Installing Oracle APEX on Hyper-V

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For developing APEX applications I use a virtual machine containing an Oracle APEX environment. This includes the following components.

Server components:

  • Microsoft Hyper-V
  • Oracle Linux 8
  • Oracle Database XE 21c
  • ORDS 24.2
  • APEX 24.1
  • Gnome GUI
  • SQL Developer 23.1

In this article I will explain how to install and configure the above software.

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)

Requirements

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

  • Windows Pro or Enterprise
  • Hyper-V enabled
  • 40GB of available diskspace
  • 8GB of memory (minimum)

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

Create virtual machine

Required downloads:

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

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 4 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 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.