I have Virtualbox on my desktop like many others but my desktop PC can't keep up with running the VMs + Windows 10 that is already pretty bloated with things like OneDrive, Teams, etc.. So about a couple years ago I bought a dedicated server Dell T620 and I got 128GB of RAM and SSD for storage, aside from the RAID.
Turns out those "old" servers are really cheap nowadays. I think I spent around $300 for everything! Thats less than a new desktop PC!
Anyway, I installed VMWare ESXi 6.5 cause its free for development/research so it means I rarely use my VirtualBox on my desktop cause it simply can't compete with the server.
So I was pretty happy to hear that Oracle released a VirtualBox appliance with Oracle 23c Free with APEX and SQLcl, ORDS, etc..
So I tried to import that .ova file to my VMWare but it failed cause the virtual hardware is unsupported:
This OVF package requires unsupported hardware.Details:
Line 33: Unsupported hardware family 'virtualbox-2.2'.
To fix it you need a tool and a couple of files..
Tool: You will need to download the ovftool. In case you can't find it I am providing a link to it.
Files: Once the tool has processed the .ova it will create 4 files, two of them you need to edit and make some changes and to make your life easier I am providing those files to you here.
Replace 2 of the files generated by ovftool with the 2 files I provided to you.
Then proceed with creating the new VM using the option "Deploy a virtual maching from a OVF or OVA file" and upload the 4 files then follow the wizard accepting default values and wait for about 2 mins.. (Do NOT refresh your browser page) and there is no indication that something is happening but eventually you'll get the notification that the VM has been created!
After you startup the VM and voila!! You will have the Oracle Database 23c Free VirtualBox Appliance running on your VMWare esxi!
So I am pretty happy cause now I can access the DB or APEX over the LAN and its many times faster than on my VirtualBox.
Good luck!
