Every DBA must have a VM to play around, it can be either a VM in public cloud like AWS, Azure, GCP, IBM Cloud etc. or you can build your own VM on your system. If you have a system with processor which supports virtualization and 8 GB of memory you should be fine with creating VMs. You can do it with 4 or 6 GB of memory but then you might observe slowness on your VM as well as on your system.
For creating VM you can use Oracle Virtual Box or VMware Workstation Player which is freeware.
In this post we will see how to Setup VM for DB2 using Oracle Virtual Box on a Windows 10 system. Below steps can be used to setup VM for other purpose as well not necessarily for DB2.
Step1: Download Oracle Virtual Box
You can download Oracle Virtual Box from Download Oracle Virtual Box
Step2: Install Oracle Virtual Box
Run setup file to get below screen
Click on Next > button
You can change installation directory by clicking on Browse button.
Click on Next >
If you would like to have Start menu entries, Shortcut on Desktop, Quick Launch icon you can check Create start menu entries , Create a shortcut on the desktop, Create a shortcut in the Quick Launch Bar respectively.
You can keep Register file association as checked.
Click on Next > button
You will get a warning message as above indicating your network might temporarily disconnect, if you are actively using your network like downloading or uploading or connected to your system by taking RDP it will disconnect.
Click on Yes button to proceed.
Click on Install button to install Oracle Virtual Box
Once installation completes you will get above screen. Keep Start Oracle VM VirtaulBox option checked.
Click on Finish button to complete installation. It will launch Oracle VM VirtaulBox.
Step3: Create a VM in Oracle VirtaulBox