Oracle Database Service for Azure

Recently Oracle and Microsoft announced availability of their new service – Oracle Database Service for Azure. It raises the level of integration and interoperability between Oracle Cloud and Microsoft Azure. With the new service Microsoft’s customers are able to create and manage Oracle databases created in Oracle cloud and use them for applications located in Azure. That sounds great and moves us one step closer to a real multi-cloud environment. Before proceeding, let me clarify what I mean as the “real” multi-cloud. I mean an environment where different pieces of the same IT service are located in different clouds working as a whole.

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New kid in the block – Rocky linux.

If you’ve been following the recent changes in the linux world you probably remember how Red Hat and Centos announced in December 2020 that the CentOS Project was shifting focus to CentOS Stream and support for CentOS Linux 8 had been cut to December 31, 2021. It created a wave of discussions in the community about the future for Centos as an enterprise platform and some people started to look to alternative Linux distributives. As a result we got a new, community-driven downstream built, same as Centos used to be, Rocky linux.

The downstream build is based on the same code base as the vendor distributive and resembles most features of the “parent” vendor Linux. It is following all the releases after they have been built by the vendor. In most of my tests I am using Oracle Linux when I am in the Oracle cloud but I am using Centos in Google cloud and other public clouds like Azure or AWS. Now we have Rocky Linux available on those platforms and I’ve had a quick look and done some testing using the Rocky Linux 8.4 (Green Obsidian).

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Cloud and how it might help at difficult times.

The recent changes caused by the virus and economic meltdown affected almost everybody in the world. We are all now going through a difficult period of our history, and when many companies are struggling to survive, the other thrive and boost production. In such volatile environment, it becomes more and more important to be able to adapt the IT environment to immediate business needs quickly.

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Desktop in the cloud? Easy.

This is a difficult time for everyone, even if you are used to working most of the time from home, airport, cafe, or any other place. The problem is not only how good you are managing your time but sometimes in network reliability and throughput. When so many people work from home, and so many kids are trying to watch streaming services at the same time, your home network might be under severe pressure. In such a case, a remotely hosted desktop product could be the solution.

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Is Oracle cloud only for Oracle?

Several days ago, discussing public cloud solutions and competition between different providers, one of the people mentioned that Oracle Cloud is just for Oracle products. At the same time, AWS and Azure are more vendor agnostic. I was a bit surprised by that statement but it appeared that several other people shared the same view. I decided to write the blog and show what options Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has for different workloads.

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Oracle OCI and Azure inter-cloud link. Good option for a hybrid cloud.

Not long time ago Oracle and Microsoft announced about new level of cooperation in the public cloud interlinking their clouds providing ability to use each of the cloud where they are the best. For example it allows to run application on Azure and use an Oracle database in the Oracle OCI. It was possible before for some regions but would involve multiple steps on both sides involving a 3d party network provider to interlink Oracle FastConnect and Azure ExpressRoute. Now it can be done using Azure and Oracle OCI interfaces only. The option so far exists only for US Washington DC area where you have OCI Ashburn and Azure Washington DC regions.  I tried it and found it working but not without some surprises. Continue reading “Oracle OCI and Azure inter-cloud link. Good option for a hybrid cloud.”