Once you start on the automation path it becomes progressively easier to automate new things because you will build up a collection of stuff you can tweak to create the new stuff. Here’s an example…
A little while ago I did a hands-off build of 18c RAC using VirtualBox and Vagrant (here). I had to solve a few little problems, but for the most part it was piecing together a bunch of stuff I already had, like silent installations and database creations, so no big drama. Probably the most complicated thing was deciding how I wanted to organise things, which I’m sure will change over time…
Fast forward to a few days ago when I wanted to play around with 18c Data Guard. I actually took the RAC build and used that as the basis of this little project. Obviously some things were chopped out and some things were added, but a lot of it was just reused, which saved a bunch of thinking and hassle.
Once I had the 18c build working, a couple of changes in the config files and I had a 12cR2 build up and running (here). Some config file changes and a couple of minor scripting changes and I had a 12cR1 build up and running. You get the picture.
Of course you will occasionally have to do something that constitutes a step change, or you will decide to take a completely new approach* and have to go back to basics, but a lot of the time you are only a tweak away from the next automation.
Check out the rest of the series here.
Cheers
Tim…
* I’m playing around with Ansible at the moment, so maybe I’ll end up redoing these using Ansible. Maybe not. We’ll see. 🙂
