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Prepare a VM image in this ultimate guide

Hi there AppWorks fans,

Welcome to a new installment of AppWorks tips.

This guide will help you create a new VM image on the previous installed Oracle Virtual Box. There are some certain settings that are required to do for a proper usable image.

This post is the second part of the series for ‘AppWorks installation in 10 great steps’

This is the list of ingredients we are going to use:

  • The already installed ‘Oracle Virtual Box’ software from the previous post

  • RHEL ISO file. Downloaded from: developers.redhat.com

    • You are required to create a Red Hat account…You also need it later on for package downloading!
    • I’m using a RHEL 8.7 image with the name rhel-8.7-x86_64-boot.iso
    • Get yourself some information about the lifecycle of RHEL

  • OpenText documentation from the support site

Documentation is NOT available in the downloaded AppWorks software package! All documentation for version 24.4 is found here.

  • Login with your OpenText account
  • Now search whatever you need…It’s a smart search system these days!
  • This will be your result to continue your journey (after all the endless filter options…)

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Don’t switch a winning team! I stay with RHEL 8.7

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Let get right into it…

Let’s begin by starting up the ‘Oracle VM VirtualBox’ software and create a new machine by hitting <Ctrl>+<n> on your keyboard or from the menu bar selecting ‘Machine’ > ‘New…’

Make sure you are in the ‘Expert Mode’. This can be switched with button on the bottom. Now make these settings:

  • Name: OpenText Process Automation {version} RHEL
  • Machine Folder: C:\VirtualBox VMs (or another place!)
  • ISO image: That’s the one we downloaded.
  • Type: Linux
  • Version: Red Hat (64-bit)

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Open the ‘Hardware’ section for more settings:

  • Memory size: 9216 (= 1024 * 9 for 9Gb)
    • Make sure your local machine has enough memory available (I’m running on a laptop with 16Gb memory)
  • Processors: Be careful on this slider (less is more!); The image shows 8, but after too much struggles on stuck CPUs, I leave it at max. 2! Also make sure to disable Hyper-V under your Windows features; Read all about it here. 2 CPUs is also fast enough for what one low-code-developer does; That’s at least my eXperience after some weeks of using it with a setting of 2 CPUs!

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Finally, the ‘Harddisk’ section:

  • Hard disk: Create a virtual hard disk now
  • File location: leave as is
  • File size: 250Gb
  • Hard disk file type: VDI

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Hit ‘Finish’ to finalize the creation wizard.

Now it’s time to tweak the image setting. So, select the brand-new image and hit <Ctrl>+<s> on your keyboard or click on the menu bar ‘Machine’ > ‘Settings…’

  • General category:

    • This is fine by default.
    • It’s possible to change the clipboard options and drag & drop options on the ‘Advanced’ tab. This can be handy when you want to be more flexible to access your image directly with you copy/paste actions or moving files in/out your image.

  • System category:

    • Most of the setting are fine, but we can tweak a bit here
    • On the ‘Motherboard’ tab you will see the memory settings set like you already defined. You can remove the ‘Floppy’ from the ‘Boot Order’ by unchecking it.

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  • Display category

    • Can be left as is.

  • Storage category

    • Should be fine from the initial image creation!

  • Audio category

    • Disable the audio.

  • Network category

    • It is a good practice to add 2 adapters to a VM. The first one is to make connection from your local machine to the image (host-only). The second one makes internet available on the VM (NAT).
    • ‘Adapter 1’ tab
      • Enable it and attach it to ‘Host-only’ Adapter
    • ‘Adapter 2’ tab
      • Enable it and attach it to ‘NAT’

  • Serial Ports category

    • Keep it disabled.

  • USB category

    • Can be left as is.

  • Shared Folders category

    • Can be left as is.

  • User Interface category

    • Can be left as is.

This should be the end-result of all your hard configuration work! 💪

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Give it a big ‘DONE’ for this post as we created a nice VM image we can use for our AppWorks installation. The next step will be to request a try-out license for AppWorks. CU next time on the following post on the series for ‘AppWorks installation in 10 great steps’ and have a great day!