Virtual Environment for learning I am a new DBA and my friend told me the best way to learn about becoming a DBA is to setup your own server (virtually or physically).

I don't have a spare machine laying around so I will need to set one up virtually.

My job uses RHEL 7.2 so I downloaded the same version of the OS.

My work uses Oracle 10, 11 and 12. Should I use one of these versions or should I install the latest?

Here's where my question


What size should I create the disk drive for this environment? (I plan on using it to practice RMAN, ASM, DataGaurd and RAC). 
What should the size of the partitions be? (for education and will not be used for production)
What should my RAM, CPU config be (if it really matters). I know this stuff can be adjusted later on the fly. I am more concerned with the first one since changing partition sizes is an involved process.


If I am missing anything, please feel free to leave a comment or "answer the question".
This is a very broad question as the list you gave of what you want to practice would need multiple databases to learn dataguard and RAC.  Why do't you try Oracle's free trial of the cloud based databases?  You can make mistakes there and it will be easy to learn on the newest versions and when you have some more knowledge you can deploy Oracle Virtual Box at home for a test that will last longer.

Running an Oracle database on Virtual Box on a home PC could easily use four to six GB of memory if you are doing any thing intensive.  Storage is cheap these days so allocating at least 100Gb for the database files gets you started.

A typical enterprise disk setup is to mount separate drives


/u01 for the oracle product ~100 Gb
/u02 for datafiles ~100 Gb (but if you import data you could need up to 500 Gb)
/u03 for indexes ~100 Gb
/u04 for archive logs ~100 Gb and so on


This is probably overkill for a learning situation but, at the least, separate the oracle install from the data for easier management. Suggested disk allocations get you started but if you actually use it to store data you should ensure that you can extend the virtual disks.  In other words allocate 1 Tb of storage to the virtual machine and then you can extend the storage as needed.