Oracle OCI Resource Manager Discovery.

If you work with Terraform, you are quite familiar with the situation when a lot of resources have already been deployed manually. What options do we have in such a case? The first one is to use the native Terraform Resource Discovery and create the state file, which can be imported to your enterprise configuration. But if you plan to use Resource Manager in OCI, you can use the new Resource Manager Discovery feature. It creates a stack discovering your resources in a compartment.

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Oracle ExaCC Gen 2 new features and improvements.

Some time ago after the last Oracle Open World Christine Kivi wrote a blog stating that this is not “your father’s Oracle” anymore . The rapid development and continuous improvements in Oracle cloud is one of the signs that Oracle is changing. The generation 2 Exadata cloud at customer (ExaCC) was released on that last OOW 19 and initially had some limitations in options and interface. Oracle team promised to fix the issues and provide new functionality, planning some major updates in the next calendar year (2020). And so far as I can see Oracle team is working delivering the promised. Here I will try to review some of the new features implemented for the last several months. This is going to be a relatively long post. You can go to the bottom, read the summary and read in details only about changes you are interested in.

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Oracle multi-tenant: PDB scope parameters and where you can see them.

Working with Oracle multi-tenant architecture gives us some obvious benefits but also some challenges. What if we want to change a system parameter but only for a certain pluggable database (PDB) and keep it default for all others? Starting from 12.1 Oracle provides the ability to modify parameters on PDB level. If you look to a reference documentation for database parameters it states clearly whether it can be applied on CDB level or not. And with every new release we have more and more parameters which can be changed on PDB level. It has grown from 185 for 12.1.0.2 to 194 on 19.7.0.0.

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Migrating a new PDB to the existing 19c DataGuard on ExaCC.

We’ve already discussed  how to migrate databases from a standalone 12.2 database to a pluggable database (PDB) in a 19c container in the Oracle cloud. But what if the target container database (CDB)  is already part of a Data Guard configuration and has several PDB in it? I will try to go through the main steps on how to do that without breaking the replication. 

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Moving Oracle database to the cloud. 12.2 standalone to 19C RAC PDB.

I see more and more Oracle databases are moving to the public cloud or to a hybrid cloud solution. Depending on the platform, size and used options it could be a different path but the general approach boils down to three main options – Oracle RMAN backup and restore, Oracle Data Guard or Oracle Data Pump with or without transportable tablespaces. Here I want to share our approach for migration from 12.2 standalone database to 19c RAC container as PDB in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). 

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Oracle Zero Downtime Migration troubleshooting.

The Oracle Zero Downtime Migration (ZDM)  tool has been created to help with Oracle databases migrations. It saves time and automates many tasks. The saved effort is getting bigger and accumulates on scale when you need to move multiple databases. Behind the scenes it uses the very well known Oracle Data Guard. As a result you have good solid technology on the basis but at the same time limited to what the DataGuard can do and what it cannot. All details and documentation are available here.  The tool works fine when all prerequisites are met but when you hit an issue you need to dig in and troubleshoot. Here I will try to share some experience with the ZDM troubleshooting. Please note that the information in the blog is actual for the 19.2 version of ZDM and it is possible that the behaviour will be different in the future versions.

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Exadata Cloud at Customer – number of active CPUs and adding a new database.

Let’s imagine a typical working day, and you are getting a request to add a new database to your Exadata Cloud at Customer (ExaCC). If you are not familiar with the product, you can read about it in detail here. In short, it is an Exadata machine with a cloud interface, something like Oracle Exadata Cloud Service, but with the hardware installed in your datacenter. 

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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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Oracle OCI Database service storage allocation.

Today I would like to discuss the block storage allocation in a VM based Oracle DBCS system. Several times in different conversations it was mentioned that the block storage will be allocated with triple redundancy on the ASM level. Let’s check it out.

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Linux LVM for Oracle Database on OCI

Oracle Database as a service (DBCS) on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) had been traditionally built based on Oracle Grid Infrastructure with ASM as the main storage layer for the database, however Oracle recently has started to offer a Linux LVM as the storage alternative. Which option is the better alternative? Let’s review some of the differences between the two options.

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