In a five-part series on virtualization and cloud topics, Ivo Dujmovic, an architect in Oracle's Applications Technology Integration group, offers a detailed view of the Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.1 for prospective and current users.

Part 1: E-Business Suite 12.1.1 Templates for Oracle VM Now Available

Available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions from Oracle E-Delivery, Oracle VM templates for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1 is a virtual deployment package that delivers a "quick start" for E-Business Suite 12.1.1 on Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.3.

Dujmovic writes that Oracle VM template for Oracle E-business Suite 12.1.1 (64-bit and 32-bit) consists of two separate virtual machines:

• Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1 Vision Demo Database Tier
• Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1 Application Tier

Further, the database tier virtual machine includes:

• Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.3
• Oracle Database 11.1.0.7
• E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1 Vision demo database with data

And the applications tier virtual machine includes:

• Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.3
• Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1 applications node

The author also cautions that these templates are designed for demonstration environments and other non-production purposes; they are not intended to be used for production environments.

Part 2: Using Oracle VM with Oracle E-Business Suite Virtualization Kit

Dujmovic leads off Part 2 with the intriguing subhead, "Rolling Your Own Apps Templates Using Oracle VM," which is where the EBS Virtualization Kit comes in to play. He then goes on to explain that virtualization platforms like Oracle VM are called "platforms" because that is what they are, that and no more. They don't do everything for you. He warns users about the possibility of naming and IP collisions when multiple VMs are in use.

The answer to this problem is to initialize new VMs upon first startup, Dujmovic suggests. Anticipating this, Oracle VM/Linus team supplied scripts for exactly this process, he adds. There are also scripts for initializing the E-Business Suite instance on first boot.

Part 3: On Clouds and Virtualization in EBS Environments (OpenWorld 2009 Recap)

In Part 3, Dujmovic reviews the highlights of OOW'09, including such issues as:

• Why use virtualization?
• What is a cloud?
• What virtualization platform should I choose for E-Business Suite?

Not surprisingly, the answer to the last rhetorical query is Oracle VM.

Part 4: Deploying E-Business Suite on Amazon Web Services Elastic Compute Cloud

In Part 4 Dujmovic goes over the collaboration between Oracle and Amazon involving the development of the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), which he terms "the quintessential public cloud."

The issue identified in this section is the possible introduction of uncertified stack additions in the virtualization layer (hypervisor, provisioning tools), along with the possible introduction of a lack of control over physical hardware, given that neither the end-customer nor Oracle has control of the hardware or the virtualization stack below the OS. This has led to a new aspect in the relationship between Oracle and its customers, he writes.

Dujmovic recommends that, in light of the absence of a sufficient number of proof-points concerning the relatively new phenomenon of cloud computing, one needs to adopt a stance involving prudence and caution. Here, too, the author advises against the use of Amazon EC2 for production purposes since that solution uses a virtualization engine that is not supported by Oracle.

Still, there are uses of Amazon EC2 features that the author recommends for E-Business Suite environments, which are:

• Virtual private cloud: VPN-based extension to the customer's intranet
• Elastic IPs: allow sticky IP addresses for persistent references between nodes
• Large file import service: for DBFs larger than 5 TB, it is better to ship them on 2TB disks to Amazon -- you could have your instance up in 4-5 days
• High-memory instance types: EBS needs higher memory-to-CPU ratios, and higher I/O bandwidth

Part 5: Live Migration of EBS Services Using Oracle VM

Finally, in Part 5 Dujmovic announces the possibility of achieving live migration of E-Business Suite instances on Oracle VM. "In an environment configured to support live migration, end-user sessions running on one node in a virtual machine server can be migrated transparently to a different node on a different virtual machine server," he writes enthusiastically. It is the advent of virtualization that has made this possible he explains, then cites the few requirements that Oracle VM live migration feature calls for.

As he does in each of the five parts of this series, Dujmovic invites reader responses.

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