Fruit is healthy and my MacBook Pro is great !

Recently i switched from my old WinXP Notebook to a MacBook Pro and finally managed to set it up for all my working projects and my needs.

When working on ApexLib i often need different Versions of APEX to check the new features, which means multiple databases with each a different APEX Version on it.

My Requirement was to have multiple Virtual Machines, each of them with Oracle XE and APEX installed. The System Requirements shouldn’t be too high, so i decided to go for Linux in my VM’s and use Parallels Desktop as Virtualization Software.

On Parallels Homepage i found a ready prepared VM containing a stripped down linux (without desktop GUI, console only) with a basic Oracle XE installation on it. After downloading it all you have to do is start it.

Another important Requirement was that i needed fixed IP’s for my VM’s and my Mac, regardless which network i am currently connected to. Parallels has a networking option called NAT/Shared Networking for this kind of requirement, to set it up you open the Parallels Preferences and switch networking type to Shared and check the box saying “show in system preferences” and set the DHCP Range to a startpoint of 10.211.55.100.

In the System Preferences under Networking you choose the Parallels Networking Adapter and set its IP address to 10.211.55.101 (or whatever you want, this doesn’t make any difference).

Now open the Configuration of your Virtual Machine, go to Hardware -> Networking Adapter and set this to Shared Networking too.

For the last part start the Virtual Machine, press Alt+F2 to get to the login prompt and log in with root. On the console type “netconfig” and give your Virtual Machine a fixed IP-Address from the free Range before .100 which is your Gateway/DNS.

I chose 10.211.55.32 for APEX 3.2, 10.211.55.31 for APEX 3.1 and so on.
In the file /etc/hosts i added an entry for my Host Mac, so that i don’t need to remember the IP Addresses.

Finally edit the /etc/hosts file on my Mac and add host names for all your Virtual Machines.

Now reboot everything (i know, this isn’t needed but i’m a long time windows user….) and enjoy your little network, to open APEX on a certain machine simply use the before specified host-names, e.g. http://xeapex32:8080/apex