Installation

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Companies choose many different installation paths, many different types of configurations, and many different sets of OSs. You can tailor how you install to meet with the other company standards on OSs for the different kinds of pieces. If all of your company's databases are on a UNIX system, you can follow that. If your company has standardized on all Linux servers, you can follow that standard. If all Web servers are on a Windows platform, you can follow that as well.

Regardless of what configuration you choose, you need to check the certification section on Metalink or check with Metalink's technical people to make sure that you have been sold a valid, implementable configuration that is actually supported. Checking with Metalink's certification section allows you to make sure that you have a certified combination of Oracle E-Business Suite release housed on a supported OS. Do not assume that just because it is being packaged by sales that it is certified or supported. Creating an unsupported or impossible to configure and implement configuration is not done maliciously or often, but it does happen. Sales departments do not always talk to the technical side to find out if what the customer wants (and therefore what they are going to be sold) is even possible. Even in small companies, sales people do not always talk to implementation team members. This happens all too frequently. In a company the size of Oracle, it is bound to happen on occasion. But do you want to be the hapless company that it happens to? A little legwork before you sign with either Oracle Sales or a contracting company (if you are bringing one in to help with your implementation), could save you time, money, and grief.

Do not just take the word of a company that wants your implementation business either. If you are looking to contract a company to assist in your implementation, do not just ask them if what you are planning on buying (or what you bought) can be done. Ask if it has been done. Ask if the team you are going to be working with has ever done it. Ask if it was successful and if they can give you a reference of someone for whom they were able to successfully implement this particular configuration.

Go to the listservs. Ask questions of the people who spend their days in the apps trenches. Has any of you ever done this? Did you have any problems that you can attribute directly to the choice to implement this way? Would you suggest this implementation track to other people thinking about implementing?

Do searches on the Internet. Google is a great resource. Oracle, AppsNet, and TechNet are also very good places to search for information. There are case studies and white papers of other companies, their successes and their failures. See if you can get ideas of what worked, problems you may encounter, or better ways that may work for your company. TechNet (http://otn.oracle.com) and AppsNet (http://www.oracle.com/appsnet) are great places to look; naturally they tend to be slanted toward things that make Oracle look good, but they will show you what works.

Look at the documentation. Documentation will not tell you what cannot be done or what is not certified. It may not tell you if what you are looking at can be done as sold. It will tell you how to install and implement the different pieces on different OSs.

It is often a case of the buyer beware, but if you do this legwork up front, you will be surprised at how much easier your life will be through the implementation and beyond. Not only will it make things go smoother if you have information at hand before you start, it will likely mean that everyone is happier with the process and with the end result. And again, it is not likely that anything that might have been done was in any way deliberately malicious. They believe that you know what you want, so they know what you want. They are going to do their best to give you what you ask for. Couple the desire to provide what you want with the faith that they are selling a flexible product that can meet the overall needs of any companies that implement and you can understand how they can believe that they can bring you exactly what you say you want for your company.

An Oracle E-Business Suite installation uses a utility called Rapid Install (or RapidWiz). RapidWiz is an installation wizard that walks you through the installation and prompts you for ports, directory structures, server names, and other instance implementation-specific information. Once it has finished helping you to gather all of your pertinent information, it runs the installation of the technology stack, the Apps file system, the database, the HTTP server, and other associated services. It also configures your server and services on the apps tier and configures the preseeded database. Oracle suggests that RapidWiz can accomplish all of this in just about an hour. I suggest that you plan on at least twice that amount of time for each instance depending on how many opportunities arise during the installation process. Even if there are no problems anywhere along the installation process, laying down 45 GB in files and getting several services configured in 60 minutes is difficult at best.

You can choose any one of three different hardware configurations: single node, two node, or multi-node installation.

Single node installation is one where the database, Concurrent Managers, application layer, and all Web and Forms and Reports services are installed on one physical server. While this is a viable implementation solution, it is most often used in smaller installations and for demonstration purposes and is most often installed on a UNIX or Linux server for simplicity and stability.

A two node installation spreads the components over two physical servers. Typically one server houses the database, Concurrent Managers, and Reports Server, while the other houses the application layer and all Web and Forms services.

A multi-node installation distributes all pieces across more than one physical server. This configuration allows for the most scalability and flexibility. You can choose the number of physical servers over which to distribute the processes and decide which pieces, if any, to house together on the same servers.

To further complicate your decision making process, you will also need to decide how many instances of the application you want to maintain. Minimally, two is suggested: one to apply patches, do any auxiliary development, test upgrades, and do general maintenance before you do it all to production and the other for production. Many sites maintain three fully operational instances. One instance is the Vision Demo environment for training purposes for the initial go live. This can later become the Development environment. Another instance is maintained to provide a copy of production where changes to reports and customizations can be tested and where patches can be applied to determine their impact on the production environment ahead of time. This allows you to minimize production downtime and know ahead of time what problems you may run across and other patches that the application of the main patch may have spawned. The final instance, regardless of what else you have in your implementation, will be your Production environment.

It is not unusual to have four independent environments: Vision Demo (or development), Test, Production, and one for the administrators to perform upgrades and apply patches on to limit the impact of what they are doing on other users. This environment allows them to encounter any major difficulties with patches without having to impact developers and other testing users' day-to-day working and get issues resolved before moving to the other environments. This allows Test to be the environment where functional testing is done and frees the resources to proceed with normal programming move-ups during the time that administrators are working through issue resolution in upgrades and major patch installation.

What exactly are you going to be installing for each environment you choose to maintain? RapidWiz (as late as Version 11.5.8) installs a working 8i database (Enterprise Edition, Version 8.1.7) in nonarchive log mode, complete with the initialization parameters required to allow apps to perform at its preconfigured functional level. Depending on which version you install with, you may have to upgrade to the terminal patch set for 8i (8.1.7.4). It installs an 8.0.6 Oracle Home and 9iAS, Version 1.0.2.2.2 that includes the Apache Web server. JInitiator is placed for download access to the PC clients. Oracle Developer Suite 6 i is installed and with it comes Oracle Forms, Oracle Reports, and Oracle Graphics. Further, you will install Oracle Java Server Pages (OJSP), Oracle client libraries and support files, and Oracle's Java Database Connector (JDBC). Once it is all installed, RapidWiz configures Apache to run with your specifications. It configures all listeners on the Web server node. Forms, Reports, and Graphics Servers are configured, Concurrent Managers are configured, and all are started. RapidWiz then creates the environment files, startup and shutdown scripts for all services and for the database, and creates the database connection files that allow it to all work together seamlessly.

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