Installing Oracle Linux on Hyper-V

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For developing APEX applications I use a virtual machine with Linux on it containing an Oracle APEX environment. This includes the following components:

  1. Microsoft Hyper-V
  2. Oracle Linux 8 including Gnome UI
  3. Database FREE 23AI
  4. ORDS 24.2
  5. APEX 24.1
  6. SQL Developer 23.1
  7. Visual Studio Code (optional)

In this article I will explain how to install and configure the operating system on your server, which are the first two components (in bold).

Side note: These are alternative ways to use Oracle APEX:

  • Request a workspace on apex.oracle.com (free)
  • Run APEX on Oracle Cloud (free and paid options)
  • Download a VirtualBox Appliance (free)

Let us continue setting up our server.

Requirements

First things first; we need (virtual) hardware to run our server on. So let’s first look at some pc requirements for running a virtual server:

  • Windows Pro or Enterprise
  • Hyper-V enabled
  • 50GB of available diskspace
  • 8GB of memory (minimum)

This article can help you setup Hyper-V on your computer. Of course there are alternatives for virtualization software like VirtualBox and VMware if you can not use Hyper-V.

You can use an old computer instead of a virtual machine

Create virtual machine

Required downloads:

  • Oracle Linux R8 installation ISO from the yum repository. A boot ISO file is fine.

Follow these steps to create the virtual machine:

  1. On your Windows computer, click Start and type “Hyper-V”.
  2. Start Hyper-V Manager.
  3. Click the Quick Create… button under Actions.
  4. Do not select an operating system from the list. Use the Local installation source option instead.
  5. Uncheck “This virtual machine will run Windows”.
  6. Click Change installation source… and select the Oracle Linux R8 ISO file.
  7. Click More options, give your Virtual Machine a name, like “APEX Development Server”.
  8. The Network Default Switch setting is fine in most cases.
  9. Click Create Virtual Machine.

After the virtual machine is created successfully, we change some settings:

  1. Click Edit Settings.
  2. On the left, click memory and change RAM to 8192 MB and uncheck Enable Dynamic Memory.
  3. Optionally you can make the following changes:
    • Change the default number of virtual processors.
    • The name for the virtual machine can be changed (if you forgot at step 7).
    • I usually disable checkpoints until after installation of OS and software.
  4. Click OK to save your settings.

Install Oracle Linux

  1. Connect to the Virtual Machine and click Start.
  2. Select “Install Oracle Linux 8.xx” with your arrow keys and type Enter.
  3. Select a language to use during installation (default: English (United States)) and click Continue.
  4. This is the installation summary page. Follow these steps:
    • First click Network & Host Name, change the hostname if you want (for example: apex.local), click apply and turn on the Ethernet (eth0) adapter. Click Done.
    • Then click Software Selection, select Workstation and click Done.
    • Then click Installation Destination, select Custom for Storage Configuration and click Done.
    • In the Manual Partitioning screen, click the “Click here to create them automatically” link.
      • Change the “/” partition (root) Desired Capacity from 70GB to 32GB.
      • Change the swap partition Desired Capacity to 8 GiB.
      • Change the “/home” partition mount point to “/opt/oracle”
        change Desired Capacity to 100 GiB and
        change Name from “home” to “opt_oracle” and
        Click Update Settings.
      • Click Done and then Accept Changes.
    • Set a password for root.
    • User Creation: Create the Oracle user.
      • Full name: Oracle
      • User name: oracle
      • Check: Make this user administrator
      • Give the user a password and click Done.
    • Click Begin Installation. This will take a while.
    • When the installation is done, click Reboot System.
    • Click License Information, I accept the License agreement, Done and Finish Configuration.