The Triora Group

I’ve discussed the Oracle VM Manager in the previous post.  Using it you can do a variety of tasks including:

• Create virtual machines from installation media or from a virtual machine template
• Delete virtual machines
• Power off virtual machines
• Import virtual machines
• Deploy and clone virtual machines
• Perform live migration of virtual machines
• Import and manage ISOs
• Create and manage virtual machine templates
• Create and manage shared virtual disks

I want to cover the Virtual Machine creation process in this post.

If you are using the Oracle VM Manager you must have a gues operating system (O/S) to install when you choose to create a new Virtual Machine.  Currently Oracle VM supports RedHat and Oracle Enterprise Linux (32/64bit), Windows XP, Vista, 2000 and 2003.  The Windows software can be run in 32 or 64 bit but does not run as natively as the Linux guest O/S’s. As you go through the process of defining a new VM have several options.

The first is to to use an existing Template which can either be one you have created or one that you have downloaded from Oracle.  In my case there were two Linux X64 templates that Oracle had created and which I used initially. One Oracle template is just a plan Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.3 Template which has OEL pre-configured.  The other is OEL5.3 with the 10gR2 database (10.2.04) already setup with an ORCL instance.  Using the templates is very simple and gives you a quick-running environment.

Another option is to create your own template or image from an existing environment that you have customized.

The other option for building your VM is to create it from an ISO image.  If you are installing Windows 2003 that you could create an ISO image or mount the CDROM and build it from there.

The last option is to create everything manually using a Xen command-line tool, virt-install.  The documentation is good on this option but it can be much more time-consuming so I’m not going to cover that here.

Here are several screens showing the create process using the OEL 5.3 template.

Once the Confirm button is pressed the Manager creates the appropriate Virtual Machine subdirectory in the /OVS/running subdirectory, creates a customized vm.cfg file and then copies the template files to the new directory.  At the same time, the XE database is updated with the appropriate information about the new VM.  (As a side note, if you create a VM manually, you can “import” it into Oracle VM Manager so that the XE database is updated as well).

Once the VM Manager is completed with copying the files into the new directory, the new VM will show up in the list of Virtual Machines.  You can then choose to “start” it up and by selecting the “CONSOLE” option you can watch the boot process as Linux or Windows boots.

So far I’ve setup several Linux hosts.  I’m going to be setting up a Windows 2K host in the next week to support an older version of Oracle’s CBRM software.  I’ll provide an update on how that goes.

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As I noted in my previous entry I was finally configured to start creating Virtual Machines (VM).  But first I wanted to do some background checking on what I had actually installed.

On the Dell I found a lean version of Linux.  A uname -a command returned this:

Linux hostname 2.6.18-8.1.15.1.16.el5xen #1 SMP Fri Aug 1 18:27:30 EDT 2008 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

My file systems consisted of the following:

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2             3.0G  807M  2.0G  29% /
/dev/sda3             1.4T  176G  1.2T  13% /OVS
/dev/sda1              99M   36M   59M  38% /boot
tmpfs                 293M     0  293M   0% /dev/shm

The /OVS filesystem was where the VM configurations and files would be stored.  Over in the /OVS filesystem I had the following directories created.

• local
• iso_pool
• running_pool – contains subdirectories for each VM
• seed_pool – contains VM templates that have been imported via the Oracle Virtual Machine Manager gui
• publish_pool
• remote
• templates
• sharedDisk
• tmp

Using OVM Manager creates or copies files to directories as needed.  I haven’t reached the point where every directory has a file in it yet since I haven’t exercised all of the features of OVM Manager yet.  I do have files in seed_pool, running_pool, sharedDisk, and templates.

running_pool, which sounds like a good american indian name, is the directory where each VM is defined as a sub-directory.  The subdirectories are names 999_hostname where 999 is a sequence id along with the hostname you selected during the create VM process.  Inside that sub-directory you will find the following files.

• README – Just a text file with a brief message.
• System.img – an image file containing the filesystems for root, boot, etc.  (about 3GB in size)
• vm.cfg – a text file with the configuration information about the Virtual Machine
• vm.cfg.orig – an original  copy of vm.cfg

Here’s what is typically in the vm.cfg file with a barebones VM create.  It mentions the System Image file, CDRom, maximum memory, startup memory and the two physical ethernet adapters along with their virtual interfaces.  It also shows that this VM will use 2 virtual cpu cores when running (vcpus).  I’ve replaced my actual hostname with hostname below.

acpi = 1
apic = 1
builder = ‘hvm’
device_model = ‘/usr/lib/xen/bin/qemu-dm’
disk = ['file:/OVS/running_pool/hostname/System.img,hda,w',
',hdc:cdrom,r',
]
disk_other_config = []
kernel = ‘/usr/lib/xen/boot/hvmloader’
keymap = ‘en-us’
maxmem = ‘8192′
memory = ‘4096′
name = ‘hostname‘
on_crash = ‘restart’
on_reboot = ‘restart’
pae = 1
serial = ‘pty’
timer_mode = ‘2′
uuid = ‘c20ee3f5-08cc-b38b-c50d-368f04709d86′
vcpus = 2
vif = [’bridge=xenbr0,mac=00:16:3E:03:87:08,type=netfront’,
‘bridge=xenbr1,mac=00:16:3E:1E:06:5A,type=netfront’,

Using the OVM Manager I can added/delete new Virtual Disks, modify memory settings, and make changes to the Virtual Ethernet adapters.  As I’ve added new disks to existing Virtual Machines I get an additional img file in the directory and an additional reference to it in the vm.cfg file.

Here’s a sample screen shot of OVM Manager showing the four VM’s I’ve defined.

At the top you can see the major menu entries for managing VM’s, Resources, Servers, Server Pools and Administration.

Administration is where you setup the users who can manage this console.

Server Pools must be defined and is a grouping of physical servers.

Servers are all physical servers defined.  In my case there is one, the Dell 2950.

Resources is where you can manage VM Images, Templates (which you can download from Oracle), ISO files and Shared Disks.

On the Virtual Machines screen shown you can startup, shutdown, configure and view the console of a specific virtual machine.  There are other options including deleting a VM under the “More Actions” drop down.

One of the first problems I had was that this VM Manager became out-of-sync with reality.  It showed a V M as “Initiating” when it was actually shutdown.  To fix that problem I had to go into the XE database and reset the status of the VM using  standard SQL update and commit commands.  That seemed awkward!

UPDATE! After I figured the solution out on my own I then found a note about it down in the troubleshooting section of the documentation for the VM Manager.

SQL> update ovs.ovs_vm_img t set t.status=’Powered Off’ where t.img_name like ‘vm_name‘;
SQL> commit;
SQL> quit

Creating new VM’s is simple.  The real question is do you want to create it from a Template, ISO file or existing VM image?

More on that in my next post.

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I had the opportunity to see “Terminator Salvation” this past weekend.  I’m feeling some solidarity with John Connor and his frustrations with “the machines”.  Of course his machines are real and spend all of their time trying to kill him while mine just frustrate me and are “virtual”.

I’ve been spending some time learning how to setup and manage Oracle Virtual Servers (OVS).  OVS provides the ability to setup up multiple logical or Virtual Machines (VM) on a single hardware platform.  These VM’s can be configured with different operating systems and have access to the physical hardware components including disk arrays, ethernet cards, memory, CPU cores and CD drives.  You can stop and start each VM as needed, particularly if you are limited by memory or processors.

This makes VM’s a popular choice for test environments where you want to set something up, test it and then shut it down for later use.  OVS is designed to provide the software to define and execute multiple VM’s and some client software to manage them remotely.

Underneath the covers OVS is built on the open-source Xen package which Oracle has taken and modified.  Though there are various GUI tools for using with Xen, Oracle provides a GUI tool, the Oracle Virtual Machine Manager (OVM), to configure and manage multiple VM’s.  OVM stores configuration information in a local XE Oracle database and runs in your IE or Firefox browser.

My goal was to take an Dell 2950 and install several Virtual Machines (VM) configured with Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.3.  I also wanted to setup a VM with the latest version of the 10gR2  database (10.2.0.4).

One of my challenges was that I didn’t have a second Linux “server” to act as the OVM so I had to use my laptop to “manage” the Virtual Machines and that required installing Linux or in my case, OEL5.3, in a VMWare environment on the laptop.  The high-level process involved the following steps:

1. Downloaded Oracle VM Server and created an installation CD

2. Booted the Dell using the VM Server CD and installed that on the Dell.

3. Downloaded VMWare to my laptop and setup a Virtual Machine for OEL5.3

4. Downloaded Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.3 and wrote it to five CD’s.  You can also download a DVD version which is what I also did.

5. Installed OEL5.3 in the VMWare VM on my laptop (which was already running Windows XP)

6. Booted OEL5.3 on my laptop and installed the Oracle Virtual Machine Manager (which includes the XE database)

At this point I had an Oracle VM server on the Dell and a way to manage it from my laptop using the Linux-based Virtual Machine Manager.

I was now ready to enter the “virtual frustration” zone…

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For over six months there has been the promise of this new update with desired features. The update was rolled out in the UK several weeks ago but has been delayed in the US for unspecified reasons.   Developers who have a special version of the G1 with “root” access have also had the update for a while.

But where there is a will, there is a way and someone found the download for those tired of waiting for an “over-the-air” (OTA) update.

After all this waiting, I just installed Cupcake manually. Took about 10 minutes using the download and instructions I found here.

Since Android1.5  is based on Linux 2.6.2.7 there continue to be lots of new features and applications being created.

The features in this release include the following:  (see here for all of the features)

• On Screen “soft” Keyboard (in addition to the slide out keyboard)
• Stereo Blue Tooth (This is something I’ve really wanted)
• Video Camera capability using the built-in camera.
• Performance improvements with the Camera, GPS acquisition, etc.
• Updated with latest Webkit browser & Squirrelfish Javascript engines
• Copy ‘n paste in browser

It is interesting since I work a lot with Linux (Red Hat and Oracle Enterprise Linux) with Oracle, that it’s the same O/S on my phone.

Love that!

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Today is the final day of the OAUG Collaborate 2009 conference in Orlando and here are some final thoughts as I look back at the last 5 days.

First, Orlando is a great location for the conference.  Great weather, easy access and plenty of restaurants and lodging.

The attendance was down but I can only speculate how much.  Someone said about 40% but that’s a guess.  It was clear that organizations are not spending money as freely to send individuals.

The quality of the sessions I attended was excellent.  In almost all of them I walked away with new information and something I wanted to explore even more.  The presenters were readily available for questions after their presentations.  And there was a good mix of non-Oracle and Oracle presenters.

The exhibitors were here in full force and there didn’t seem to be a drop-off in their participation.

The opportunity to network and meet other attendees was great and getting to hear others experiences with various applications/products was also valuable.

Oracle’s products and product strategy continue to be impressive even in a down market.  Fusion Applications, EBS 12.1, Fusion Middleware 11g with Weblogic, JDeveloper 11g, …  all of these are impressive products.

Collaborate seems to be a better value for me than Open World because there is more end-user interaction and the ability to have more discussions about the good and the bad of working with Oracle products and organization.  The independence of OAUG makes a difference.

Lastly, the efforts of OAUG will save Oracle customers lots of money because of the decision to not charge the additional 10% for licenses on those products moving to Extended Support in the next year (Database 10g, EBS 11i and others). That alone should save organizations enough to send at least one person to the next Collaborate.

Next year, Collaborate 2010 will be in Las Vegas.  In the coming 12 months there’s much to look forward to with new product releases, like the Fusion Applications, making their entrance.  Stay tuned and make your plans for next year!

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After seeing the initial demonstration of the planned Fusion Applications I wanted to provide my impressions.  Any user interface is critical to application users since it is what they actually work in each day.

Oracle has taken a strong stance on using Web 2.0 capabilities in the new User Interface (UI) as can be seen by the following shown in the demo:

• Supports Links to Web Applications (they showed LinkedIn and FaceBook as examples)
• Allows Tagging (an individual user to “tag” something to easily come back to it later)
• Built-in search based on User role  (is prominently displayed at the top in the banner)
• Desktop Widgets (similar to those available from Yahoo or on Windows Vista)
• Contextual Help with Audio Visual capabilities
• Collaboration (chat, click-to-email, presence, wiki’s, RSS feeds)

For those not familiar with RSS (Really Simple Syndication), it provides a notification of changes to a given website so that you are notified and don’t have to constantly check on that site.  You may not be aware of it but RSS is built-in to Outlook 2007 and when you set up a RSS “feed” it brings the information in like an email and makes it available for your reading.  Also a note about Wiki’s.  These  provide a collaborative workspace where groups can share documents and comments.

As noted in a previous post the speed of screen refreshes in the Web Browser (Firefox was shown) is excellent since they use the partial page refresh capabilities to minimize the amount of web traffic from the Application Server to the client.

Several of the applications features, in addition to the above, that will help business users are the use of customizable dashboards.  Existing dashboards are pre-defined for common application roles but users can heavily customize their “home page” to only view the key data they want to monitor for their job role.  Numerous types of graphs and charts are enabled in the dashboards including pie, bar and spider charts.  In the HR module the work is organized around an Organization Chart allowing drill down/up.  This was very impressive allowing resizing of the display area and drill down (based on role) to lots of information about an individual.  A less obvious but key feature in the embedded analytics was the ability to look at operational information, such as customers using an Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) approach.  The application user could filter data displayed ont he screen by various criteria.  For example, review customers by sales total or geography or other criteria.

The UI is well-designed with the left side devoted to Navigation and center to your current task and the right side providing contextual information.  Oracle is using their Application Development Framework (ADF) in conjunction with JDeveloper to provide the look-and-feel across the applications.  While they didn’t specify I know they are using the new WebLogic Server as the Application Server rather than iAS the current application server used for 11i and R12 of the E-Business Suite.

The speaker said that many reports are built-in but with the use of BI Publisher, new reports can easily be added.

As I wrap up this post, here are some of the other “cool” features that caught my eye:

• The use of slider bars to adjust parameters.
• Links to external web sites like LinkedIn and Facebook (for more people information)
• Role Based Access Control at all levels
• Customizable screens for the end user
• Ability to un-dock a portion of the screen for other use
• Uncluttered look to the UI
• Workflow capabilities for common processes using WorkLists and Activity Guides (with graphical representations)
• Pop-ups with information about customers, vendors and people when their information is included in the data

To summarize, I’m very impressed with the User Interface and can see how it will greatly benefit application users by improving their productivity and knowledge of what is happening in their area.

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In this post I’ll try to summarize the key points about the upcoming Fusion Applications from Oracle.  My expectations is that the initial release will be available in mid to late 2010 based on what was provided at Collaborate.

On Tuesday Oracle provided live demonstrations showing several of the Fusion Application modules, CRM and Human Capital Management.  Before the demonstration they discussed some of the key features which are noted following.

They discussed the new Setup Manager which will simplify setup of application modules by providing configuration templates.  These templates will have built in workflow (process flow) capabilities for each step in the setup.   These templates also allow delegation of various steps to others and yet continue to allow tracking on the overall progress.

An additional feature is that configuration information can be exported and imported between Instances to ensure similiar environments.  There is also the ability to compare configurations.

Upgrades to the Fusion Apps will retain the current architecture of your environment.  For example, PeopleSoft uses a multi-pillar setup with multiple database Instances and this will be retained.  E-Business Suite users use a single Instance setup and this will be retained for them.

A centralized Identity Management application will be external to the Fusion Applications (and other applications) while providing a common repository of user, role, responsibility and Separation of Duties (SOD) information for the applications.

All that we have heard previously about Fusion Applications being based on a Web 2.0 (Chat, Presence, Community/Wiki,RSS), Service Oriented Architecture, embedded Analytics, and Unified Data Model were confirmed.  These new applications will take the best-of-breed capabilities of CRM from Siebel, ERP from E-Business Suite and Person/HR from PeopleSoft.

The Fusion Applications will be rolled out to a controlled group of customers in late 2009.  Oracle is going to maintain a tight lid on public information on this effort.

The initial release of the Fusion Applications will include the following applications:

• Core ERP (Financial Management)
• CRM
• HR/HCM
• Procurement
• Projects
• GRC (Governance, Risk and Control)
• Supply Chain

Coming later will be these areas of functionality:

• Public Sector (fund accounting)
• Manufacturing

The intial release will not have all localizations but will be available for APAC, Europe, North American and Latin America.

The demo was very impressive and the User Interface delivers on the Web 2.0 capabilities.  It also takes advantage of the partial refresh capabilities popularized by AJAX to only refresh portions of the Web screen.  In a separate post I’ll highlight my observations further.

The Help capabilities were impressive allowing users to add comments to the Help entries.  Some Help entries included video examples and User Productivity Kit (UPK) interaction.

In summary, Fusion Applications are well on their way to being a reality and I believed Oracle Application Users will be very pleased with the results based on what was shown this week at Collaborate.

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With my new role at SSG Limited, I’m attending some sessions at OAUG that are related to the Telecom marketplace.  SSG Limited has over 10 years of experience with Oracle’s Communications Billing and Revenue Management (previously Portal).

Oracle also offers Metasolv (purchased in 2006) which is an Operations Support System (OSS) for the communications and media industry.

Right now I’m sitting in a session by Andrew Fruhling discussing what Oracle has seen in Telecom space during the last year.  Some of his highlights were:

• 30+ new customers going live with Oracle Communications applications
• 25 new product releases for Communications applications
• New services including WiMax, SaaS, hosting, prepaid, conferencing, triple-play….
• Reached the 100 million subscriber BRM Benchmark
• BRM product received the top rating from Gartner
• Over 100 new customers for Oracle Communications applications
• Increased leadership in TMF

He then discussed the industry pressures and trends including 1) Growing competition, 2) Common systems for Customer Fulfillment, 3) Increased Focus on Customer cross/up sell,  4)Supporting Next Generation Services/SOA, and 5) Industry Consolidation.

One of his first topics was about using Application Integration Architecture (AIA) for better integration between the many systems most organizations have.  Oracle already offers several Telecom Process Integration Packages (PIP’s).

He then emphasized that Oracle is continuing to focus on incorporating industry standards in their products such as SOA, XML and BPEL.

Lastly he said that Oracle is planning a number of new releases for their Communications products in the next year.

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Just last week, Oracle announced the 12.1 release to EBS and this week at OAUG they are rolling out some of the key features for the new release.  The actual release name in MetaLink is 12.1.1   In a session early this morning the following changes were highlighted:

• iSetup – a new product that documents the functional setups ina BR100 format to help in migrating instances.  Also provides deployment reports to validate what was successfully migrated and what was not.
• Oracle Diagnostics Framework with a new UI, Role Based Access Control, integration with BI Publisher
• New Application Management Pack (Version 3.0) for EBS.  Uses Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control
• New Application Change Management Pack for EBS which supports packaging of customizations for migration and control.
• New User Management Reporting on roles, responsibilities and objects
• Java Authentication capabilities (JAAS) from the EBS security model
• New Identity Management product, Oracle Access Manager, which will replace Single Sign On (SSO)
• An Application Object Library Lite which will work with third party applications

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This morning the Oracle keynote was by Oracle President, Charles Phillips.  His presentation ackowledged the obvious economic pressures that organizations are facing and the continuing need for value and the increasing transparency requirements (governance).

Phillips mentioned that Oracle has made 56 acquisitions in the past 5 1/2 years with Sun Microsystems being the 57th.

He then reviewed the Applications Unlimited program and how Oracle has delivered new releases for all Applications (Peoplesoft, JD Edwards, Seibel).  As part of that he noted that R12 includes 18 new products, 2443 enhancements

Here is a brief list of the announcements he made during his presentation:

• The  general availability of E-Business Suite (EBS) 12.1.1.
• New stand-alone products that can be used with 11i and R12 (UPK, Mgmt Packs, Project Analytics, Site Hub, MDM).  These don’t require upgrades to the Applications.
• Oracle Extended Support for EBS 11i has been extended from November 10th to November 2011 and the 10% additional cost has been waived for the first year.
• Oracle Extended Support for the Database 10gR2 has been extended from July 2010 to July 2011.
• Sustaining support for EBS 11i Release 9 has been extended from June 2009 to June 2010.
• Oracle Business Intelligence Applications , Release 7.9.6, which includes new pre-built analytic Dashboards
• New release of the Application Integration Architecture (AIA), version 2.4
• New AIA Process Integration Packs (pre-built integrations between various applications like EBS, PeopleSoft, etc.)
• The ability of  Oracle Content Management (unstructured data such as scanned invoices/images) can now be associated with EBS to manage them.
• New version of Oracle Secure Enterprise Search (SES) – searching within the Enterprise data
• New version of Oracle Enterprise Manager
• Updated version of Oracle Beehive which is Oracle’s collaboration tool for providing a  single platform for messaging, collaboration, real-time, calendar, tasks, contacts, chat, conferencing, presence.  New capabilities focus on Team Collaboration and include capabilities for blogs, wiki, discussions, and tags.

For the details on the changes to product support for EBS 11i and the Oracle Database, you can find all of your FAQ answers here.

Lastly, Phillips spoke about the HP Oracle Exadata Storage Server, a special purpose storage environment using commodity processors and Linux along with Oracle Parallel Query Database Software, that is intended to lower the amount of data transferred between the database and the applications.

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