Tag: Oracle Linux

Which OS is “the best” for Oracle?

This question comes back to haunt me all the time, and did again last weekend, so for the sake of a few minutes here’s my opinion…

We can break down these types of questions into two main categories. People wanting to use unsupported operating systems, and people who what to know which is “the best” supported OS, so let’s deal with them separately.

Unsupported Operating Systems

Don’t do it! 🙂

I do installations on Fedora which is not supported, but as explained here, I do it for a specific reason, and I put a link to that post on every article as a warning.

If you have a specific need to do an install on an unsupported OS that’s fine, but you should never see that in the wild, and you shouldn’t encourage others to do it, as you are compromising their systems. I don’t care if you prefer another OS or unsupported Linux distro. There are supported alternatives for free, so there is no point wasting your time doing this…

Which is “the best” supported OS?

Oracle Linux!

Why? Amongst other things:

  • It’s what the Oracle database is written on. Having lived through the death of Tru64 and the ongoing death of HP-UX, I would always pick the OS the product is being written against. I don’t care what Oracle class as a tier 1 platform. I care about what their developers are working on, and that is predominantly on Oracle Linux.
  • It’s what Oracle are using for Oracle Public Cloud.
  • It’s what Oracle use on Exadata and Exalogic, their flagship engineered systems.
  • It’s a supported OS that is available for free, including errata. You can pay for support and extra features if you want, but it’s totally fine not too, and you still have a supported DB.

If you are a Windows shop, I can understand if you want to run Oracle on Windows servers. I can understand you may have a love for some other supported OS because you think it is technically superior. I can understand if you use RHEL everywhere else and you would rather stick with RHEL. I can understand if the core factor makes licensing another platform cheaper for you. That’s all fine and might make your choice *the best choice for you*, but I still think Oracle Linux is the best choice overall.

Remember, it’s just my opinion! 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

PS. I have an Oracle Linux FAQ here.

PPS. For those that have commented elsewhere, of course this opinion is based on the fact it is 2018, although it has been true for a few years now. I don’t care that Solaris, VMS or any other OS was “the best” for Oracle in the past. If I get asked the question today, I’m going to answer based on today. Sorry, I’m not living in the past, and I can’t predict the future…

Let’s Encrypt : Free Certificates on Oracle Linux (CertBot)

My website has been using HTTPS for over 18 months now. A couple of months ago I came across Let’s Encrypt and thought, “Free Certificates? That’s interesting!”, so I gave it a shot for some other stuff I look after, just to see how I got on with it.

The certificates only last 3 months, but you can automate their renewal using CertBot. You set it up to check every day, and the certificates get renewed if they are within 30 days of expiring. Since I set it up a little over 2 months ago, the first round of renewals happened a couple of days ago. No dramas.

Having seen the first automated refresh happen successfully, I decided to switch the main website to use the Let’s Encrypt certificate today. That means no more buying certificates for me! 🙂

I put together this article when I did the initial setup, just to document it for myself.

I didn’t mention it at the time as I wasn’t really sure about how it would work out, but now I’m using it I thought it might be interesting to any other cheapskates out there. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Video: Oracle Linux Virtual Machine (VM) on Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Continuing the cloud theme, here is a quick run through of the process of creating an Oracle Linux virtual machine on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

A few months ago I wrote an article about installing an Oracle database on AWS.

I updated the images in that article last night to bring them in line with this video.

The cameo today is by Joel PĂ©rez, who was a bit of a perfectionist when recording “.com”. I’ve included about half of his out-takes at the end of the video. Don’t ever hire him for a film or you will run over budget! 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle Linux : UEK4 Released

linux-tuxI wrote a post a couple of months ago called
Which version of Oracle Linux should I pick for Oracle server product installations? One of the points I raised was the use of UEK allows you to have all the latest kernel goodies, regardless of being on an older release, like OL6.

I saw a post today about the release of UEK4, so now you have access to all the improvements in the 4.1 mainline Linux kernel, whether you are on are running OL6 or OL7. That just goes to prove the point really.

If you are running RHEL, you might be feeling pressure to move from RHEL6 to RHEL7 to get a bunch of the kernel enhancements that came with it. If you are running OL6, just switch to UEK4 and your kernel is ahead of the RHEL7 kernel. No stress and no having to deal with systemd and firewalld. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7 Released

It feels almost like heresy to discus something that isn’t Oracle-related on the day that Oracle announced the new In-Memory Database Option, but something else was also released today. Red Hat gave birth to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.

I’m a big fan of all things Linux. I’m typing this blog post on a Fedora 20 desktop at home. I’m a rabid fan of Oracle Linux for servers at home and at work. As a result, the birth of RHEL7 is a pretty big deal for me.

I’ve been playing with the Oracle Linux 7 betas for a while (OL7 Install, DB 11gR2 Install, DB 12c Install). I expect we will see the birth of Oracle Linux 7 pretty soon, which is where it gets really interesting for me.

I’m sure it’s going to take quite a long time for Oracle to start supporting their products on RHEL7/OL7, but this is the future, so you’ve for to get your skates on! 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 2 Installation…

I did an EM Cloud Control 12cR2 installation at work yesterday. The database repository was 11.2.0.3 on HP-UX and the middle tier was installed on RHEL 5.8. The installation was pretty much the same as the 12cR1 version. Over the next few days I’ll be testing out some of the features to decide if we can move across to it permanently.

Today I did two run throughs of single server installations on Oracle Linux 5.8 and 6.3. There are a couple of minor differences, but nothing to worry about. You can see what I did here:

The installations are a little small, so they are not too fast, but it’s good enough to test things out.

Cheers

Tim…

Update: It’s been a while since I used the 12c version, so I’ve had to relearn a few simple things. I thought I might as well write the down in case it helps others.

ClamAV on Fedora and Enterprise Linux…

Following on from my post on AntiVirus Software and Apple Macs, I decided to add antivirus to my desktop machines also. I chose ClamAV because it is part of the Fedora repository. I wrote a quick note about installing ClamAV on Fedora and Enterprise Linux (RHEL, Oracle Linux, CentOS etc.).

Not surprisingly, scans revealed no viruses on any of my Fedora machines.

Cheers

Tim…

Cloud Control 12c R1 Installation on Oracle Linux 5.7 and 6.1…

While I was at Open World I tried a few times to get hold of the new Cloud Control software, but the hotel network wasn’t up to the job, so I had to wait until I got home.

The installation is pretty simple compared to previous versions of Grid Control and it installs fine on both Oracle Linux 5.x and 6.x. As always it’s a little greedy on the memory front, with the recommendation for a small installation being 4G for the Cloud Control and 2G for the repository database. That’s not including the OS requirement. On the subject of the repository database, you can use a number of 10g and 11g versions, but anything before 11.2.0.2 requires additional patches, so I stayed with 11.2.0.3.

You can see what I did here.

Cheers

Tim…