I often see people afraid to try even the simplest of tasks on their Oracle databases, asking “Can I <fill in the blank>?” When it is suggested they try for themselves and see what happens, the common excuse is “I don’t have a test system.”
Every oracle professional (or student) should have their own private computer lab. I’m assuming in this day and age anyone in this category already has their own computer. Starting from there, you should do the following:
1 – Go to vmware.com and download VMplayer. VMware freely distributes this so your cost so far is zero. If you are willing to invest about US$185 in your career, buy VMworkstation instead. It will give you some additional management features above what VMplayer has. Either product will allow you to create virtual machines on your personal computer.
1a – Install the VM product
2 – Go to oracle.com and download Oracle Enterprise Linux. Oracle freely distributes this, only charging if you want a support contract. As they also provide a free public yum server for distribution of most packages, even a support contract is not needed for your personal use.
2a – using your vmproduct and your downloaded linux, create a virtual linux machine.
3 – Go to oracle.com and download whatever db or related product you want. The terms of the oracle license agreement allow you the full use of any product for personal study.
By doing the above I have a full computer lab running on my Windows 7 laptop, for a total cost of US$185 – and even that cost was because I chose to upgrade my VM from VMplayer to VMworkstation. In this lab I have two linux servers running a DataGuard configuration, and a Windows Server 2003 server running a standalone Oracle database. Due to processing constraints I wouldn’t want more than 3 virtual servers actually running at one time but I can certainly have more virtual machines with various configurations defined and waiting. The only limit there would be the disk space necessary for the VM’s.
I also don’t expect blazing performance but that is not the purpose. What is the purpose is to have my own test system available at any time to test whatever configuration and or commands I want to test, with zero risk of damaging a production system. (And don’t forget that for your developers, the “test” system is production!)
There was a bit of a learning curve getting the initial setup working the way I wanted, but that learning experience gave me some additional knowledge in networking and systems administration. I developed several shell and sql scripts to easily reproduce an installation from the ground up.
By using VMworkstation snaphots I can always restore the entire virtual server to a point in time prior to some experiment or test gone wrong, so there is no reason to fear breaking something.
So quit complaining about not having a test system and go build your own! No excuses!
