JD Edwards Virtual Machine Templates Installation tutorial - Part 1 - Hardware

Before you begin to think about JDE VM Templates, you must think about HARDWARE.

Hardware means not only the workstation, but the infrastructure you must have to support the JDE VM Templates workload.

Going straight to the point, below my recommendations for your infrastructure:

Networking

• For networking, I strongly recommend Gigabit Ethernet instead of the traditional 10/100 Ethernet. Transfer a 80GB template will take forever on 10/100!
• Avoid Wireless connections for servers.
• Use Routers and Switches Gigabit compatible - 10/100/1000
• Use Ethernet cables Cat 5e
• 2 NICs on the VM Server / Storage box. The VM Server need at least two network cards to work. One is for Server Heartbeat and control, other for VM's communication. 

Storage

• 500 GB for VM Server + Storage Server + HTTP Server machine
• 1 TB for Virtual Box machine - VM Server Manager, Deployment Server, Development Workstation. I'm assuming this second machine is your personal desktop computer in which you'll virtualize using Oracle Virtual Box to get all those machines in only one piece of hardware.
• I do recommend SATA internal storage. I'm using a RAID array 0+1 which give me more performance in I/O, specially for database connections, but you can use your internal hard drive with no problems.

Memory

• 16 GB RAM on each machine. 

Processor

• As we're virtualizing the environments, you must have a "virtualization" compatible processor. I'm using an Intel i7 2600 in my Virtual Box machine and two Intel Xeon 5600 Series on my HP Proliant DL360 G5, as my VM Server and Storage box. 

So, basically you'll run the JDE VM Templates at your home office using two computers connected by a Gigabit Ethernet network infrastructure.

Below a diagram of the infrastructure I'm using on JDEFusion labs

JDEFusion labs diagram for JDE VM Templates

My setup is using an internet proxy / firewall system BEFORE go to the router. It's another machine, but it's an old laptop with 2GB Ram and 120 GB hard disk. I'm using a Linux small business server called Zentyal - www.zentyal.org. It's free and make the network management so much easier and increase the security as well. You can setup shares, Domain Control and has many other features that you'll be amazed! My two cents! :o)

I hope you got the message and if you're interested on start this project, I do recommend you to check your setup and make the necessary changes prior to install any software.
 Also, I'll take a break with the next post because next week I'm going to Las Vegas to the Collaborate 12! The iConsortium group is sponsoring my travel and again, thanks to Tony Brackett for all the support! Talk to them if you need something related to JDE, like upgrades, implementations, etc...