StarQuest Technical Documents

Using SQDR Plus with the IBM DB2 Virtual Appliance (deprecated)

Last Update: 30 September 2014
Product: SQDR Plus
Version: 4.0 & later
Article ID: SQV00PL012

NOTE:

As of v4.24, SQDR Plus requires the use of DB2 LUW 10.5. Since DB2 10.1 is supplied with the IBM DB2 Appliance, the use of this procedure is no longer recommended, but information in this tech note may be of general use. In addition, it is possible to start with the DB2 Appliance, remove DB2 10.1, and replace it with 10.5. This tech note will be revised if IBM releases an update of the DB2 Appliance with DB2 10.5.

Abstract

A virtual appliance is a pre-configured virtual server environment that greatly minimizes the work required for you to get up and running. The IBM DB2 Virtual Appliance is preconfigured with the Linux operating system, DB2 Express-C, and DB2 management tools such as Data Studio, and provides an excellent platform for hosting the Tier 2 (staging) platform of the StarQuest SQDR Plus data replication solution.

This document describes how to obtain and set up the IBM DB2 Express-C 10.1 Virtual Appliance for use with SQDR Plus. We used the 64-bit Linux Express-C appliance (SUSE Enterprise Linux 11sp2 x64; DB2 for LUW Express-C 10.1sp2) with VMWare ESXi 5.1. The IBM DB2 Virtual Appliance is also available for deployment with KVM.

Note that DB2 Express-C imposes limits on the the RAM and number of processors it utilizes, though any additional RAM and processor resources may be utilized by the SQDR Plus services. DB2 Express-C is suitable for small to medium-sized implementations; IBM also provides a DB2 Enterprise 90-day Trial Virtual Appliance suitable for large scale implementations.

Solution

Prerequisites

• a VMWare environment (ESXi, VMWare Workstation, or VMWare Player) capable of hosting 64-bit virtual machine guests.
• A datastore on a high speed (SSD) disk drive is recommended for storing the DB2 database files.
• familiarity with Linux
• a static IP address
  

Obtaining the Virtual Appliance

To download the IBM DB2 Virtual Appliance:

1. Point a browser at http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/db2/express-c/download.html
2. Expand Get a data server appliance and select DB2 Express-C virtual appliance. Log in with your ID, accept the displayed agreements, and download the desired OVA image (db2_express-c_va_64bit.ova). It is about 2.5gb in size.

Creating the Virtual Appliance

To create the virtual machine on ESXi:

1. Select Deploy OVF Template... from the File menu of the vSphere Client application and select the OVA file.
2. Click continue to dismiss the warning about "the selected operating system is not supported on the selected host" - we will be using the replacement identifier of Other Linux (64-bit).
3. Enter a name for the virtual machine and specify the datastore for its files. Note that two virtual disks are created; the second disk is used for the DB2 database files, and should be placed on a high speed (SSD) disk drive if possible. You can either place the entire VM on the high speed disk now, or move just the second disk later. We chose to create the virtual disks as Thin Provisioned.
4. After the virtual machine is created, examine its settings. Increase the RAM from 2gb to at least 4gb, and the number of virtual processor cores from 1 to at least 2.
   

Configuring the Virtual Appliance

1. Start up the virtual machine.
2. After the machine boots, you will be guided through a set of dialogs to configure your system, specifying items such as Language and Keyboard, Timezone, and root password.
3. On the Networking dialog, change from DHCP to static IP addressing.
4. You will be prompted for names and passwords for the DB2 users, such as the DB2 instance owner (default db2inst1). Supply suitable passwords; you will need the password for db2inst1 when configuring SQDR Plus.
5. The database configuration will complete and a sample database will be created.
6. The suseconfig process will then run to complete the setup of your system.
   

The system is now configured and ready to use; however, there are a few changes needed before installing SQDR Plus. You can perform these command line actions either in a terminal window on the console or using an ssh (e.g. PuTTY) session.

1. Logon as root.
2. Edit /etc/services and use a text editor such as vi to change the value of db2c_db2inst1 from 50001 to 50000. This the default listening port for DB2 for LUW, and using this value will simplify configuring SQDR Plus.
3. As the instance owner (db2inst1), perform the following operations:

# su - db2inst1
$ db2 UPDATE DBM CFG USING JAVA_HEAP_SZ 20480
$ db2stop
$ db2start
$ db2 get dbm cfg | grep SYSADM_GROUP

The last command is to confirm that the operating system group used by DB2 is "DB2GRP1"

4. Enter su to run the following commands with root authority.
5. Create a new user "sqdr" and record its password, as you will need it when configuring SQDR Plus:

# useradd -u 2000 sqdr
# passwd sqdr

6. Open /etc/group with a text editor and add the new user sqdr to db2grp1.
7. Enter db2iauto -on db2inst1 to configure DB2 to autostart when the system is booted.

You are now ready to install and configure SQDR Plus, beginning at Step 5 of the Quick Start Guide to Using SQDR Plus v4 (Part 1). You will need to modify the SQDR Plus installation file setup.conf to change the value of DB2DIR to /opt/ibm/db2/V10.1.

Additional Information

• Refer to the Installation Instructions provided when you download the appliance for additional installation and configuration information.
• See the IBM developerWorks article Test drive DB2 10.1 using a virtual appliance for additional information and resources related to the IBM DB2 Virtual Appliance.
• The virtual appliance includes IBM Data Studio, which provides an integrated, modular environment for database development and administration of DB2. To start Data Studio, run /opt/IBM/DS3.2.0/eclipse, or select the Data Studio icon on the Desktop of the instance owner or in the Development group (any user) of the Linux GUI environment.
• The virtual appliance includes Technology Explorer for IBM DB2, a light-weight, web-based console for DB2. To start Technology Explorer, point a browser at http://<hostname>/TE, or select the Technology Explorer icon on the Desktop of the GUI environment. The existing sample connections expect DB2 to be listening at port 50001; you will need to reconfigure the connections to use port 50000 instead.
• The SUSE Linux environment includes vncserver, so you can use a VNC client such as TightVNC or VNC running on another UNIX system to access the GUI environment.
• You may want to install the VMware Tools version that comes with your VMware product. VMware Tools bring in many benefits for the use of any virtual environment, including better clock synchronization with the host system, improved file movement between the host and guest OS, and improved GUI responsiveness.