Today I’d like to explain how to share instances of
Oracle's Pre-built Virtual Machine for SOA Suite and BPM Suite across different computers in your network. Three requirements I had to address:
- Call of external services like GeoNames (http://www.geonames.org/postal-codes/) from within the BPM Suite VM
- Connection to multiple BPM Suite VMs from Host (e.g. JDeveloper and Browser)
- Connection to multiple BPM Suite VMs from different developer computers in the network
- Share data between VMs and developer computers via FTP
The default options already support connections between host and client. However the target here was to address multiple independent VMs from different computers in the same network. The following settings worked in my environment:
1) Start the Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager and open network settings of the VM.
2) Select
Bridged Adapter in “Attached to”. Bridged Networking is used when you want your vm to be a full network citizen, i.e. to be an equal to your host machine on the network (see
Networking in VirtualBox for more details).
3) Select the name of your network adapter. Take into account that when you change your connection method (WIFI / Cable) a different network adapter is required. Get the appropriate name from the network settings of the host.
4) Specify the Adapter Type.
5) Start the VM.
6) Per default the VM receives the IP via DHCP method. Open a terminal window in the client and send the following command as root user to get the current IP address information of your VM. Instead of DHCP you could also change the connection method of your VM to a static address.
ifconfig <CONNECTION-NAME> (e.g. ifconfig eth1)
7) Another way to get the IP information is the network icon at the bottom of the Oracle VM VirtualBox window.
8) Connect or ping this IP address (here: 192.168.2.131) from the host or from a different computer in your network. I suggest adding the IP address to your etc/hosts-file in order to address the VM via names instead of a static IP addresses. If successful start the SOA / BPM Server and enjoy the remote development. If not please check your firewall and router settings. Good luck!