EBS 12.2 -- Cloning in Virtualized Oracle Database Appliance ODA x4-2

You may need to clone your EBS VM machines which reside on a virtualized ODA X4-2 .. You can always create new VM machines and copy the database and application tiers like you do in a standard rapid clone process.. On the other hand, need for cloning EBS 12.2 in such a virtualized environment may make you want to take advantage of VM technologies.. I m  talking about Oracle VM Server here.. ODA X4-2 comes with Oracle VM Server, thus you can clone existing VM machines using standard copy commands and oakcli utility.

To clone the VM machines; use my approach in the following link;
http://ermanarslan.blogspot.com.tr/2015/01/oda-x4-2-cloning-in-virtualized.html

Cloning VMs will save your time as you will not have to scp your application files and duplicate your database.. But even if you clone your VMs , there will be some more things to do for creating a proper EBS 12.2 clone.
First of all ; you will need to change your database name in the target..I recommend recreating controlfile for this.
After you change the name; just execute adcfgclone dbTier on the database site, this will create the environment file , update the necessary apps tables and configure the files like tnsnames and listener.ora .. Note that : your ip and hostname will also be different than the source where this database comes from.. That 's why a new configuration needed...
Once you finish configuring your database in your cloned database server , proceed with the apps tier.
In apps tier cloning phase; take a preclone first; use adpreclone.pl.. This is needed because your apps Tier may be changed and your common top clone directory may not be up-to-date.. For example: If you have made an EBS 12.2.4 upgrade recently, you need to execute adpreclone to create an uptodate clone directory..(run preclone in source and scp it to the cloned env)
Otherwise, you will end up with unexpected errors in the post clone phase..

I will not go in the details of cloning, as this is beyond  of the scope of this blog post..
For the details about cloning in EBS 12.2, you can follow my cloning documents. They are detailed, and they are especially for EBS 12.2
Theory: http://ermanarslan.blogspot.com.tr/2014/07/ebs-122-cloning-how-to-clone-ebs-122.html
Real Life : http://ermanarslan.blogspot.com.tr/2014/07/ebs-122-cloning-real-life-example.html

So, as the purpose of this post is to explain the logic for cloning EBS 12.2 in virtualized platforms; lets walk through the problems and their solutions which you may encounter during such a cloning process..

1)You need to execute preclones before executing post clone in appsTier. Otherwise you will encounter something like this;
START: Instantiating the OHS Config.
Running /jit/jit12/fs1/FMW_Home/webtier/perl/bin/perl -I/jit/jit12/fs1/FMW_Home/webtier/perl/lib/5.10.0 -I/jit/jit12/fs1/FMW_Home/webtier/perl/lib/site_perl/5.10.0 -I/jit/jit12/fs1/EBSapps/appl/au/12.0.0/perl -I/jit/jit12/fs1/FMW_Home/webtier/ohs/mod_perl/lib/site_perl/5.10.0/x86_64-linux-thread-multi /jit/jit12/fs1/EBSapps/appl/fnd/12.0.0/patch/115/bin/txkSetOHSConfig.pl cfgCloneInstance -ctxfile=/jit/jit12/fs1/inst/apps/JIT12_fxsljit03/appl/admin/JIT12_fxsljit03.xml -archvloc=/jit/jit12/fs1/EBSapps/comn/clone/FMW/OHS/ohsarchive.jar -mvpln=/jit/jit12/fs1/EBSapps/comn/clone/FMW/OHS/moveplan.xml -t2plogloc=/jit/jit12/fs1/inst/apps/JIT12_fxsljit03/admin/log/clone/ohsT2PApply -logdir=/jit/jit12/fs1/inst/apps/JIT12_fxsljit03/admin/log/clone -console=off -promptmsg=hide
Script Executed in 49055 milliseconds, returning status 1
ERROR: Script failed, exit code 1

2)If you will not change the paths in the application tier; remove the following oracle homes from the inventory; oracle_common,webtier;Oracle_EBS-app1

Dont set your env.

cd /u02/r122/fs1/FMW_Home/oracle_common/oui/bin

./runInstaller -detachhome ORACLE_HOME=/u01/install/APPS/fs1/FMW_Home/oracle_common

./runInstaller -detachhome ORACLE_HOME=/u01/install/APPS/fs1/FMW_Home/webtier

./runInstaller -detachhome ORACLE_HOME=/u01/install/APPS/fs1/FMW_Home/Oracle_EBS-app1

3)Dont set EBSapps.env before running post clone in Apps.
Because there is a file which is sourced in EBSapps.env and it has hostname dependencies .. Hostname is changed in cloning process as you may imagine, thus sourcing the environment create problems indirectly..
If the env is set, then you can't even switch user to applmgr , you cant su - applmgr(it will hang), even if you can; you will not able to do anything..

/u01/install/APPS/fs2/FMW_Home/Oracle_EBS-app1/applications/oacore/APP-INF/node_info.txt

4) Dont set environment before running database post clone in database tier.. The env script is much simpler than the env script of apps , but you dont set it -- just in case..
/u01/install/PROD/11.2.0/ORATEST_daroratestdbsrv1.env

5) Delete the fmw folder before running post clone script in Apps tier.. fmw is packaged in common_top/clone dir, so it will be create during post clone..

So, keep in mind the 5 thing that I have mentioned above.. Other than these 5 things; method for changing hostname and ip address in EBS 12.2 is the same as the method for cloning. 

In a virtualized environment, the process is consist of 1) clone the vms 2) open them and change their ip/hostname 3) run postclone on db and apps tier

There isn't any public document for changing ip address & hostnames, but as I have mentioned above, cloning will do the job..