If you’re looking to give OrangeHRM a try, one of the easiest ways is to use a virtual appliance. Jack Wallen shows you how it’s done.
OrangeHRM is one of the most widely used open source human resource management tools on the market. With features such as employee information management, employee absences, recruitment, as well as employee performance appraisal tools and other features needed for general human resource management.
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OrangeHRM is used by over a million people worldwide in single-digit companies and thousands of employees.
If you’re looking to test the waters of this open-source HRM platform, one of the fastest ways to do so is with the TurnKey Linux Virtual Appliance.
Let me show you how easy it is.
What you will need
For this to work, you must first download the virtual appliance from TurnKey Linux. Be sure to download the OrangeHRM .ova file. You will also need a virtual machine manager. I’ll demonstrate with VirtualBox, which can be used on Linux, macOS, and Windows. If you’re using another VM manager (like VMware), you just need to modify the appliance import process to make it work.
That’s it. Let’s move on to deployment.
How to import the OrangeHRM appliance
To import the virtual appliance, open VirtualBox and click File | Import device. In the resulting window (Figure A), click the folder icon, navigate to the directory containing the OrangeHRM .ova file and select the appliance.
Figure A
Click Next and, in the resulting window (Figure B), be sure to change the RAM option to something like 3072 (or higher).
Figure B
Once the appliance has been successfully imported, select the OrangeHRM entry and click Start.
In the first interactive screen (Figure C), you must set a password for the root account.
Figure C
The root account is the one used by the operating system (therefore to connect to the version of Linux used to host OrangeHRM). Once you have successfully added a root password, you will be prompted to create a password for the MySQL database user and the OrangeHRML administrator account. After that, you can skip the TurnKey Linux Hub service initialization and optionally enter an email address that will receive system notifications and critical security alerts, but you should definitely select Install for the latest security updates (Figure D).
Figure D
Once the installation of the latest security updates is complete, you will be asked to restart the virtual machine. OK, then when the reboot is complete, a screen with all the addresses needed to access the OrangeHRM tool will appear (Figure E).
Figure E
The primary address you use is simply https://SERVER (where SERVER is the IP address listed under Web). You will be taken to the OrangeHRM login screen (Figure F), where you will use the administrator username and password you set for that user during deployment.
Figure F
And that’s all there is to deploying OrangeHRM as a virtual appliance. While I wouldn’t recommend going this route for a large enterprise (because you’d want to do a full software install for it), deploying this HR platform as a virtual machine could be a great option for small businesses with less than 100 employees. Either way, this is a great way to test out OrangeHRM to see if it’s the right fit for your business.
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