Last month, when I got the new Mac Mini, my key reason was to set it up as a small home-based server to support my Oracle development and education. Since my workplace isn’t great at staying up to date with the latest products, I wanted a sandpit to try things out for myself - even when they don’t relate to my current projects. The Mac Mini seemed like an ideal home server - as its small, discreet, and doesn’t draw much power. And, as per my previous post it doubles as my media server. Although Oracle don’t ship or support any native server-based or database products for the Mac, Oracle’s pre-built VirtualBox VMs are a great way to trial new products and configurations hosted within a Linux-based virtual machine. This means less time playing with configuration and upgrades (unless I want to). As newer products come out, I just download and substitute the latest VM, and if I mess things up then I can just revert back to the original VM. However, as with all things, the first time setup takes a little research and planning - as changes to some configuration settings, and other customisations, may be required depending on what you want the system to do. Read More...

Tags: Oracle, VirtualBox, os x, Database, VM, Mac Mini