Virtualbox images for EM 12c, DataGuard, RAC, GoldenGate / run multiple simultaneous OL5 images on Win7?

From: dnrg <dananrg_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2012 03:11:10 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <1339668670.51443.YahooMailNeo_at_web113519.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>

A friend pointed me to Virtualbox and an excellent "Developer Days" image (includes Oracle 11gR2 running Oracle Linux 5) as a quick way to build a sandbox for experimenting with features, options, etc.     http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/community/developer-vm/index.html

I bought an HP Pavillion g6 quad core (AMD) laptop with of 8G RAM laptop specifically for Oracle professional development. And the Developer Days image looks great. But a few questions:

Q1) Do any Virtualbox images exist for:
    -- EM / Grid Control 12c (I'll settle for an EM / Grid Control 11g image)
    -- Images I can practice RAC with (properly configured, would the Developer Days image above do?)
    -- DataGuard
    -- GoldenGate

Q2) Given the laptop specs above, should I be able to run at least two simultaneous Virtualbox Oracle images atop Win7? The minimum I'd need for RAC.

Q3) Can / does Virtualbox run in a "Bare Metal" mode? How much of a performance hit am I looking at in running Virtualbox on Win7? I'd wipe the laptop clean and install Linux; but after a failed attempt to cold-image my new laptop using PING (Partimage Is Not Ghost) I'm not confident the laptop can handle Linux. None of my hard drives were recognized while booting from the PING CD.

Q4) Are there any other useful Virtualbox images I should know about?

Q5) Would OOW be the place where new Virtualbox images for education and training be released? If so, could someone please post a link when and if that occurs?     

Q6) Is Virtualbox the best virtualization software for Oracle education and self-training purposes? VMWare seems to be the virtualization software of choice in my org. And would VMWare be the way to go if I want to build my own images (again, for self-training? The sysadmins know VMWare--it's what they're already comfortable with--so they're avoiding Oracle's VM software. But it might be nice to get a learning "two fer" out of this if 1) VMWare is the dominant virtualization software overall out in the market generally and 2) There is a free version that would allow me to build Oracle images for training purposes.

Q7) Is it legal to produce, and has anyone released, various Oracle images for self-education / training purposes that will run on VMWare Player?

Thanks very much.

Dana 

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Received on Thu Jun 14 2012 - 05:11:10 CDT