Polls results

Few months ago, I initiated two polls here on my blog, since I'll remove them from the right side, I paste here below to keep reference.
That's interesting results (keep in mind, more than one response was allowed) :
Thanks to all of you who voted.
If someone have some references provided by Oracle, I'd be intersting to have some official percentage regarding these questions.

Peopesoft OVM in VMWare : start/stop script

Working on virtual machine is nice but that multiply dramatically the number of IP addresses, server names, etc.
Peoplesoft VM on Oracle VM comes with 3 templates. If you add one Oracle VM Manager (optional), that makes one more, in total in that simple configuration :
* 1-3 IP address for Oracle VM Server (depending how many running images you want in one)
* 1 IP address for Oracle VM Manager
* 3 IP address for the servers (one for each running Oracle VM image)
And you need to start each one before doing anything you want to do.
Then, and only then you have to start the database, application server, batch server and web server.
And eventually you'll have the connection to your front end application.

But if you install all this on top of VMWare as I described here, that obviously does not make the picture more simple, you'll also have to start the VMWare image in front. And a lot of manual tasks to achieve before to be able to work within the front end application.
So, that becomes obvious to script the start and stop of all the compenents.

Here are all the steps required to use the script given below, and the description of the script itself.

1. VMWare tools
First step, install the VMWare tools on every single VMWare image, it is required to stop the VMware image through the command line.



Mount the CD-ROM drive, untar the gz file in /tmp, and run the VMWare tools installation script vmware-install.pl.
You should open the VMWare console to do so, not through a telnet connection (the tools stop and restart the network service), before running the tools installation script :

On the VMWare image hosting Oracle VM Server, a couples of messages about C-libraries, ignore them, just answer no, we don't want it, they are not required for what we want to achieve :
Finally, it is done, and the tools are running :


2. Authorized key
2.1 On the host OS
Generate a rsa public key on the host, as root :

ssh-keygen -t rsa

That'll create a file under /root/.ssh/rsa.pub.

2.2 On every single remote server
According to my picture, on the 3 VMWare images (2 Oracle VM Server, 1 Oracle VM Manager), on the 3 Peoplesoft VMs (the database server, the App/Batch server and the PIA server), create the file authorized_keys2 under /root/.ssh, and copy the content of the /root/.ssh/rsa.pub from the host create at the step 2.1.
Add the reference of the host into the /etc/hosts file as well (IP address and host server name).

3 The script
The script will take place onto the host, within no modification on the remote servers (except the point 2 above).
It has been tested with the following configuration :
=> host OS : CentOS5.4
=> VMWare 2.0.2
=> Oracle VM ServerManager 2.2.0
=> Peoplesoft VM images 1.0.0

Here a brief description of the script :

3.1 Variables settings
You'll see in the script a lot of parameters, everything is doing to make it the most flexible as possible, there are 3 mains part :
* variables regarding the VMWare installs and images
* variables regarding the Oracle Server and Manager images
* variables regarding the Peoplesoft VM images
You MUST change all the values according to YOUR own environment.

3.2 Functions
There are some functions used to manage the startup and shutdown of the the components.
* check_availability()
This one check if the given server (IP address or name) is up or down with a ping server.
* xm()
This function start and stop the Peoplesoft VM images.
To start the Peoplesoft VM images, after connected onto the Oracle VM Server, it uses the Xen command, xm, available on Oracle VM server hosting the Peoplesoft VM image, e.g. :

xm create /OVS/running_pool/*${remote_image}/vm.cfg

To stop the Peoplesoft VM images, it is simply connect onto the server, and run a shudown :

shutdown -h now

There is also an xm command line option to stop Oracle VM image, but somehow, that does not work inside a ssh connection. It needs to be investigate further.
* vmware_vmrun()
Use to start and stop the VMWare images through the vmrun command line from VMWare 2.0.2.
* startup_psovm()
Main function to start all the environment. Firstly, start the VMWare images, then the Peoplesoft VM images within the functions xm() and vmware_vmrun() described above, and finally the database, the application server, the web server and the batch server.
* shutdown_psovm()
Main function to start all the environment. Firstly, stop batch server, the web server, the application server, then the Peoplesoft VM images and VMWare images within the functions xm() and vmware_vmrun() described above.
* main
The main of the script is small, check the valid input parameter (startupshutdown) and call the corresponding function.

3.2 The main commands used
As a remember, here are the main commands used in the script (of course, all the parameters need to be set in front) :
* This one return 0 if the server ${remote_server} is not available, 1 otherwise

count=$(ping -c 1 ${remote_server}  grep 'received'  awk -F',' '{ print $2 }'  awk '{ print $1 }')

* This one start the ORacle VM image ${remote_image}

xm create /OVS/running_pool/*${remote_image}/vm.cfg

* This one start the VMWare image ${vmware_image} :

${vmware_bin}/vmrun -T server -h https://${vmware_ip}:${vmware_port}/sdk -u ${vmware_user} -p ${vmware_pwd} start "[${datastore}] ${vmware_image}/${vmware_image}.vmx"

* This one return a number > 0 if the VMWare image${vmware_image} is up :

count=`${vmware_bin}/vmrun -T server -h https://${vmware_ip}:${vmware_port}/sdk -u ${vmware_user} -p ${vmware_pwd} listgrep "${vmware_image}/${vmware_image}.vmx"wc -l`

* Shutdown the VMWare image ${vmware_image} :

${vmware_bin}/vmrun -T server -h https://${vmware_ip}:${vmware_port}/sdk -u ${vmware_user} -p ${vmware_pwd} stop "[${datastore}] ${vmware_image}/${vmware_image}.vmx" soft

* Start the application domain ${ovs_apps} :

./psadmin -c boot -d ${ovs_apps}

* Start the batch domain ${ovs_prcs} :

./psadmin -p start -d ${ovs_prcs}

* Stop the batch domain ${ovs_prcs} :

./psadmin -p stop -d ${ovs_prcs}

* Stop the application domain ${ovs_apps} :

./psadmin -c shutdown -d ${ovs_apps}

* Note, start and stop the database are, well, standard for Oracle (startup, shutdown immediate)
* Note, start and stop the web server are,again standard for Weblogic (startPIA.sh, stopPIA.sh)

Now, you can find the script here : PSOVM_HR.sh

Enjoy,

Nicolas

FSCM9.1 is available

After Peopletools 8.50 released earlier in September'09.
After HRMS9.1 (Peopletools 8.50 based) released in September'09.
After CRM9.1 (Peopletools 8.50 based) released in October'09.
Peoplesoft FSCM9.1 (Peopletools 8.50 based) has been released last Friday, November the 13th, you can download all the required softwares on http://edelivery.oracle.com

And of course, the corresponding documentation is also available online http://docs.oracle.com

Nicolas.

Peoplesoft VM : about the App/Batch image - PRCS (in VMWare)

On a previous step, I described the App/Batch server settings and some modifications to be done. If the application server and process scheduler are starting well, the process scheduler is not able to post the reports of the processes. Actually there are many reasons, and we need to update few things before starting the process scheduler (if it is already started, shut it down, and purge the cache) : 1. There is no distribution report node defined for the process server. Note, the name of the process server is NOT PSUNX - as we could wait - but like your dbname. So let's create one : 2. The distribution report node needs to be attached to the process server : 3. The local node is not password authentication, need to be set : 4. The user which is used to start the process scheduler (PS) needs the ReportDistAdmin role : 5. The Gateway is not defined, we need one : And define the local node to be able to ping it : 6. The /etc/hosts on App/Batch server needs to contain the PIA server IP address and name :

[psadm2@psovmab appserv]$ more /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain   localhost
::1     localhost6.localdomain6 localhost6
192.168.1.135   psovmab.phoenix.nga psovmab
192.168.1.136   psovmpia.phoenix.nga psovmpia
[psadm2@psovmab appserv]$

The PIA server needs the App/Batch server IP address and name :

[psadm2@psovmpia bin]$ more /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain   localhost
::1     localhost6.localdomain6 localhost6
192.168.1.136   psovmpia.phoenix.nga psovmpia
192.168.1.135   psovmab.phoenix.nga
[psadm2@psovmpia bin]$

7. Check if the Domain status (messaging domain) is active, purge all, the non-required will be gone, and the truly active one will remain :

And finally, you can run standard report (e.g. DDDAUDIT, SYSAUDIT, AEMINITEST), they will run successfully and posted as well :
At the end of this long process of installing Peoplesoft templates on VMWare, take backup of the VMWare images before playing around and modify and/or break something. It is very useful, if something is going wrong because of unfortunate modification, restore your set of VMWare images, and restart from a clean install.

Enjoy !

Peoplesoft VM : about the PIA image (in VMWare)

I created an virtual machine from the PIA server template downloaded from edelivery (OVM_EL5U2_X86_64_PIA85002_PVM), here are my first screenshots and comments.

On the first start of the VM, go to the console, then you should see the following, and fill the requested data (fixed IP address, netmask, gateway...) :
Note the warning in the first screenshot above :

********************WARNING******************************************************
Hard limit value of the file descriptors on this system is set to 1024
In order to run the server process with 4096 file descriptors,
increase the hard limit on the system equal or higher than the number
MAX_FILE_DESCRIPTORS in setenv.sh
*******************************************************************************

This warning is raised by startPIA.sh and stopPIA.sh scripts.
This is because the file /etc/security/limits.conf is wrongly configured. Connect onto this server as root (password is as usual on Peoplesoft templates, ovsroot), edit the file, it is like this :

*    nofile  65536
*    nofile  65536
*    nproc   65536
*    nproc   65536
*    core    unlimited
*    core    unlimited
*    memlock 50000000
*    memlock 50000000

It should be like that :

#*    nofile  65536
* -  nofile  65536
#*    nproc   65536
* -  nproc   65536
#*    core    unlimited
* -  core    unlimited
#*    memlock 50000000
* -  memlock 50000000

The webserver is owned by psadm2 user, to stop and start the webserver, go to /opt/oracle/psft/pia/tools/webserv/peoplesoft/bin.

Finally, you can access to the front end application with the URL http://192.168.1.136:8000/psp/ps/EMPLOYEE/HRMS/?cmd=login
Be careful, if your browser is not configured in English, you can receive the following error message (because only English is loaded into the database) :

You have to select the English language to be able to connect as PS/PS :
And enjoy the application entirely build from the Peoplesoft templates :Enjoy,

Nicolas.

Peoplesoft VM : about the App/Batch image (in VMWare)

I created an virtual machine from the App/Batch server template downloaded from edelivery (OVM_EL5U2_X86_64_AB85002_HCM91_PVM), here are my first screenshots and comments.

On the first start of the VM, go to the console, then you should see the following (be careful, I noticed some timeout if you're too slow to connect and enter a value, the DHCP configuration will be taken in account by default, sigh), and fill the requested data (fixed IP address, netmask, gateway...) :


Unfortunately, it is not working as we could expect. Indeed, the application server won't start, the process scheduler won't start neither.
Eventhough, you filled all the correct data, that won't work without manual modifications.

The App and Batch domains are owned by psadm2 user, and files located under ~/ps/pt/8.50/appserv, default app domain name is APPDOM, default prcs domain name is PRCSDOM.

Well, looking in the log file, we can see the following :

PSADMIN.2190 (0) [11/14/09 18:21:21](0) Begin boot attempt on domain APPDOM
PSAPPSRV.2242 (0) [11/14/09 18:21:49](0) PeopleTools Release 8.50.02 (Linux) starting. Tuxedo server is APPSRV(99)/1
PSAPPSRV.2242 (0) [11/14/09 18:21:49](0) Cache Directory being used: /home/psadm2/ps/pt/8.50/appserv/APPDOM/CACHE/PSAPPSRV_1/
PSAPPSRV.2242 (0) [11/14/09 18:21:53](3) File: SQL Access ManagerSQL error. Stmt #: 2  Error Position: 0  Return: 12154 - ORA-12154: TNS:could not resolve the connect identifier specified
PSAPPSRV.2242 (0) [11/14/09 18:21:53](1) GenMessageBox(200, 0, M): SQL Access Manager: File: SQL Access ManagerSQL error. Stmt #: 2  Error Position: 0  Return: 12154 - ORA-12154: TNS:could not resolve the connect identifier specified
PSAPPSRV.2242 (0) [11/14/09 18:21:53](1) GenMessageBox(0, 0, M): Database Signon: Could not sign on to database H91TMPLT with user PS.
PSAPPSRV.2242 (0) [11/14/09 18:21:53](0) Server failed to start
PSADMIN.2190 (0) [11/14/09 18:22:00](0) End boot attempt on domain APPDOM

Checking the database, from the database server point of view, whether the database name is the one you gave - here H91TMPLT, the service name is slightly different, it is postfixed by the domain name .corp.peoplesoft.com, see below :

[oracle@psovmdb ~]$ lsnrctl status

LSNRCTL for Linux: Version 11.1.0.7.0 - Production on 15-NOV-2009 12:39:08

Copyright (c) 1991, 2008, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Connecting to (DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=psovmdb)(PORT=1521)))
STATUS of the LISTENER
------------------------
Alias                     LISTENER
Version                   TNSLSNR for Linux: Version 11.1.0.7.0 - Production
Start Date                15-NOV-2009 01:57:15
Uptime                    0 days 10 hr. 41 min. 52 sec
Trace Level               off
Security                  ON: Local OS Authentication
SNMP                      OFF
Listener Parameter File   /u01/app/oracle/product/11.1.0/db_1/network/admin/listener.ora
Listener Log File         /u01/app/oracle/diag/tnslsnr/psovmdb/listener/alert/log.xml
Listening Endpoints Summary...
  (DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcp)(HOST=psovmdb)(PORT=1521)))
  (DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=ipc)(KEY=EXTPROC1521)))
Services Summary...
Service "H91TMPLT.corp.peoplesoft.com" has 1 instance(s).
  Instance "H91TMPLT", status READY, has 1 handler(s) for this service...
Service "H91TMPLT_XPT.corp.peoplesoft.com" has 1 instance(s).
  Instance "H91TMPLT", status READY, has 1 handler(s) for this service...
Service "XDB.corp.peoplesoft.com" has 1 instance(s).
  Instance "H91TMPLT", status READY, has 1 handler(s) for this service...
The command completed successfully
[oracle@psovmdb ~]$

Let's check the tnsnames.ora file, and here what surprise, very strange to me, the Oracle client installation is owned by root... and the tnsnames.ora file in use is located under /etc/tnsnames.ora.
It is an unfortunate configuration of this file, using SID instead of SERVICE_NAME, finally, the modification give this :

[psadm2@psovmab LOGS]$ more /etc/tnsnames.ora
H91TMPLT=
(DESCRIPTION=
 (ADDRESS_LIST=
  (ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=192.168.1.133)(PORT=1521)))
 (CONNECT_DATA=(SERVER=DEDICATED)(SERVICE_NAME=H91TMPLT.corp.peoplesoft.com))
)
[psadm2@psovmab LOGS]$

After that change, we can connect onto the database from the App/Batch server, then go to $PS_HOME/appserv, run ./psadmin and reconfigure the application server domain and process scheduler.
Finally, everything should start and work fine.

Next step, PIA server.

Enjoy,

Peoplesoft VM : Oracle VM install/config (in VMWare)

To continue my serie about "Peoplesoft VM in Oracle VM in VMWare", after describing the architecture, the VMWare 2.0.2 install on CentOS 5.4, and the different VMWare images configuration to be used, time to install Oracle VM Manager/Server as VMWare images.

1. Oracle VM Manager installation :
This is obviously the easiest part, most of the Oracle VM Manager installation is standard regardless the fact it is inside VMWare images.
Before installating the Oracle VM Manager, you need to install an OS. I'm using OEL5.4 (downloadable on http://edelivery.oracle.com/linux, note Oracle VM Manager is also downloadable from there). The installation of OEL5.4 I followed is very stanadard. Nothing special to be installed, except : you must use fixed IP address, disable firewall and SELinux.
Following the OEL5.4 installation, you need to follow the documentation of Oracle VM Manager installation, it is very well explained in the documentation, including "screenshots" (that's why I won't reply then here).
Please, read http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15458_01/doc.22/e15439/toc.htm

2. Oracle VM Servers installation :
This is obviously the easiest part, most of the Oracle VM Server installation are standard regardless the fact it is inside VMWare images.
The software is downloadable on http://edelivery.oracle.com/linux.
The documentation is also very good and clear enough, even for people who never did it before, please read : http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15458_01/doc.22/e15442/ovsig.htm
Note, you must use fixed IP address, apart from that, nothing special to be done.
You'll need to do it two times, once for each Oracle VM Servers, as I described in the previous post.

3. Oracle VM configuration :
Now, configuration needs to be done from Oracle VM Manager.

3.1 Memory configuration :
Before doing any configuration from the Oracle VM Manager side, we need to set the proper memory size used by the OS.
We declare 2560Mb RAM size for each Oracle VM Server, but the size used by the OS is about 553Mb :

[root@psovmdb-host ~]# free
         total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        566272     202640     363632          0       9764      56448
-/+ buffers/cache:     136428     429844
Swap:      1052216          0    1052216

From the output above, the Xen OS use 566272Kb=553Mb, added to 2048Mb defined for the VMWare images, that makes 2601Mb (>2560Mb defined), the Oracle VM image won't start.
We can reduce the OS reserved memory till 10% of the total RAM amount, 250Mb.
Edit the file /boot/grub/grub.conf and change the size defined for dom0_mem (4 lines), and reboot the Oracle VM Server box.
Confirm the memory size has been droped down :

[root@psovmdb-host ~]# free
         total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        256000     197460      58540          0       9792      57072
-/+ buffers/cache:     130596     125404
Swap:      1052216          0    1052216

3.2 OVS folder :
On the Oracle VM Server, by default the OVS folder is a symbolic link to a local partition /dev/sda3. OVS hosts the templates as well as the running images you created from the templates.
Since I'm using a NFS server to host the templates as well as the running images, I'll change the mount point by following the steps below.
Add a new repository :

[root@psovmabw ~]# /opt/ovs-agent-2.3/utils/repos.py -n 192.168.1.1:/ovs-hcm-abw
[ NEW ] f0423499-3b4b-4276-beac-8d3ec1be1402 => 192.168.1.1:/ovs-hcm-abw

List of the repositories :

[root@psovmabw ~]# /opt/ovs-agent-2.3/utils/repos.py -l
[ R ] 45e89d11-9f0a-43b9-901f-b03439aef697 => /dev/sda3
[   ] f0423499-3b4b-4276-beac-8d3ec1be1402 => 192.168.1.1:/ovs-hcm-abw

Delete the previsou repository defined by default :

[root@psovmabw ~]# /opt/ovs-agent-2.3/utils/repos.py -d 45e89d11-9f0a-43b9-901f-b03439aef697
[ DEL ] 45e89d11-9f0a-43b9-901f-b03439aef697 => /dev/sda3

[root@psovmabw ~]# /opt/ovs-agent-2.3/utils/repos.py -r f0423499-3b4b-4276-beac-8d3ec1be1402
Make the new repository as the new default one :

[ R ] f0423499-3b4b-4276-beac-8d3ec1be1402 => 192.168.1.1:/ovs-hcm-abw
[root@psovmabw ~]#

Whatever method you choose, you should copy the Peoplesoft templates in the /OVS/seed_pools (that'll be take automatically when you'll import them from Oracle VM Manager).

3.3 Server pool :
Connect onto the Oracle VM Manager web server (with admin user, and password set during the Oracle VM Manager installation), go to the tab "Server Pools", and create two new server, one for each VM image you created earlier (each one correspond to one VMWare image and one Oracle VM Server) :

Then, you'll got two also servers ("Servers" tab) :


3.4 Import the templates from server pool :
On the "Resources" tab, from the server pool dedicated to the db server, import the template relative to the database, from the other one, import the two templates for App/Batch and PIA servers. You should obtain something like the following :

3.5 Create the image from templates :
Go to the "Virtual Machines" tab, and create the virtual machine, you can name them as you want (not necessarly like the templates). Do it for every single template (the three of them).
That can take a while, it is copying the files from /OVS/seed_pools to /OVS/running_pools, then you should obtain such screen :
Next step, start the VMs.
You could see for the Database server I already post here.

Enjoy,

Peoplesoft VM : VMWare images configuration

After installing VMWare 2.0.2 on my server CentOS 5.4, time to configure the VMWare images.
As I explained in my architecure description, I'll need three VMWare images :

1. The VMWare image for Oracle VM Manager :
This image is optional, but since I'm not very well with the Xen command lines, and since I have enough RAM to have one more image running, I prefer to get the GUI (web based application) to manage the Oracle VM coming from the templates.
Oracle VM Manager 2.2.0 has to be installed on top of an OS, I'll use OEL5.4.
It should be large enough for the OS, a small database and the software required by Oracle VM.
I configured 20Gb (max., not fixed size) of hard disk, within 2048Mb RAM, and 1 CPU.

2. The VMWare image for Oracle VM Server (Database server) :
This image will host the Oracle VM Server used to host the Database server image.
Oracle VM Server 2.2.0 has to be installed from scratch (no OS), a small size is needed (less than 5Gb) for the software itself. But the image should be large enough to receive the database template (OVM_EL5U2_X86_64_HCM91_PVM) under /OVS/seed_pool AND the image itself under /OVS/running_pool which you'll work on.
The template is about 60Gb, same for the running_pool, that means you'll need about 130Gb all together.
Unless, like me, you have a NFS server which can host all the files (this can be configured on the Oracle VM Server before doing anything - I'll describe this step later).
Since I'll store all the seed and running pool on a NFS server, I don't need that much space onto the VMWare image itself. I configured 8Gb (max., not fixed size) of hard disk, within 2560Mb RAM (2048Mb required for the Oracle VM image), and 2 CPUs.

3. The VMWare image for Oracle VM Server (App/Batch and PIA) :
This image will host the Oracle VM Server used to host the App/Bacth server AND the PIA (web) server image.
Oracle VM Server 2.2.0 has to be installed from scratch (no OS), a small size is needed (less than 5Gb) for the software itself.
But the image should be large enough to receive
a) the App/Bacth template (OVM_EL5U2_X86_64_AB85002_HCM91_PVM) under /OVS/seed_pool AND the image itself under /OVS/running_pool which you'll work on.
This template is about 15Gb, same for the running_pool, that means you'll need about 30Gb all together.
b) the PIA template (OVM_EL5U2_X86_64_PIA85002_PVM) under /OVS/seed_pool AND the image itself under /OVS/running_pool which you'll work on.
This template is about 10Gb, same for the running_pool, that means you'll need about 20Gb all together.
That means, for this VMWare image, you'll need around 60Gb.
Unless, like me, you have a NFS server which can host all the files (this can be configured on the Oracle VM Server before doing anything - I'll describe this step later).
Since I'll store all the seed and running pool on a NFS server, I don't need that much space onto the VMWare image itself. I configured 8Gb (max., not fixed size) of hard disk, within 2560Mb RAM (1024Mb required for each Oracle VM image), , and 2 CPUs (maximum allowed by VMWare Server, but 2CPUs for App/Batch and 1 for PIA - that should not cause any troubles since they should not be overloaded).

Next step, the Oracle VM (Manager/Server) installations.

Nicolas.

VMWare 2.0.2 on CentOS 5.4

In order to get a working environment I described here, I need to install VMware 2.0.2 on my OS, CentOS 5.4.
VMware 2.x is very different than VMWare 1.x, it is a web based application, and a lot of bugs have been fixed.
Unfortunately, it was not workable, after few minutes up and running, the webserver was hanging and crashing. Unless you reboot the server, no way to make anything inside VMWare.

After a lot of research, it appears that VMWare 2.0.2 does not like the glibc and glibc-common libraries coming within CentOS 5.4.
So, we need to downgrade them to their version of CentOS 5.3. Here are the steps :

1. Go to /etc/yum.repos.d and copy the file CentOS-Base.repo to CentOS53-Base.repo
2. In CentOS53-Base.repo, rename all the packages within 53 :
[base] will become [base53]
[updates] => [updates53]
[addons] => [addons53]
[extras] => [extras53]
[centosplus] => [centosplus53]
[contrib] => [contrib53]
3. In CentOS53-Base.repo, replace all the occurences of release=$releasever by release=5.3
4. Downgrade the glibc and glibc-common libraries by running the following :
yum downgrade glibc glibc-common
3 packages are installed, 15 are removed.
5. To avoid further upgrade/update of those libraries (awaiting a fix of VMWare), we need to exclude them from the update's list. Add the following line in /etc/yum.conf :
exclude=glibc glibc-common glibc-devel glibc-headers nscd
6. Finally, reboot the server, and re-run vmware-config.pl, and everything should work fine !

UPDATE (16-MAY-2010) : problem solved within CentOS 5.5

Enjoy,

Peoplesoft VM : about the database image (in VMWare)

I created an virtual machine from the database server template downloaded from edelivery (OVM_EL5U2_X86_64_HCM91_PVM), here are my first screenshots and comments.

1. In Oracle VM Manager, list of the templates downloaded from edelivery :

2. In Oracle VM Manager, list of the virtual machines, created from the Peoplesoft templates :
3. First start of the database VM (OVM_EL5U2_X86_64_HCM91_PVM) :4. Once the VM is in running status, click on "console" button :

5. Enter the VM password :
6. Nice, we arrive on the database server, bare is progressing :
7. Don't configure the DHCP :
8. Give the IP address, netmask, DNS and server name :
9. I want the database start on server boot, and set my own database password :

10. My database name will be H91TMPLT :
11. Finally, first login onto the database server (default root password is ovsroot):


It quite a fast process, if we except the large amount Gb to download and to be created as virtual machine.

So far, only few remarks/bugs :
1. On the first boot of the machine I configured the database to be started on boot (step 9 above), , unfortunately it looks like the database and listener do not start automatically on the virtual machine start.
2. The /etc/oratab does not contain the database name I gave during the first VM setting, but only the following (it could explain the point 1) :

orcl:/u01/app/oracle/product/11.1.0/db_1:N

3. The database password given on the first VM boot are not taken in account, e.g. SYSTEM's password is manager, not the one I gave during the initialization (step 9 described above)
4. An other point, the image is about 60Gb, but less than 30Gb are used onto the VM, that's a pitty, so much wasting space onto the host for nothing :

[root@psovmdb ~]# df -k
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/xvda2             3177204   1039168   2138036  33% /
/dev/xvda1               31077      8277     21196  29% /boot
tmpfs                  2097152         0   2097152   0% /dev/shm
/dev/xvdb1             9851308   4478364   4872524  48% /u01
/dev/xvdc1            25806268  19211972   5283396  79% /opt/oracle/psft/ptdb
[root@psovmdb ~]#

Speaking about size, note the database is only 16.3Gb datafiles :

SQL> select sum(bytes)/1024/1024 from dba_data_files
2  union all
3  select sum(bytes)/1024/1024 from dba_temp_files;

SUM(BYTES)/1024/1024
--------------------
           16007
             320
SQL>

5. Be aware, the SYSADM's password is in capital letter :

SQL> conn sysadm/sysadm
ERROR:
ORA-01017: invalid username/password; logon denied

Warning: You are no longer connected to ORACLE.
SQL> conn sysadm/SYSADM
Connected.
SQL>

6. Only English language is installed :

SQL> select language_cd from pslanguages where installed=1;

LANGUAGE_CD
------------
ENG

Well, enjoy it !

7. (added the 21st of MARCH 2010 ) : the password of PEOPLE and SYSADM is limited in time, please read my post here

Nicolas.