Earlier this month, Oracle announced the availability of the latest Exadata machine, the X8-2. As well as the option to swap in big 14 TB disks in older versions of Exadata that were shipped with far smaller disks, allowing these older systems to substantially increase there capacity. Our AMIS resident […]
Engineered Systems
What kind of Oracle Linux support on Oracle hardware is included
When you buy an Oracle Database Appliance – any type – or just a X-server (e.g. X7-2), you get free support for OracleVM, Oracle Solaris and Oracle Linux. But Oracle Linux has different flavours , like basic, premier and premier limited. What kind of support do you get when buying hardware […]
The bare minimum of licensing an ODA X7-2
The other day we had a discussion with Oracle sales about the question if you can buy an Oracle Database Appliance (ODA) X7-2 HA when you only have 1 socket license Oracle SE. The licensing rules can be interpreted different by some. Disregarding the question why you would buy an […]
ODA X6-2M – How to create your own ACFS file system
In this post I will explain how to create your own ACFS file system (on the command line) that you can use to (temporarily) store data. So you have this brand new ODA X6-2M and need to create or migrate some databases to it. Thus you need space to store […]
Create a 12c physical standby database on ODA X5-2
ODA X5-2 simplifies and speeds up the creation of a 12c database quite considerably with oakcli. You can take advantage of this command by also using it in the creation of physical standby databases as I discovered when I had to setup Dataguard on as many as 5 production and […]
Virtualization on the Oracle Database Appliance S, M, L
One of the great advantages of the Oracle database Appliance HA is the possibility of Virtualization through OracleVM. This virtualization wasn’t possible for the other members of the Oracle Database Appliance. Until now. In the patch 12.1.2.11.0 which has been released recently for the ODA S,M and L, virtualization is […]
ETL using Oracle DBMS_HS_PASSTHROUGH and SQL Server
While I prefer a “loosely coupled architecture” for replication between Oracle and SQL Server, sometimes a direct (database) link cannot be avoided. By using DBMS_HS_PASSTHROUGH for data extraction the 2 other ETL processes (transformation and load) can be configured and administered with more flexibility, providing an almost acceptable level of […]
Configuring Oracle Traffic Director 12c with WebGate
At a recent customer install, I was faced with configuring Oracle Traffic Director (OTD) 12.2.1.2.0 Webgate with Oracle Access Manager. Deploying Webgate on OD 12c is very well described in the documentation. See A Configuring OAM Agent (WebGate) for Oracle Traffic Director 12.2.1.2 There is however a flaw in the […]
Golden Gate 12c and DIY Sequence Replication with PL/SQL
Recently, while migrating AIX 11gR2 Databases to Oracle Linux 12cR1 on an ODA X5-2, our setup of Sequence Replication by Oracle Golden Gate appeared to be faulty. The target side sequences were not automatically incremented. The problem came to light during the migration of acceptance databases, and under some time […]
Net usable storage when using Oracle Database Appliance
Since the birth of the ODA X6-2 HA, the net usable storage has become more of a challenge when advising a customer as the X5-2 HA had substantial more – but slower – storage. This very short blogpost is just a quick summary / checklist of the net usable storage, […]
Better track the Usage of Database Options and Management Packs, or it will cost you
So here it is Oracle announces a license audit, some urgency kicks in and this familiar but also really serious question comes down from management: “Are we using any unlicensed database features“. The seriousness is quite understandable, because if so, the company can look forward to some negotiations with Oracle […]
Dump Oracle data into a delimited ascii file with PL/SQL
This is how I dump data from an Oracle Database (tested on 8i,9i,10g,11g,12c) to a delimited ascii file: Next to the query and the generated filename the Dump_Delimited function takes another 6 parameters, each one with a default value. Check out the PL/SQL, and BTW… the basics for this code […]
DIY Parallelization with Oracle DBMS_DATAPUMP
Oracle dbms_datapump provides a parallel option for exports and imports, but some objects cannot be processed in this mode. In a migration project from AIX 11gR2 to ODA X5-2 ( OL 5.9 ) 12c that included an initial load for Golden Gate, I had to deal with one of those […]
How About Oracle Database 12c Threaded_Execution
THREADED_EXECUTION Threaded_Execution is an Oracle Database 12c feature aiming to reduce the number of Oracle processes on LINUX. After setting parameter THREADED_EXECUTION on TRUE and a database bounce, most of the background processes are threads within just 6 Oracle processes, where more than 60 processes existed before the bounce. And […]
Oracle 12c STIG Password Generator in PL/SQL
Creating or modifying an Oracle Database user password can be done by using any standard password generator you can find on the WEB. But I wanted a password to comply to “ora12c_strong_verify_function”, and this isn’t as easy to generate as you might expect. Though most generators provide options to include […]
Oracle Database Appliance X6-2L and X6-2 HA, comparing the line
A while ago I published an article about the ODA X6-2S and X6-2M, the new entry level machines for small business. And since then Oracle introduced the ODA X6-2L and the successor of de ODA X5-2: ODA X6-2 HA. Quite a line of ODA’s. But when to choose what ODA? […]
Oracle OpenWorld 2016 – Engineered Systems – Announcing MiniCluster S7-2, Exadata SL and ODA X6-2-HA
In addition to offering infrastructure services from the cloud, Oracle continues to extend its line of engineered systems. The high end consists of SuperCluster and Exadata, ExaLogic and Exalytics and allow enterprises that want to continue exploiting their corporate data centers and running large workloads on premises and running private […]
You are in trouble when more than 8 kernel options are enabled in oracle executable
A brief headsup for everyone responsible for maintaining kernel options in the oracle executable. The environment where I discovered this is a 3 node racattack cluster with Oracle GI & RDBMS 12.1.0.2.0. After enabling Unified auditing in my 12.1.0.2 database I noticed that all of a sudden database startup started […]
Utilizing your IT environment with Oracle Database Appliance
I admit, I’m a bit of a fan of the Oracle Database Appliance. And I also admit there are some characteristics of the X5-2 ODA’s which made it sometimes a bit hard to fit in the needs of the customer. I’ll come to that later in this post. With the […]
How to create a private 10 Gb network on an ODA X5-2
In my previous post Network considerations on an ODA X5-2 I described a solution where I created a private network to optimize network performance between the components running on an Oracle Database Appliance. I am talking about a Virtualized setup in this article, and rebuilding the second pair of public […]
Network considerations on an ODA X5-2
When you buy an Oracle Database Appliance (ODA) X5-2 off the shelve, you will get a machine with four times 10Gb copper Ethernet (bonded into two interfaces) for public communication and two 40Gb InfiniBand (bonded into one interface) for interconnect communication between the two ODA_BASE’s. You would think that should […]
Oracle Database Appliance X6-2S and X6-2M, filling the gap
Oracle introduced the ODA X6-2S and ODA X6-2M. And no, they are not the successor of the quite popular ODA X5-2, which we installed and configured quite a number of times lately. These 2 new machines are the in-between ODA’s, entry level machines for small business. Single node with flash […]
Licensing ODA on NUP’s and with different metrics
Since Oracle launched the Oracle Database Appliance a few years ago it has become clear that only the Enterprise Edition is allowed on the machine. But when NOT using the bare metal setup (not the OracleVM) it’s not always quite transparent what kind of licensing requirements is needed and allowed. More […]
Changed licensing rules for Exadata X5-2 with OracleVM
On 21 January 2015, Oracle announced Exadata X5, the sixth revision of Oracle’s database management system (DBMS) engineered system. The entire Exadata configuration no longer needs to be licensed when using OracleVM. Instead, a minimum of 40% of the cores in a server must be licensed. This information has been […]
Guest template Oracle Linux 6.5 available on Exalogic
When Oracle Exalogic is delivered in you data center and you implemented Exalogic as a virtual platform, the Exalogic Guest Base Template (EGBT) is based on Oracle Linux 5.8. On Exalogic you can update the template to Oracle Linux 5.10. As of 21 october the new Exalogic base template is […]
Larry Ellison – Opening Keynote of Oracle Open World 2010 – announcing Exalogic, the cloud in a box.
The first major keynote of this year’s Oracle Open World conference was last night – Larry Ellison announcing the Oracle Exalogic machine, the “cloud in a box”. A high end machine that is meant for consolidation (through virtualization) of many applications on a single piece of highly optimized infrastructure.
Oracle Database 11g Release 2: Flash Cache and Exadata V2
So, if I would wonder what is the purpose of this almost “hidden” feature called flash cache and were this came from (also see my post “Permanent Link to Oracle RDBMS 11gR2 – Flash Cache” Oracle RDBMS 11gR2 – Flash Cache), now I know. I didn’t have the chance to […]