This article illustrates a joint cookbook-approach for provisioning a PeopleSoft application on Bare Metal Cloud Services configuration; including network, compute, database, load balancing service, and storage. The second section of this paper describes the migration of an on- premise PeopleSoft Database to the Bare Metal Cloud. The following link describes this in detail. Enjoy !! … Continue reading
ACFS Snapshot – A Walk Through
This blog explores some of the new 12.2 ACFS features. We will walk through the ACFS snapshot process flow: [oracle@oracle122 log]$ acfsutil snap info /acfsmounts/acfsdata/ snapshot name: just_before_load snapshot location: /acfsmounts/acfsdata/.ACFS/snaps/just_before_load RO snapshot or RW snapshot: RO parent name: /acfsmounts/acfsdata/ snapshot creation time: Wed Mar 22 20:36:09 2017 storage added to snapshot: 8650752 ( … Continue reading
Bare Metal Cloud – A PeopleSoft Implementation … Bare it and Grin !!
The following document illustrates a cookbook for provisioning a Bare Metal Compute Services configuration or a BMCS Compartment; including network, compute, and storage. In this illustration, the infrastructure to be built out is used to host a PeopleSoft PeopleTools implementation. Executive Overview Most Public Cloud providers leverage multitenancy to get the most out of their … Continue reading
Grid Infrastructure and RAC 12.2 New Features – a Recap
The following list illustrates the new 12.2 Oracle RAC and Grid Infrastructure. This is a personal list which “I believe to be the most interesting.” I apologize to the RAC Dev team if I left out any features. Streamlined Grid Infrastructure Installation 12.2 Grid Infrastructure software is available as an image file for download and … Continue reading
Clonewars – Next Gen Cloning with Oracle 12.2 Multitenancy (Part Deux)… With a Sprinkle of PDB Refresh
This is Part 2 of the Remote [PDB] Cloning capabilities of Oracle 12.2 Mulitenant. Cloning Example 2: Remote clone copy from an existing CBD/PDB into a local PDB (PDB->PDB). In this example “darkside” is CDB with darthmaul being the source/remote PDB and yoda (PDB) is local target SQL> select database_name from v$database; DATABASE_NAME ——————————————————– DARKSIDE … Continue reading
Clonewars – Next Gen Cloning with Oracle 12.2 Multitenancy (Part Un)
In this blog, we will walk through Oracle 12.2 Remote Cloning of PDB feature. In Oracle 12.1, remote cloning was also available, however, this required placing the productions database (which is usually the source) in read-only mode. This makes the cloning feature very inefficient to leverage. In 12.2, it is now possible to maintain the … Continue reading
Flex Your Inner ASM – ASM 12.2 New Features
The following article will describe at a high-level the key ASM improvements in Oracle 12.2. Note, due to number of changes and improvements in ACFS, we cover ACFS is a separate article. Oracle ASM Flex Disk Groups and File Groups In previous releases disk group storage attributes were defined only at the disk group level, … Continue reading
In-Memory of.. Sorry I mean 12.2 In-Memory New Features
As part our of continuing 12.2 New Feature Series we explore different areas of Oracle 12.2 In this blog we discuss the new In-Memory 12.2 features In-Memory Expressions An In-memory expression, or “hot” expression, enables frequently evaluated query expressions to be materialized in the In-Memory Column Store, for subsequent reuse. By default, the procedure DBMS_INMEMORY_ADMIN.IME_CAPTURE_EXPRESSIONS … Continue reading
ACFS 12.2 New Features – a Recap
Oracle Automatic Storage Management Cluster File System (ACFS) made it’s debut with Oracle 11.2. Many DBAs are not aware of the vast features that are available with ACFS. With each release and update to Oracle, significant enhancements have been made. With Oracle Database 12c Release 2, new feature/functionality was made to ACFS. Snapshot Enhancements In … Continue reading
12.2 SQLPlus History command – features and fumbles
Yes, there’s been a lot of hoopla about the HISTORY capability in 12.2 SQlPlus, and I know my friend Gokhan Atil has written about it too. So I’m just gonna share this bit for my team and my feedback on it SQLplus always lacked the history capability like U/Linux shell history. Now in 12.2 SQLPlus … Continue reading
ASR and IP Addresses on PCA/OVCA
How to determine OVCA or PCA Management Node, Compute Node, and ILOM service processor IP addresses The asr command has various switches that give information on the assets; however, the assets are generally list by ILOM address. So how do you get the asset listing and how do you map it back to the primary … Continue reading
Dallas Oracle User Group Performance & 12.2 New Features Technical Day
Hey DFW Oracle Folks … heads up I’m speaking at the DOUG Performance & Tuning and 12.2 New Features Technical Day! Charles Kim and I be speaking on the following topic: “What to Expect .. When You are Expecting to Virtualize Your Database” – (OVM or VMware) Linux Best Practices for Oracle Database Systems Time: Thursday 20 October 2016 … Continue reading
Data Guard Setup …its a recap
The intent of this section is to illustrate the build of the physical standby (disaster recovery) database from a production database. For this scenario both databases will reside on the 1 physical server. This section assumes that the Oracle Grid Infrasturcture, either Standalone or Cluster configuration is installed on both the primary host and standby … Continue reading
Uh Oh, I didnt set my Exadata core count correctly , now what?
Changing Capacity On-Demand Core Count in Exadata We recently implemented an Exadata X6 at a one of client sites (yes, we don’t Oracle ACS, we do it ourselves). However, the client failed to tell us that they had licensed only a subset of the cores per compute, after we actually had implmeneted and *migrated* production … Continue reading
iptables save
When I was working with our sysadmin person, he freaked out that when we stop/restarted iptables service, and the iptables were gone. The iptables rules are lost upon shutdown on iptbles service or after system reboot. What I usually do is save off my iptables rules into a save file as follows: # iptables-save … Continue reading
Got Containers. Linux Containers Starter Kit
Got Containers? Container Starter Kit
Adding Physical disks to Windows 2012 Server
Since I have a terrible memory for such things, I have to keep notes for myself on How-Tos. A video is at the bottom that illustrates the process (if I can’t read it, at least I’ll see it) 🙂 This blog will walk through the process flow of adding Physical disks to Windows 2012 Server. … Continue reading
Convert VMware Fusion VM to ESXi based VM
There are occasions that we need to create custom built Linux VMs on behalf of our clients. Forexample, we may build a Linux VM that has all the best practices for 12c Oracle database or a 12c Weblogic Server. We sometimes do this in VMware Fusion or in vSphere/ESXi config. In this example we will … Continue reading
VMware Fusion vmx conversion to OVA for VM appliance shipments
As in the earlier post on VMware VM appliance shipments, there are occasions that we need to build VM appliances for our clients. Depending on the scenarios, requirements, or convenience, we will build VMs in VMware Fusion and convert them to OVA files so our clients can simply import them (“Deploy a OVF Template”). In … Continue reading
YUM for Exadata, or is it Yummy Exadata
For method 1 there are two options Connect a non-Exadata DB server to sync with ULN (or public Yum) and setup a Yum repository – OR – Use the general Oracle Linux iso as Yum repository on the local DB server. For 1) when creating a repository by syncing with ULN: do not place the … Continue reading
Setting Round-Robin Multipathing Policy in VMware ESXi 6.0
Storage Array Type Plugins (SATP) and Path Selection Plugins (PSP) are part of the VMware APIs for Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA). The SATP has all the knowledge of the storage array to aggregate I/Os across multiple channels and has the intelligence to send failover commands when a path has failed. The Path Selection Policy can … Continue reading
What’s with MGTDB anyways
For those who have either upgraded or fresh-installed 12.1 (12c) Grid Infrastructure stack, will notice a new database instance (-MGMTDB) that was provisioned automagically. So what is this MGMTDB and why do I need this overhead. Si let’s recap what the DB is and what it does… Management Database is the central repository to store … Continue reading
New [rarely covered and rarely discussed] 12c features
With busy weeks of IOUG and other conferences coming up, we have little time to blog…. So, in the coming weeks, I’m just going to do some “baby” blogs; i.e., some quick tips and new features Here’s a new 12c new feature that simplifies snapshotting databases Snapshot Optimized Recovery There’s many of you that take … Continue reading
Setting Jumbo Frames – Portrait of a Large MTU size
There cases where we need to ensure that large packet “address-ability” exists. This is needed to verify configuration for non standard packet sizes, i.e, MTU of 9000. For example if we are deploying a NAS or backup server across the network. Setting the MTU can be done by editing the configuration script for the relevant … Continue reading
High Level Overview of 11204 ASM Rebalance in Async ARB0
High Level look at 11204 Rebalance with Plan Optimiation and Async ARB0 Drop disk SQL> alter diskgroup reco drop disk ‘ASM_NORM_DATA4’ rebalance power 12 here we issue the rebalance NOTE: requesting all-instance membership refresh for group=2 GMON querying group 2 at 120 for pid 19, osid 19030 GMON updating for reconfiguration, group 2 … Continue reading
Queryable Opatch and Datapatch
One of my Oracle Support Buddies mentioned to me a cool feature called Query-able Opatch. This new feature of 12c Oracle Database provides the capability to store, in-database, and query the patch inventory. Note this feature is specific to Database Home, it does fit into the for Grid Infrastructure or other Oracle Homes. I wasn’t … Continue reading
Oracle 12c Multitentant My Top Questions Part II
CDB / PDB Operations Q. How can I install and setup Pluggable Database ? A. Use runInstaller to install the Oracle Database software Use dbca to create databases. You can create many pluggable databases in a single operation. DBCA enables you to specify the number of PDBs in the CDB when it is created.After a … Continue reading
Oracle 12c Multitentant – My Top Ten PDB Questions PartI
Q. What are my options for connecting to a Pluggable Database ? A. Connect to root, then SQL> alter session set container = nisha; Database connection using easy connect Ex: CONNECT username/password@host[:port][/service_name][:server][/instance_name] $ sqlplus test1/test123@//localhost/nisha Need to define Database connection using a net service name Example TNSNAMES.ora: ======= LISTENER_CDB1 = (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = … Continue reading
[Re-] Imaging Exadata with 12.1.2.1.1
[Re-] Imaging Exadata with 12.1.2.1.1 Introduction This document, based on Doc ID 1991376.1, specifically addresses re-imaging Exadata systems to 12.1.2.1.1, using standard (non-OVM) deployment via USB boot. In this scenario, a new Exadata system was delivered with the 12.1.2.1.0 image; however, client decided to implement the latest image (12.1.2.1.1) before OEDA was executed. Scenario The … Continue reading
Installing Oracle Linux 6.6, Prepping Linux OS for Oracle Database 12c Install, and Installing Oracle Database 12c
Installing Oracle Linux 6.6, Prepping Linux OS for Oracle Database 12c Install, and Installing Oracle Database 12c I know it seems simple to install Linux and Oracle Dtaabase. But I felt a need to standardize on how we do it internally at Viscosity. So I provided this little note to our DBA team to build … Continue reading
Apply 12102 PSU1 (19392646) on a Standalone Cluster
We are about to apply 12102 PSU1 (19392646) on a Standalone Cluster. This patch applies the patch to RDBMS home as part of opatchauto. Here’s the output in case anyone wants to compare: [root@ol64afd OPatch]# ./opatchauto apply -analyze /mnt/hgfs/12cGridSoftware/12102-PSU1/19392646 -ocmrf ocm/bin/ocm.rsp OPatch Automation Tool Copyright (c) 2014, Oracle Corporation. All rights reserved. OPatchauto version : … Continue reading
Data Domain discussion and Notes
The following are notes from our discussions w/ EMC on deploying Data Domain w/ RMAN at client site: Process flow is as follows – Clients -> eth -> Media/Master Server ((includes OST)-> SAN -> DD The OST plugin first sends a request to the DD server/appliance to validate the hash of the data packet. DD … Continue reading
What should you ask your All Flash Array Vendor
I was just traveling back from a client, where the customer just bought into the concept of an all flash array for their database and VDI workloads. They had asked me to help out where I can. So I started pondering the things this customer (or any customers/buyers) should think through….. At first I was going … Continue reading
OVCA Network specs – discussion with Oracle
Notes from meeting w/ Oracle on OVCA: The most current version of Oracle Virtual Compute Appliance (VCA or OVCA) is X4-2 VCA consists of the following: Infiniband (IB) QDR links operating at 40Gb/s bandwidth (raw fabric bit rate); effective maximum network throughput possible is in the order of 32Gb/s for data (due in part b/c … Continue reading
blktrace basics
Life of an I/O Once a user issues an I/O request, this I/O enters block layer…then the magic begins… 1. IO request is remapped atop underlying logical/aggregated device device (MD, DM). Depending on alignment, size, …, requests are split into 2 separate I/Os 2. Requests added to the request queue 3. Merged with a previous … Continue reading
The Add Roles to Windows2012 Server
There are two methods to add roles/features to a Windows 2012 Server. One is using the Add Roles Wizard and the other is using the cmdlet. The Add Roles Wizard simplifies how you install roles on the server. This is quite different from the way it was done in Windows 2008 Server where admins had … Continue reading
Oracle Inventory and what it means to
Whilst presenting on Exadata patching, an interesting question about “What is the Inventory”, came up at break. This individual was new to Oracle, so I spent some time going over what the Oracle Inventory is. Here is the brain dump captured 🙂 The Oracle [Software] Inventory is the mechanism that manages the software library on … Continue reading
Exadata Monitoring and Agents – EM Plugin
To those who attended our Exadata Monitoring and Agents. Here’s some Answers and followup from the Chat room The primary goal of the Exadata Pluigin is to digest the schematic file and validate database.xml and catalog.xml files. If the pre-check runs w/o failure then Discovery can be executed. Agent only runs on compute nodes and … Continue reading
Do I know all the background processes for ASM and RAC, surely ya jest !!
Several folks asked me if I knew all the background processes for ASM and RAC….surely you must be kidding, but I have a list of them, and it changes per release. Below is ASM and RAC background processes, I have listed the ones that are new to 12c, and some are specific to Exadata (I … Continue reading
ASM Check script
Here’s a little script from @racdba that does ASM check when we go onsite #!/bin/ksh HOST=`hostname` ASM_OS_DEV_NM=/tmp/asmdevicenames.log ASMVOTEDSK=/tmp/asm_votingdisks.log GRID_HOME=`cat /etc/oratab |grep “+ASM” |awk -F “:” ‘{print $2}’` ORACLE_HOME=$GRID_HOME PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin:$PATH: export GAWK=/bin/gawk # # do_pipe () { SQLP=”$GRID_HOME/bin/sqlplus -s / as sysdba”; $SQLP |& # Open a pipe to SQL*Plus print -p — ‘set feed off … Continue reading