This chapter provides an overview of installing Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder. This chapter includes the following sections:
The steps you need to take to install Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder are described in Table 1-1.
Table 1-1 Tasks in the Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Installation Procedure
| Tasks | Details and Documentation |
|---|---|
|
Prepare your system environment for installation. |
Ensure that your system environment meets the general installation requirements for Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder. See the following sections: |
|
Ensure that reference systems are set up. |
To create appliances using Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Introspection functionality, you must have appropriate reference systems set up. Refer to product specific documentation for those system requirements and set up. |
|
Install and configure your deployment environment. |
An Oracle VM environment must be installed and configured to deploy your assemblies. See Oracle VM ( |
|
Install an Application Server. |
Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Deployer requires Oracle WebLogic Server to be installed in an Oracle Home. Installing Oracle WebLogic Server creates the Oracle Home and WebLogic home directories, which are required for an Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Deployer installation. For more information, see "Oracle Home and WebLogic Home Directories" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Installation Planning Guide. Also see the following sections in Oracle Fusion Middleware Installation Guide for Oracle WebLogic Server:
|
|
Install Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder. |
Use this installer to install Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Studio and Deployer and configure a Studio instance. This creates the following directories:
See Chapter 3, "Installing Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder" for installation instructions. |
|
Create and configure your Oracle WebLogic Server Domain for the Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Deployer. |
Use the Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuration Wizard to create your WebLogic domain and configure Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Deployer. You will be asked for the location of the Domain home directory, which is where the Administration Server resides. This directory can be located anywhere on your system. See Chapter 4, "Configuring Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Deployer" for instructions on starting the Configuration Wizard and creating your WebLogic Domain, performing manual configuration, and configuring security. |
|
Start the servers. |
Start the Administration Server. See "Starting and Stopping Servers" in Oracle® Fusion Middleware Managing Server Startup and Shutdown for Oracle WebLogic Server for instructions on how to start the Administration Server. |
The Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Deployer component runs inside Oracle WebLogic Server. The CLI and the Studio graphical user interface interact with the Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Deployer through a Web service exposed in Oracle WebLogic Server. You must configure Oracle WebLogic Server as part of the installation and configuration process.
You can select one of the following installation options:
This option installs only Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Studio. It contains the capabilities to create appliances and assemblies, create appliance templates and assembly archives and creating deployment plans.
Oracle WebLogic Server should be pre-installed under an Oracle Home.
Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Deployer gets installed in a new Oracle Home under the same Oracle Home where you have Oracle WebLogic Server installed.
This option exposes abctl command line and Studio graphical user interfaces.
This option installs only Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Deployer. It contains the capabilities to configure deployment targets, upload assembly archives to Deployer, create assembly instances, deploy/undeploy/start/stop assembly instances and scale appliance instances.
Oracle WebLogic Server should be pre-installed under an Oracle Home.
Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Deployer gets installed in a new Oracle Home under the same Oracle Home where you have Oracle WebLogic Server installed.
This option exposes abctl command line and Web Services interfaces.
The default installation option installs both Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Studio and Deployer. It contains the capabilities described for Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Studio and Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Deployer install options.
Oracle WebLogic Server should be pre-installed under an Oracle Home.
Both Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Studio and Deployer get installed in a new Oracle Home under the same Oracle Home where you have Oracle WebLogic Server installed.
This option exposes abctl command line, Studio graphical user interface and Web Services interfaces.
Read this section before proceeding. It contains vital security information and precautions. Failure to read and understand these items may cause security vulnerabilities.
The user who installs should be a trusted user, and a member of a trusted OS group.
The template creation process does a security check to see that the Operating System (OS) user attempting to create the template is the same OS user who owns the Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder bin directory. Having the OS user who installs the product be the same OS user who creates templates ensures that the security check will succeed.
Oracle WebLogic Server must be installed in a secure configuration prior to deploying the Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Deployer to it.
Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder uses the Oracle VM product set as the virtualization infrastructure.
Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder and Oracle VM Manager are network and storage- intensive products. The Oracle VM servers, the Oracle VM Manager and Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder communicate over the network during the course of introspection, registration and deployment of VMs.
The setup should have the following characteristics:
Oracle VM server pools machine with at least 16GB of total physical memory, gigabit networking facility, high capacity and high speed storage space for various tests and configuration, and acceptable processing power. The best performance will come from server-class machines with fast processors, memory and a high performance storage subsystem.
Oracle VM Manager machine which is hosted on another machine. This machine will run OEL x86_64 Linux and must be connected to the Oracle VM server pool by a Gigabit network switch.
Reference systems (products you plan to introspect) may also be installed on this machine to help speed up introspection and file set capture. Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder also supports remote introspection, so reference systems do not have to be co-located with Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder. Due to the large size of various Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder artifacts that will be created for your components you should make sure to have plenty of disk space on this machine.
If you going to use static IP addresses for your appliances of an assembly for deployment, you should have one static IP address per appliance instance.
Before using Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder, ensure that your environment meets the following prerequisites. These items are not required for installation, but are necessary environmental components for the use of Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder.
Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder requires that the Unzip utility be present on reference systems in order for remote introspection to work properly.
Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder requires that SSH port forwarding be enabled on reference systems in order for remote operations (such as introspection and packaging) to work properly.
Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder needs to run certain executables as root. By default, root permissions do not propagate across NFS. Thus, an Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder installation accessed via an NFS share will not be fully functional. As an alternative, you can install OVAB locally, or update your NFS configuration to propagate root access, such as by adding the no_root_squash option when mounting the NFS share.
Open the default port 9678 on the Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder host to allow communication between Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder and the Oracle VM Manager host and all Oracle VM Server hosts in the same resource pool. Otherwise, template registration may fail.
If port 9678 is not available in the Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder host, configure another port as the phonehome port during the template registration.
Ensure your environment meets all requirements before starting the installation.
The certification document details supported installation types, platforms, operating systems, databases, and JDKs. See Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder in Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/fusion-middleware/documentation/fmw-1212certmatrix-1970069.xls.
Please ensure you meet the following requirements.
The following operating systems are supported:
Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 (UL6+) (32-bit or 64 bit (default) supported)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (UL6+) (32-bit. 64 bit supported in 32-bit mode)
You can verify your operating system version using the commands listed here.
Oracle Enterprise Linux:
# cat /etc/enterprise-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux:
# cat /etc/redhat-release
Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Studio requires a minimum java version 1.7.0_15. You must install the JDK before installing Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder.
If Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder is installed on Oracle Enterprise Linux 5, download and install Oracle Open-OVF package from the OVM 3.0 channels of a yum repository. For information on setting up a yum repository see http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/linux/yum-repository-setup-085606.html
See also the following whitepaper on the Unbreakable Linux Network, a comprehensive resource for Oracle Linux and Oracle VM support subscribers, offering access to Linux software patches, updates and fixes, along with information on yum program and support policies: http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/027615.pdf
Note:
For information on obtaining Open-OVF for Oracle Enterprise Linux 6, see Release Bulletin for Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder.
To allow template creation to work, the following programs must be present:
/sbin/fdisk
/sbin/losetup
/sbin/kpartx
/sbin/blkid
/sbin/e2label
/sbin/mkfs.ext3
For creating templates with LVM-based OS images, the following programs must be present:
/sbin/vgchange
/usr/sbin/pvs
The supported Guest OS is an Oracle Enterprise Linux Base Image.
Note:
You have a choice of downloading an Oracle provided sample Oracle Enterprise Linux Base Image, or creating your own. The sample image is available on Oracle Technology Network: http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/ovab
Ensure that the base image architecture matches your component software. That is, use a 32-bit base image if your component software is 32-bit; 64-bit base image for 64-bit component software.
To create the appropriate Base Image(s):
Oracle Enterprise Linux Base Image, see: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/vm/overview/templates-101937.htmlThe information on this, and referenced pages, will provide the information you need to create your own System Base Image.
When specifying a base image, the image must meet the following requirements:
Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.x or later
The system base image file name must be System.img
The base image must have the user oracle. One way to add a user to the base image is to boot the base image, log on to it as root, and call /usr/sbin/useradd oracle. The user oracle must belong to the primary group oinstall and to the (non-primary) group oracle.
At least 300MB of free space for /tmp, typically on a partition. (depending on the type of product your are creating appliance for and deploying, you may need more free space. Refer to appropriate product install guide for the specific free space requirement).
At least 500MB of swap space partition
To configure SSH for remote introspection of VMs created with the base image, make sure that the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file has the line AllowTcpForwarding yes.
If a product that is introspected contains files encoded with a specific character encoding, ensure that the system base image you use to create templates for the resulting appliance(s) contains the needed character encodings.
You must have installed the following kernal modules:
ovmapi_5.5.ko (32 bit)
ovmapi_5.3_64bit.ko (64 bit)
You must have installed the following packages (RPMs):
glibc
nc
libovmapi-3
ovmd-3
ovm-template-config-3
ovm-template-config-authentication-3
ovm-template-config-datetime-3
ovm-template-config-firewall-3
ovm-template-config-network-3
ovm-template-config-selinux-3
ovm-template-config-ssh-3
ovm-template-config-system-3
ovm-template-config-user-3
xenstoreprovider-3
You are recommended to have installed the following packages (RPMs):
nfs-utils
kernel-uek-2.6.32
kernel-uek-devel-2.6.32
kernel-uek-firmware-2.6.32
kmod-ovmapi-uek-1.0.0
For FMW components, the following shell parameters must be set:
soft=4096
hard=4096
Ensure that the vmapi module is appropriate for the kernel version. You can test the vmapi on a running system:
/assemblybuilder/etc/vmapi get + # shows all properties obtained from vmapi
/assemblybuilder/etc/vmapi set key=value # sets a property in the vmapi list
/assemblybuilder/etc/vmapi get key # shows the value associated with key, if any
For Oracle database, the following shell parameters must be set
nproc-soft=2047
nproc=hard=16384
nofile-soft=1024
nofile-hard=65536
maxproc(ulimit -p)=16384
For Oracle database, the following kernel parameters must be set:
Semaphore Limits
semmni=128 # max number of arrays; default is 128 semmsl=250 # max semaphores per array. default is 250 semmns=32000 # max semaphores system wide; default is 32000 semopm=100 # max ops per semop call; default is 32
Shared Memory Limits
shmmni=4096 # max number of segments; default is 4096 shmmax=0.5GB # max seg size (kbytes); default is 4194303, which is 3GB shmall=2097152 # max total shared memory (kbytes); default is 1073741824
File Descriptors
file-max=6815744 # system wide file descriptors; default is 204573; aio-max-nr=Maximum:1048576 # default is 65536; ip_local_port_range=9000 65500 # default is 32768 61000; rmem_default=262144 # default is 109568; rmem_max=4194304 # default is 131071; wmem_default=262144 # default is 105968 wmem_max=1048576 # default is 131071
Additional database requirements:
Add the following line in the /etc/pam.d/login file:
session required pam_limits.so
The Oracle Forms and Reports plug-in requires the open-motif RPM.
In a RAC environment, you additionally configure a grid user (which is a user created to own the Oracle grid infrastructure binaries), and configure the home directory for the grid user. To introspect a typical RAC environment, you must add the grid user to the base image for the RAC database appliance.