Quick primer on virtual environments

A Virtual Machine (a VM) is "an efficient, isolated duplicate of a real machine."

• Source: Wikipedia

It's an image of a physical machine. For example, if you use Microsoft Virtual PC, it runs in its own process and looks like a window on the desktop — like a Remote Desktop Connection window.

It has its own virtual hard disk or two, its own virtual network connections, and much more. You can even run a web server on a VM and browse it from your desktop.

The physical machine running VMs is called a host machine.

You can in fact back up your server or your workstation and restore that image into a VM, and run that virtual machine on your laptop or desktop computer.

You can have multiple machines running at the same time or you can have the entire server farm running off your laptop (as shown in the following screenshot).

We will be using this feature in the following chapters.

Running Oracle Content Server in a virtual environment offers you some important benefits that can slash days and even weeks off your learning curve:

• You can always undo anything that went wrong.
• Guest OS, the VM's Operating System has absolutely no affect and may even have no access to your host. Even if you're running a deadly virus on your VM you may be completely safe.
• You'll be able to take the VM with you; moving it to another machine is a simple file copy operation.

I hope I have you convinced. And now it's time to get our tools ready.

Get your tools ready

Let's get ready to install Oracle UCM.

Content Server can work with a number of different databases. I suggest we use Microsoft SQL Server. Why?

Because chances are that you are running Windows and familiar with basic administration. Also, Microsoft offers an evaluation version of SQL Server, so you won't have to spend time installing the OS and a database server.

You can download SQL Server 2005 on Windows 2003 Server — installed and pre-configured for you in a virtual environment. It's ready to use.

All you need to do is get Oracle Content Server, and install it on this VM. In fact, I am going to walk you through the process.

Download your test VM

I'm not giving you the exact link because links change quite often. Type these words in Google: download SQL server VHD.

Note

What's VHD?

It's an extension of Virtual Hard Disk files that you can run with Microsoft Virtual PC.

Find a link from a Microsoft site and download your virtual machine.

You will need Microsoft Virtual PC to run it. Again, right now, the current version is 2007. It's a free download from Microsoft site.

Type into Google: download Microsoft virtual PC. You'll get the download link.

Install Virtual PC on a machine where you will be running your VMs.

Tip

How much RAM should you have?

I recommend that you have at least 512 MB of RAM that you have to spare on top of your daily essentials. 1 GB on the host is the minimum.

Once you have the VHD unzipped and Microsoft virtual PC 2007 installed on your machine — you're ready to run your VM.

The last thing you need is the actual copy of the Content Server.

Getting a copy of Oracle UCM

To get the Oracle UCM follow these steps:

1. Go to http://edelivery.oracle.com/. Here you will get a page as shown in the following screenshot; click on Continue:
2. Enter your first and last name and your company information. Accept the terms and click on Continue to proceed.
3. In the next page, select Oracle Fusion Middleware as the product pack and Microsoft Windows (32 bit) as platform and click on Go.
4. Pick Oracle? Enterprise Content Management 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) Media Pack and click on Continue.
5. Now out of the available options download Oracle Content Server 10gR3 (10.1.3.3.3) for Microsoft Windows (32-bit).

While your Content Server is downloading, we can use the time for getting the VM ready.

Getting the VM ready for Content Server

In this section I'll walk you through the steps of using MS Virtual PC 2007 to run the VHD file you've just downloaded, and how to configure it best to save time when you will be installing the Content Server.

Let's get started:

1. Run Virtual PC 2007.
2. Click on New...; New Virtual Machine Wizard opens.
3. Click on Next.
4. Choose Use default settings to create a virtual machine as shown in the following screenshot:
5. Give the VM a name and a location.

   Tip

   How to save a few gigabytes of disk space

   I recommend putting a VM in an NTFS compressed folder. The default location is My Virtual Machines in My Documents folder. You can compress that to save a few gigabytes. Remember, VMs are the images of actual machines. Files get pretty large.

6. Click on Next.
7. Click on Finish. Virtual Machine settings dialog opens.
8. Give your VM 512 or 1024 MB of RAM depending on how much RAM you have to spare.
9. Select Hard Disk 1 as shown in the following screenshot:
10. Click on Virtual Disk Wizard.
11. Click on Next; leave Create a new virtual disk selected.
12. Pickle A virtual hard disk and click on Next.
13. Pick a location. I recommend putting it in the same folder where you created your VM. See the following screenshot:
14. Now click on Next.
15. Pick Differencing as shown in the following screenshot:
16. Pick the parent VHD file — the one you downloaded from Microsoft.
17. Keep Undo Disks disabled for now.
18. Click on OK to close settings dialog.
19. On a Virtual PC Console click on Start button.

Watch your VM start... Aren't you excited yet?

1. Once the VM displays a login prompt — log in with Administrator and a password from Readme.htm that came with the VHD. Mine was Evaluation1.
2. Open SQL Server Management Studio.
3. Click on Connect.
4. Expand Security Logins on the tree view on your left.
5. Right-click on Logins. Pick New Login.
6. Create a user that your Content Server will use to connect to SQL Server. Make sure you use SQL Server authentication and Enforce password expiration is off.
7. Right-click on Databases and pick New Database.
8. Give it a name. Make sure you specify the user you've just created as database owner:

Your SQL Server database is now ready.

1. Once download of Content Server is complete, unzip the file. You will see an inner ZIP file, named something like: ContentServer_Windows_10gR3_20080807.zip.
2. Drag it over the VM's desktop. That will copy the file over to the VM. Unzip it there to an easy-to-find folder, like c:\install.
3. On your host machine browse to http://jtds.sourceforge.net/. Go Download. Save jtds-1.2.x-dist.zip.
4. Go inside the file and extract jtds-1.2.x.jar.
5. Drag the .jar (NOT .zip) file over to your VM. Place it into the installation directory.

The installation directory on your VM should look something like this:

Great! You've now completed all the pre-work and are ready to install a copy of Content Server.

Wait! There's something else I want you to do. I bet you'll like the next step.

In case you make a mistake and would like to re-run the installation — I don't want you to go through all the steps you just completed. Virtual PC gives us the power to save you from doing that.

1. Click on Windows Start button and shutdown your VM.
2. Once it stops running, go the Settings and enable Undo Disks.
3. Start the VM.

Now you can always get back to the "Ready to install" step in just a few seconds!

Suppose you made a mistake and would like to start over. Just click on the X on the top right corner of the VM window and pick Turn off and delete changes. When you start the VM, it will be back in the state in which it last started!

Say, your VM with Undo Disks enabled was infected and completely destroyed by a virus. All you need to do is Turn off and delete changes (as shown in the following screenshot)! Love it! The power of Undo Disks...

Note

Don't pick Turn off and delete changes unless you really want to go back. You can lose your work!

I hope you're not out of steam yet! It was a long prep-work. Normally, if you just install the UCM on a physical server, you'll be starting in the Lab 1 section. Just trust me, getting your VM ready was time well spent. You'll thank me later!

Lab 1: Install content server

Welcome to the actual Content Server installation process! It's time to benefit from all that prep work:

1. Start the VM.
2. Once it is started, in your installation directory there go to UCM\ContentServer\win32.
3. Start installer.exe. The Installer opens as shown in the following screenshot:
   • Installer is a cross-platform application. It looks the same on UNIX and Windows. It takes a few seconds to get used to, but it has its own advantages....

     In case you didn't guess, an asterisk designates a currently selected option. If you're OK to proceed just press Enter. If you need to change the option, type in the new choice and then press Enter.

4. *1. Install new server — just press Enter. The default choice is fine.
5. Hit Enter to install in a default directory.
6. Hit Enter to go with default JVM.
7. Just keep on pressing Enter to accept default choices for all directories.
8. Hit Enter to pick default option that is *1. Configure as a master server.
9. Keep going with defaults until you see a database selection prompt. It reads"Please select a database from the list below to use with the Content Server. Content Server Database".
10. Type 2 then hit Enter. You're choosing Microsoft SQL Server 2005.
11. JDBC driver classname []: — use net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver.
12. JDBC connection string [] — use jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://Win2k3R2EE:1433/OracleUCM; I assume your machine name is win2k3R2EE and your database name is OracleUCM.
13. Database User ID — type up the user ID you picked for your database. If you followed the screenshots, you should have UCM for yours.
14. Specify the DB password.
15. JDBC driver .jar file path [] — type the path to the JAR file that was inside that ZIP folder you downloaded from SourceForge. If you followed my instructions — use C:\install\jtds-1.2.4.jar.
16. Go with defaults to Copy JDBC driver files, Attempt to create database tables and Use Unicode text fields.
17. The installer asks you to select components to install. Hit 1 then Enter to select Content Folios. Also select Folders_g. Hit F and then Enter to continue.
18. Pick default under Configure the Administration Server service.
19. Pick 2 to say No to Configure the admin service to run as a specific user. This will have a service run as a Local System on Windows.
20. Continue with the default No for Configure admin service to be dependent on another service.
21. Default to Configure the Content Server service. *1. Install service and start automatically is fine.
22. Pick 2 to say No to Configure the service to run as a specific user.
23. Continue with default choices but don't proceed with the install yet.

Right before you proceed be sure to check the content of C:\oracle\ucm\server\install\log.txt. Right-click on it and open it with WordPad. as shown in the following screenshot:

Oops! You bet I'm happy I didn't go ahead now. I've accidentally added a space in my JDBC connection string as shown in the following screenshot:

If you see errors in log.txt — choose Change Configuration and correct the mistakes. It will be even easier this time around. All the choices you made are still there and you'll just have to keep on pressing Enter.

Choose Proceed to continue with the installation.

Once install is complete, check the log file once again. Search for the word Error. If you see errors, you'll know what went wrong and what to expect from the installation.

Note

We just completed installation of a fresh instance of Content Server. You can later use a similar procedure for upgrades. You can also install additional Content Server instances on the same machine.

How to hold on to your success

Hopefully, you have no errors in your log.txt file and your installation was successful. Now it's a good time to take a snapshot of your VM. Why?

So you can feel safe about playing with it. You'll always be able to get back to this "just installed" state.

Here's how you do it. Click on Windows Start button on your VM and shut it down. When shutdown is complete, you have a choice of committing or discarding the changes you made to the machine since the last save. Pick Commit changes to the virtual hard disk as shown in the following screenshot:

Congratulations! You've just completed your installation. Now let me show you around.