Oracle VDI has very basic hardware requirements. Customers can use new or existing hardware, as long as it meets the following requirements:
At least one 2.0GHz x86-64 (x64) CPU
At least 4GB RAM
At least 32GB disk space
These requirements assume the host is used only for Oracle VDI.
Hardware sizing is a very important part of planning an Oracle VDI deployment. Some basic sizing guidelines can be found at Chapter 8, Performance and Tuning. For more detailed assistance with sizing, contact an Oracle Sales or Support representative.
The following are the supported installation platforms for Oracle VDI:
Operating System | Supported Releases |
---|---|
Oracle Linux (64-bit) on x86 platforms | 5.6 |
Oracle Solaris (64-bit) on x86 platforms | Solaris 10 release 10/09 (update 8) or later Note: Solaris 11 is not supported. |
All the hosts in the same Oracle VDI Center must use the same operating system. The use of mixed operating systems in the same Oracle VDI Center is not supported.
For the best performance on Oracle Linux platforms, use the Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel.
The supported installation platforms for Oracle VDI can be virtualized, see Section 3.2.7, “Oracle VDI Centers in Virtualized Environments”.
If you use technologies for automating the installation of the operating system or for replicating hosts, such as Kickstart on Oracle Linux platforms or Jumpstart or Flash Archives on Oracle Solaris platforms, you must ensure that each host has a unique iSCSI initiator name. See your system documentation for details on how to configure the iSCSI initiator.
On Oracle Linux platforms, Oracle VDI requires specific packages to be installed. The Oracle VDI installation script checks for these packages before installing the software. If any required packages are missing, the installation script checks that a valid yum repository is configured on the host and then uses the yum command to check whether the packages are available. If the missing required packages are available, you are prompted to continue and the packages are downloaded and installed. If yum repositories are not configured, or the required packages are not available, the installation fails and a list of required packages that must be installed is displayed. You must resolve these dependencies before you can install Oracle VDI. The check for the required packages is only performed for fresh installations of Oracle VDI.
Before you install the software, it is best to ensure that yum is configured correctly and that it is working.
Oracle VDI requires that an Oracle Linux system is running in runlevel 5 (full multi-user mode with an X-based login screen).
The iSCSI daemon must be running on the Oracle VDI host. Use the following command to check:
/etc/init.d/iscsi status
If the daemon is not running, start it with the following command:
/etc/init.d/iscsi start
If the SELinux setting is enforcing, Oracle VDI installs correctly but configuration fails. Change the SELinux setting to permissive or disabled, by using the SELinux Administration Tool (system-config-selinux), or the /usr/sbin/setenforce 0 command (this command changes the setting to permissive).
On Oracle Solaris platforms, you must install the Entire distribution to get the libraries required by Oracle VDI. If you use Solaris zones, Oracle VDI must be installed in the global zone. Installation in a non-global zone is not supported.
Oracle VDI requires that an Oracle Solaris system is running in runlevel 3 (multi-user level with NFS resources shared).
It is important to synchronize the time on Oracle VDI hosts. Use Network Time Protocol (NTP) software to ensure the time on all hosts is synchronized.
When you configure Oracle VDI, a check is made as to whether NTP is configured on the host. If NTP is not configured, the first host (the primary) added to the Oracle VDI Center is automatically configured as an NTP server, and the secondary hosts in the Oracle VDI Center automatically synchronize their times with the primary. If NTP is configured but the time on a host is not synchronized, a warning displays when you configure Oracle VDI.
You specify that you want to use a remote MySQL database when you configure the primary host in an Oracle VDI Center. The remote MySQL database must already be installed and configured.
The following are the supported remote databases:
MySQL server, at least release 5.0, with the InnoDB storage engine.
MySQL Cluster, at least release 6.2.15, with the NDB storage engine.
To use the remote database, you must provide the following information when you configure Oracle VDI on a primary host:
The DNS name of the MySQL host.
The username and password of a privileged administrator in the MySQL database.
The port number to use for connections to the database and whether you want to use Socket Secure Layer (SSL) to secure the connections.
The privileged database administrator is used only to create and
configure an Oracle VDI database on the remote MySQL
database. When the Oracle VDI database is created, a
database user is also created. All access to the remote
Oracle VDI database is performed through this user. By
default, the name of the remote Oracle VDI database is
vda
and the name of the database user is
vdadb
. When you configure the
Oracle VDI primary, you can choose different names,
and choose a password to use for the database user.
To use SSL connections to the remote database, you must copy the certificate and key files needed for the SSL connection to the primary host so that they can be specified when you configure Oracle VDI. The certificates and key must be in Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM) format. Depending on the SSL configuration of the remote database, you might need the following:
The Certificate Authority (CA) certificate
The client certificate
The client certificate private key
For more information about MySQL SSL configuration, refer to the MySQL Server Administration chapter of the MySQL Reference Manual.
Oracle VDI can be installed in a virtualized environment. If you plan to create an Oracle VDI Center by cloning an Oracle VDI host template, note the following.
Only clone an unconfigured host.
A fully configured Oracle VDI host template cannot be cloned. You can install the Oracle VDI software in the template, but you can only configure the host and add it to an Oracle VDI Center after it has been cloned.
iSCSI initiator node names must be unique for each host.
After cloning the template, you might have to reconfigure the iSCSI initiator name on the host, so that it is a unique name. See your system documentation for details on how to configure the iSCSI initiator.
High availability requires two separate hosts.
To provide for high availability, the primary host (with the master database) and the secondary host (with the slave database) must be hosted on separate physical machines.