Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2.12 Vision ERP Demo on Oracle Linux 8 (Azure) User Guide

Overview

This guide covers deploying the Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) 12.2.12 Vision demonstration environment on Oracle Linux 8.10 from the Azure Marketplace by cloudimg. Oracle EBS is a comprehensive suite of integrated global business applications providing enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and supply chain management. The Vision instance ships with Oracle's sample dataset for demonstration, evaluation, and testing.

Bring Your Own Licence (BYOL). This is a BYOL image. It contains no Oracle licence. You must hold appropriate Oracle licences to use Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Database. The Oracle Technology Network (OTN) Developer Licence that accompanies the EBS Vision demonstration media permits development, testing, and prototyping only — not production use. For production you must obtain the correct Oracle licences from Oracle or an authorised reseller. The cloudimg image fee covers cloudimg pre-configuration, the Oracle Linux 8 base, and 24/7 cloudimg support only — never any Oracle licence.

What's included in this image:

• Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2.12 Vision installed at /u01
• Oracle Database 19c (19.18 RU, container database EBSCDB, pluggable database EBSDB), relinked on Oracle Linux 8
• Oracle WebLogic Server 10.3.6, Oracle Forms and Reports 10.1.2.3, Web Tier 11.1.1.9
• Oracle Linux 8.10 with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK 7), fully patched at build time, one kernel installed
• oracle-ebs-server-R12-preinstall and oracle-database-preinstall-19c (Oracle's EBS / Database prerequisite packages and kernel settings for Oracle Linux 8)
• The database and the EBS application tier start automatically on every boot (systemd services)
• Per-VM passwords, generated on the first boot of your VM and written to a root-only file, for SYSADMIN, the Vision demo users, APPS/APPLSYS, WebLogic, SYSTEM, SYS and every internal account (EBS_SYSTEM, all EBS product schemas, APPLSYSPUB, GUEST, RECON). The first-boot service then proves that no previous or published default password (such as GUEST/ORACLE or APPLSYSPUB/PUB) still works; if anything fails, the web tier is not started
• Swap on the Azure temporary disk (never on the OS disk)
• Azure Linux Agent and cloud-init for provisioning
• 24/7 cloudimg support with a guaranteed 24 hour response SLA

Sizing and prerequisites

Oracle EBS is resource intensive. The minimum footprint is 16 GB RAM and 500 GB of disk.

• Recommended VM size: Standard_D4s_v3 (4 vCPU, 16 GB RAM) or larger. For a more responsive demo with several users, use Standard_E4s_v3 (4 vCPU, 32 GB RAM).
• Disk: the image is delivered as a two-disk appliance — a 64 GB OS disk plus a 400 GB data disk that carries the EBS software and the Vision database, mounted at /u01. Both disks are attached automatically when you deploy from the Marketplace image.
• Boot: Generation 2 (UEFI) VM.
• Swap: a 16 GB swap file is created on the VM's temporary disk (/mnt) at every boot. Choose a VM size that has a temporary disk (sizes ending in s such as D4s_v3 and E4s_v3 do).

Before deploying, ensure you have:

1. An active Azure subscription
2. An SSH key pair for access as azureuser
3. Appropriate Oracle licences (BYOL — see Overview)
4. Familiarity with Azure VM management, SSH, and Oracle EBS administration

Step 1: Deploy the VM

1. From the Azure Marketplace, locate Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2.12 Vision ERP Demo on Oracle Linux 8 by cloudimg and select Create.
2. Choose your subscription, resource group, and region.
3. Select VM size Standard_D4s_v3 or larger (16 GB RAM minimum).
4. Set the authentication type to SSH public key, username azureuser, and paste your public key.
5. Under Networking, the image opens only SSH (22). Restrict it to your own IP address. EBS serves its login page over plain HTTP on port 8000, so either reach it through an SSH tunnel (Step 4) or add an inbound rule for 8000 limited to your own IP address after deployment — never open it to the internet.
6. Review and create.

The first boot takes about 25–35 minutes before the login page answers: the database starts, the per-VM passwords are generated and applied (including an AutoConfig run), and the application tier (WebLogic, Oracle HTTP Server and the concurrent managers) starts. Later boots take about 10 minutes.

Step 2: Connect via SSH and check the services

ssh azureuser@<vm-public-ip>

Check progress of the first boot:

sudo systemctl status ebs-db ebs-firstboot ebs-apps --no-pager

All three show active (exited) when EBS is up. To follow the first boot as it happens:

sudo journalctl -fu ebs-firstboot -u ebs-apps

Step 3: Read your credentials

The passwords for this VM are generated at first boot and stored in a root-only file:

sudo cat /root/ebs-credentials

Every VM gets its own values; nothing is shared between deployments. Keep a copy in your password manager.

Step 4: Open the EBS login page

EBS identifies itself as the host apps.example.com on port 8000, and the login page redirects to that name. With the port 8000 rule from Step 1 in place, map that name to your VM's public IP in your local hosts file:

• macOS / Linux: add <vm-public-ip> apps.example.com to /etc/hosts
• Windows: add the same line to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts (edit as Administrator)

Then browse to:

http://apps.example.com:8000/OA_HTML/AppsLogin

and sign in as SYSADMIN with SYSADMIN_PASSWORD from Step 3, or as a Vision demo user such as OPERATIONS with DEMO_USERS_PASSWORD.

Alternatively, keep port 8000 closed and use an SSH tunnel: map apps.example.com to 127.0.0.1 in your hosts file and run ssh -L 8000:apps.example.com:8000 azureuser@<vm-public-ip>.

Step 5 (optional): Use your own host name

To have users reach EBS on a real DNS name (for example an Azure DNS label mycompany-ebs.<region>.cloudapp.azure.com), set the DNS name label on the VM's public IP resource, then run the web-entry configuration script as oracle. It runs AutoConfig (about 10 minutes):

sudo systemctl stop ebs-apps
sudo su - oracle
cd /u01/install/scripts/
./configwebentry.sh

Wait for AutoConfig completed successfully., then exit back to azureuser and run sudo systemctl start ebs-apps (about 10 minutes). Browse to http://mycompany-ebs.<region>.cloudapp.azure.com:8000/OA_HTML/AppsLogin.

The server's own host name stays apps.example.com — EBS is installed against that name, and the image keeps it mapped to the VM's private IP at every boot.

Managing services

The database and application tier are systemd services and start automatically on boot, database first:

sudo systemctl stop ebs-apps        # application tier
sudo systemctl stop ebs-db          # database + listener (stop the application tier first)
sudo systemctl start ebs-db ebs-apps

/usr/local/sbin/ebs-ctl (the script those services call) does the same and reads the APPS and WebLogic passwords from /root/ebs-credentials for you:

sudo /usr/local/sbin/ebs-ctl status
sudo /usr/local/sbin/ebs-ctl stop       # application tier, then database
sudo /usr/local/sbin/ebs-ctl start      # database, then application tier

As oracle, /u01/install/APPS/scripts/startapps.sh and stopapps.sh prompt for the APPS user, APPS password and WebLogic password.

Changing the passwords later

The per-VM passwords are already unique to your VM. To set your own values, use Oracle's standard tools as oracle with the run edition environment (. /u01/install/APPS/EBSapps.env run): FNDCPASS / AFPASSWD for SYSADMIN and APPLSYS (after an APPLSYS change, update the WebLogic data source with txkManageDBConnectionPool.pl -options=updateDSPassword), txkUpdateEBSDomain.pl -action=updateAdminPassword for WebLogic, and ALTER USER for SYSTEM and SYS. Update /root/ebs-credentials afterwards so ebs-ctl and the boot services keep working.

If you plan to apply EBS patches with adop, run adop phase=fs_clone once first so the patch file system picks up this VM's APPS and WebLogic passwords.

Ports

Open an extra port in the VM firewall with, for example, sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=7001/tcp && sudo firewall-cmd --reload.

Filesystem layout

The /u01 data disk is mounted automatically via /etc/fstab (by filesystem UUID, with nofail).

Server components

Security recommendations

• Restrict ports: allow 22 and 8000 only from trusted IPs, and keep 7001, 7002 and 1521 closed unless you need them.
• Protect /root/ebs-credentials — it holds this VM's administrative passwords.
• Use HTTPS: terminate TLS at an Azure Application Gateway or load balancer, or configure SSL for the EBS web tier.
• Keep patched: run sudo dnf update for Oracle Linux updates and apply Oracle Critical Patch Updates for EBS and the database.
• BYOL compliance: ensure your Oracle licensing covers your usage; OTN terms are development/test only.

Troubleshooting

Cannot SSH: confirm the VM finished provisioning, that the NSG allows TCP 22 from your IP, and that you are connecting as azureuser.

Login page does not answer yet: on first boot allow up to 35 minutes; check sudo systemctl status ebs-db ebs-firstboot ebs-apps and sudo journalctl -u ebs-apps.

Browser shows "apps.example.com" cannot be found: add the hosts-file entry from Step 4, or configure your own web entry host (Step 5).

/root/ebs-credentials is missing: the first-boot service has not finished or failed — see sudo journalctl -u ebs-firstboot. It resumes where it stopped: sudo systemctl restart ebs-firstboot && sudo systemctl start ebs-apps.

Database fails to start: check df -h /u01 and that /etc/hosts maps apps.example.com to the VM's private IP (sudo systemctl restart ebs-hostfix refreshes it).

Support

• Email: support@cloudimg.co.uk
• Website: www.cloudimg.co.uk
• Support hours: 24/7 with a guaranteed 24 hour response SLA