Installing Guest OS Linux on Windows Vmware. Then installing weblogic on Guest OS linux

You are on the right track in that you will install Linux first and then WebLogic.  Additionally, plan out the install:

a) configure the VM to have about 4 GB of RAM to start off since you have plenty of system mem. WebLogic needs memory--the O/S can run on considerably less but if you create an admin server and one cluster in weblogic, you may find you need to add even more RAM to the VM depending on what you are doing.

b) set up the VM to get it's own IP address (either DHCP or static). I think this is "bridged" but I don't remember off the top of my head. Before you start installing weblogic, you'll want to confirm via the O/S that the guest has it's own IP..more on that below.

c) Fedora is sufficient for this install and similar enough to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (a supported O/S by WebLogic) that you can do your work there. Fedora is free.  Resist the urge to install 64bit anything at this point. You can get the Fedora 11 32bit ISO from here:  

http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/11/Live/i686/Fedora-11-i686-Live.iso

The link above is the installable 32bit live CD ISO. That is all you need to get started.  Once you have it downloaded, configure this ISO as loaded on startup in the CD-ROM of your Virtual Machine.

Start your virtual machine and follow the installation steps to install Fedora to the hard drive on the virtual machine.  If you've done the Virtual Machine configuration correctly, you should find that Fedora is an easy install and that it will be a working system after you follow the prompts to install.  You can install pretty much the minimum software.  It is VERY easy to install any additional packages later if you need them.  For example, if you want to put Apache Web server in front of WebLogic once you have it installed, you can quickly install apache with one command and a few simple steps.  Just follow the prompts and pretty much stick to the defaults if you have any doubts.

When Fedora says to restart your system, go ahead and clear the setting in your virtual machine to automatically start the ISO.

Once the system restarts, you'll probably be at a window prompting you to login as the user you created during the fedora install process.  Go ahead and log in as that user.  Then open a terminal window. I think that will be under the Fedora menu in system tools (again from memory--i apologize if I missed a detail).  At that window, type "su -" to become the "super user" to test networking.  now type ifconfig and hit enter.  You should see a screen that has something like eth0 as a network adapter and on the first few lines, it should have an IP address listed.  If you did DHCP (vs. static IP) then write that IP down.  All the usual caveats about DHCP leases would apply here if you restart the VM or leaving running for a long time.  The IP could change on you over time in some environments.  Now type exit and you'll be back at a terminal prompt and out of the "superuser" or "root" shell.  Type exit again until the window closes just to be safe.

Now navigate (in the VM guest) to the WebLogic site.  You'll probably be using Firefox on Linux as your browser and it will likely save the download in /home/<user name/download You can download the installer from here:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/middleware/index.html

Navigate to your downloads directory using the file manager.  I believe you will have downloaded this file for linux:

net_oepe11_wls1031_linux32.bin

Use Oracle's instructions for installation.  Usually the WebLogic install instructions are good:

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12840_01/wls/docs103/getstart/overview.html

This is in the documentation but you can breeze right by it if you're not looking for it...Once you have the admin server running, open the web browser on the guest linux o/s.  Type:

http://localhost:7001/console and try weblogic / weblogic for user id and password to get in if you just accepted the defaults when you created your own domain.  Once you're sure that works, take the IP address you recorded earlier and type that in the web browser on your HOST machine or any other machine in the subnet that can reach the guest and do http:<IP address>:7001/console.  You'll sometimes get quicker response if you use the host to run the browser and let the VM just worry about doing the weblogic server work.

Just some general thoughts / tips for more advanced usage after you master the basics:

As you use weblogic, maybe try the sample domains first to get the hang of starting and stopping the server(s).  You can use serveral terminal windows to start several servers if you get to that point.

Don't be afraid to try server clustering.  You can just start different VMs on different listen ports. Just open up a terminal window and use the start scripts to start the managed servers after you start the admin server. Alternately, do the research to get Node Manager running.  After a small learning curve, it makes things MUCH easier as you only need to start the admin server and the node manager and then use the Admin Servers's web interface to do the rest.

IF you choose to use apache after you get weblogic up and going, you can install apache on Fedora, configure the weblogic plugin for apache and then use the web site to forward non-static content to the app server for processing.  If you have a database on the backend, you would have a standard 3 tier web application architecture at that point.  Apache Web server / WebLogic app server / database.

Try getting CentOS ISO as well.  It is the binary equivalent to RedHat Enterprise but does not have licensing costs attached due to the way it is compiled and distributed.  If you want to get a good read of how well WebLogic will run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, either Fedora (a bit easier to setup) or CentOS are both good options with CentOS being a bit closer to the 'real' Red Hat Enterprise Linux product than Fedora.

You can also visit the VMWare websiite to research the possibility of downloading a pre-built virtual machine that all you would need to do is basically download and run.