This chapter describes the hardware and software required for an Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management (BRM) system.
Important:
Before you configure your system, see "Improving BRM Performance" in BRM System Administrator's Guide and "Database Configuration and Tuning". These documents contain information on configuring hardware and software for optimal performance with BRM. They also contain a detailed description of memory configuration for the Connection Manager (CM) and Data Manager (DM) on all platforms.Running BRM requires the following:
A compatible operating system.
Available disk space.
Database software.
Network connections.
The BRM software is available for the HP-UX IA64, Linux, Solaris, and AIX operating systems. To determine which versions of each operating system are currently supported by BRM, see "BRM Software Compatibility".
Important:
On Solaris operating systems, BRM requires the Forte compiler with the appropriate operating system patches. For the list of patches you must install, see:You should install all Critical Patch Updates as soon as possible. To download Critical Patch Updates, find out about security alerts, and enable email notifications about Critical Patch Updates, see the Security topic on Oracle Technology Network:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/whatsnew/index.html
This section describes the disk space requirements for BRM server processes and applications.
Table 4-1 shows disk space requirements for the BRM server processes:
Table 4-1 Server Disk Space Requirements
| BRM System Component | Required Disk Space |
|---|---|
|
BRM server |
300 MB |
|
BRM database |
2 to 5 GB per 10,000 customers per year. Note: This requirement varies greatly with the number of accounts and the amount of activity. |
See "Database Configuration and Tuning" for information on determining your database requirements.
Table 4-2 shows the details on the applications that BRM supports on the UNIX platform:
Table 4-2 Application Details (Linux)
| Application | Type | Required Disk Space |
|---|---|---|
|
Self-Care Manager |
Server application |
3 MB |
|
Developer Center |
Developer tools |
12 MB |
Other BRM client applications are supported on Windows. See "Required Disk Space for BRM Windows Applications" for more information.
BRM supports Oracle databases on HP-UX IA64, Linux, Solaris, and AIX platforms.
To run BRM with an Oracle database, you need the following:
Oracle Enterprise Edition.
AL32UTF8 and UTF8 database character sets.
Note:
BRM 7.5 supports AL32UTF8 as its default character set. It also continues to support the UTF8 character set for backward compatibility. The unicode character set AL32UTF8 is recommended for all new BRM 7.5 deployments.(Optional) Oracle Partitioning. You need this to partition the tables in your BRM database. See "Partitioning Tables" in BRM System Administrator's Guide.
To determine which versions of the Oracle software are currently supported by BRM, see "BRM Software Compatibility".
To set up networking and communications channels, you need TCP/IP. You also need a permanent IP address for each computer that hosts a BRM process or application.
Any kind of network connection that supports TCP/IP supports BRM, for example, local area network, virtual private network, and PPP.
BRM requires TCP/IP on every machine that runs a BRM component, including custom client programs.
Important:
BRM also needs very large bandwidth to handle traffic between the DM and the database. See "Database Configuration and Tuning" for more information.Every computer that runs a BRM component, including the database server, must have its own unique IP address.
Important:
BRM uses IP addresses to identify specific machines, so IP addresses cannot be dynamically allocated.BRM is supported on Oracle Exalogic and Oracle Exadata systems. You can install BRM server and client software on an Oracle Exalogic system and the BRM database on an Oracle Exadata system.
You can install and configure the BRM database with Oracle RAC. See the Oracle Exadata documentation for more information about creating an Oracle RAC instance in Oracle Exadata.
See "Database Configuration and Tuning" for information on configuring hardware and software for optimal performance with BRM. See the discussion about configuring a high-availability system in BRM System Administrator's Guide for information on configuring a BRM high-availability system.
When both Oracle Exalogic and Oracle Exadata are available and connected together using InfiniBand network, you can configure a database listener for the network to serve all connection requests from BRM. See the discussion about setup listener on InfiniBand network using both SDP and TCP protocol (Doc ID 1580584.1) on the My Oracle Support Web site:
You need additional software packages to create a complete customer management and billing solution for your business. These packages allow you to take best advantage of BRM functionality:
Internet software
Credit card processing software
Tax calculation software
Invoice formatting software
Compilers
See "BRM Software Compatibility" for a list of third-party software supported by BRM.