Well, for those of you that don’t know me that well, you’ll find I like to be as self sufficient as possible. That tends to mean a lot of work and a lot of learning (when I first installed, it took more a couple months… but I’ll save that for another time). Today, I’d like to explain a little of how I went about setting up SAP, and some trouble shooting for those of you in a similar situation (and maybe you have some advise for me).
First of all, I’ve set my system up using VirtualBox from Oracle. When I first started, I used VirtualServer from MS, but I quickly found it doesn’t work with Windows 7, and doesn’t play well for 64 bit operating systems. So then I discovered Oracle’s tool, and I”ve been very pleased with it. The functionality and usability seems much better. Of course, you decide for yourself. Now it may seem like a lot of work to set all of this up in a virtual environment, but let me tell you, it’s well worth it. Since I still do consulting as my “day” job, I often have to travel. Setting up a dedicated server and all of the infrastructure to go along with it can be expensive, and can be limiting. In order to access it, you must have internet. Since I’ve been doing this for roughly 6 years (I can’t believe it’s been that long), I often wanted to work in the airport or airplane. At that time, internet on a aircraft was very rare, even today, not all airplanes offer wi-fi. So with my virtual system, I was able to get myself a big HDD (portable of course) that could just come with me anywhere. Then I could just plug it, fire up the server, and continue developing. the other thing it got me was freedom. With virtualbox, I can create a save point anytime. And for testing this invaluable… Now I can create a system, and a whole bunch of configuration and master data. Save that snapshot… install my applications, and if it doesn’t work, I simply roll back and install the latest version like nothing ever happened. It also allows me to create a unique system for each customer if needed. So if I do custom development unique to one customer, I can have their own system and configuration saved in it’s own box. I can go on and on… but the short story is for someone just starting out, this environment has been awesome for me.
Next time, I’ll go into more details of what you’ll need…
Thanks for reading
Mike
As always, thanks for reading and don't forget to check out our SAP Service Management Products at my other company JaveLLin Solutions,
Mike