninstall the old version manually before installing the new version. None of my settings were lost so everything was easy enough.

It certainly seems applying VirtualBox upgrades is becoming a fulltime job. Of course, the quick release cycle is a lot better than getting no updates, like VMware Server. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle VM [not] running inside VirtualBox… (update)

I mentioned a few days ago I was having trouble running Oracle VM inside VirtualBox. I had tried with multiple versions of VirtualBox (including the latest 4.0.8), so I finally decided that is must be an issue with the host OS (Fedora 14).

Today I worked up the enthusiasm and trashed my server by replacing the host OS with CentOS 5.6. Regarding Oracle VM and VirtualBox, the news is good. I now have a functioning OVM installation inside a VirtualBox VM, so I can get back to playing with OVM again.

I don’t know exactly what the problem was, but for the moment I’m going to bury my head in the sand and think happy thoughts. I’ve wasted far to much time with this already. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…