EBS R12 Install on a 2-Tier Environment(App Tier & Db Tier)

The 2 Tier EBS R12 install has not been widely documented, therefore I decided to document this step by step process for the installation of Oracle E-Business Suite R12 on a 2 Tier seprate Apps Tier and a separate Database Tier.

Prepare the Servers:
I installed EBS R12 on two Linux (32-bit) servers. The versions of Linux was Enterprise Linux R4 Update 6 (/etc/redhat-release).
The kernel version was 2.6.9-67.0.0.0.1.ELsmp (uname -r).
Both versions were supported by Oracle for EBS R12 installs.
Oracle EBS R12 installation requires a set of required RPM packages with the following minimum Versions:

glibc-2.3.4-2.25
glibc-common-2.3.4-2.25
binutils-2.15.92.0.2-21
compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-132.7.2
gcc-3.4.6-3
gcc-c++-3.4.6-3
libgcc-3.4.6-3
libstdc++-3.4.6-3
libstdc++-devel-3.4.6-3
openmotif21-2.1.30-11.RHEL4.6**
pdksh-5.2.14-30.3
setarch-1.6-1
make-3.80-6.EL4
gnome-libs-1.4.1.2.90-44.1
sysstat-5.0.5-11.rhel4
compat-db-4.1.25-9
control-center-2.8.0-12.rhel4.5
xscreensaver-4.18-5.rhel4.11
libaio-0.3.105-2
libaio-devel-0.3.105
GCC Compilers: With regards to the GCC compilers, change the installed gcc compiler which was installed by the gcc packages, to use the 32 bit compilers. If not changed, the database install will error out during the executable relink stages. Both GCC and G++ need to be using the 32 bit compilers.
Go to /usr/bin/mv gcc gcc.orig
/usr/bin/mv gcc32 gcc
and /usr/bin/mv g++ g++.orig
/usr/bin/mv g++32 g++
All other RPM package versions should be as per list above.

JDK 5.0 Requirements: R12 requires at least JRE5.0 update 10. Go to http://java.sun.com.products/archive/j2se/5.0_10/index.html download jre-1_5_0_10-linux-i586-rpm.bin. Once done run CHMOD 755 against this bin file.
Execute the *.bin script as root to the /usr/java folder by default.

Kernel Settings: Edit the /etc/sysctl.conf file to configure the kernel setting as required by Oracle EBS R12:
kernel.sem = 25 3200 100 142
kernel.shmmni = 4096
kernel.msgmax = 8192
kernel.msgmnb = 65535
kernel.msgmni = 2878
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65000
net.core.rmem_default = 262144
net.core.rmem_max = 262144
net.core.wmem_default = 262144
net.core.wmem_max = 262144

Open File Descriptors: If you change the limits in the /etc/security/limits.conf file, as a result of their limits being lower than those mentioned below, then you must restart the system after making the changes:

* hard nofile 65532
* soft nofile 4096
* hard nproc 16384
* soft nproc 2047

Host Names: On ech server (AppSrv and DBSrv, edit the /etc/hosts file with the following entries:
ip_address node_name.domain_name node_name
---------- --------------------- ---------
192.168.0.10 appsrv.gid.com.au appsrv
192.168.0.11 dbsrv.gid.com.au dbsrv
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost

Finally, ensure both the appsrv and the dbsrv servers can ping each other and their host names are resolved successfully.

You are now ready to install Oracle E-Business Suite R12 on a 2-Tier environment.

Installing Oracle E-Business Suite R12
Firstly, stage the install CD's into a suitable location accessible by both servers. I staged the software on an external Hard Disk and swapped between servers. Staging of Oracle software can be carried out using the adautostg.pl file located at /startCD/Disk1/rapidwiz folder on the Start Here CD.
I used identical user ID's for both servers for the 2 Tier EBS R12 install. That is, both servers had oracle:dba with identical user ID and group ID.
For my instance I created a user 'oracle'
$ /usr/sbin/groupadd -g 502 dba
$ /usr/sbin/useradd -c 'Oracle Software Owner' -d /home/oracle -g dba -u 500 oracle

If you query /etc/passwd you will notice the following entry:
oracle:x:500:502:Oracle Software Owner:/home/oracle:/bin/bash
Ensure that the password files on both servers have identical entries.

Now create your mount points on both servers. For convenience I created /u01/app as the mount points on both servers.

First Install the Database Tier:
Ensure that the Stage Area is mounted on DBSRV. Login to a Terminal Server as user 'oracle' and run the rapidwiz installer from /stage area/startCD/Disk1/rapidwiz/rapidwiz
- select the standard install option
- In the Oracle Configuration Manager I selected to Decline Oracle Connection Tools Agreement, since my installation was on a Lab environment.
- At the next screen, I selected a 'new configuration'
the next screen shows the port list pool. I selected 0 pool (default pool) whereby my database port defaults to 1521.

Database Node Configuration Screen: I entered the following:
Database Type : Vision Demo Database
Database SID : VIS
Host Name : DBSRV
Domain Name : gid.com.au
Operating System : Linux (32-bit)
Database OS User : oracle
Database OS Group: dba
Base Directory : /u01/app

Primary Applications Node configuration Screen: I entered the following:
Host Name : APPSRV
Domain Name : gid.com.au
Apps OS User : oracle
Apps OS Group : dba
Base Directory: /u01/app
Instance Directory : /u01/app/inst

The Services were not edited as all database executables were expected to be installed on the DB tier and the App executables on the Apps tier. There was no sharing of the file system between servers.

Node Information: no changes were made as both servers were visible.

The installation process goes through until its completion. Ensure that no errors are encountered as you will need to attend to them prior to going to the next step. Also, ensure that the database is up and running and the listener is up.

Now Install the Applications Tier:
The applications Tier is to be installed on APPSRV. Ensure that the Stage Area is mounted on this server. Login to a Terminal Server as user 'oracle' and run the rapidwiz installer from the stage area.
Proceed as for the Database Install steps.

At the Configuration Choice Screen, select and load the following saved configuraton:
dbsrv.gid.com.au:VIS:1521

This is the path to the application Tier configuration file.

The installation process extracts all the relevant Apps install attributes and kick starts the Apps Tier installation.

Ensure that the whole installation process completes successfully.
You can now connect to Oracle E-Business Suite using:
http://appsrv.gid.com.au:8000

This completes a 2 Tier EBS R12 install.