Tag: Oracle

Sentrigo Hedgehog…

During OpenWorld this year I bumped into a guy called Slavik Markovich from Sentrigo. We chatted about a couple of things and he gave me his card. That’s when I realized Sentrigo were the company who’d been advertising quite heavily through Google Ads on many Oracle sites, including my own.

I’m not really into reviewing products unless they really jump out at me, but Slavik seemed like a nice guy so I thought I’d take a look at what Sentrigo were doing. After returning to the UK I downloaded their Hedgehog product, but never got round to using it. The website says,

“Hedgehog: Real-time database monitoring, auditing and breach prevention”

Since then I’ve had a number of phone calls from their marketing department asking how I got on with the product, to which I’ve been replying, “I haven’t installed it yet.” 🙂

Well, today I finally got round to installing the Enterprise Product on an Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL) 5 virtual machine running an 11g database. You have to install a server package, plus a sensor for each host you want to monitor. As this was only a test I installed the server and sensor packages on the same VM as my database. The installations went smoothly. All you have to do is execute a “.bin” file for each package.

Once the installation was complete I hit my first minor issue. How do you get into the product?

The installation didn’t give me any clue about the command or URL I should use to access the product. I did a search on the OS using “find / -name sentrigo” and found a directory called “/usr/local/sentrigo-server”, so I figured that was a place to start. A quick look in the “conf/server.xml” file told me port 8080 was used for non-SSL connections, so I pointed my browser at “http://oel5-11g.localdomain:8080” and I had a log in screen. Later I noticed the help text that comes with the product contained the default URL information, but as this is only available once you’ve logged in, including it in the installation output would have been a nice touch.

That’s when I hit my second minor issue. What do you log in as?

I tried admin/admin and got in. 🙂 The help text (available after you’ve logged in 😉 ) suggests you use the username/password entered during the installation. I assume the Windows installation includes this, but the Linux one certainly doesn’t. Once again, a message in the installation output telling you the default login credentials would have been nice. Either that, or put a link the help from the login screen.

So, what does it do?

The product contains a whole bunch of predefined rules for situations that Sentrigo believe represent a risk to your database. It also allows you to define your own rules using a rules wizard. For example, you may create a simple rule that says if the terminal accessing the database doesn’t equal “X”, this constitutes a breach. The rules can be as simple or complicated as you wish. The server then monitors your databases via the sensors and logs alerts when any of the rules have been broken. You can view the alerts through the server application, or have them emailed to you.

What do I think of it?

That’s a little difficult because I couldn’t get it to monitor my database (see update at bottom of post). The server was running fine. The sensor was running fine. The database connection information was fine. Even so, the database remained in the “Unmonitored” state. I tried the Standard Product also, but got the same result. Even so, I will make a few comments from my very limited use of the product:

  • It’s a neat idea.
  • It looks really nice.
  • The response to action buttons was not always clear. You hit the save button on some screens and nothing seems to happen. There is no alteration to the screen or message to say your changes have been saved. A few times I found myself clicking the Save button several times not knowing if the changes had taken effect. It may sound a little basic, but a “Your changes have been saved” message is sometimes quite useful, if a little ugly.
  • I have no idea why my database wasn’t monitored. At the time of writing the Supported Configurations and FAQ pages on the website were not available and I could see nothing in the help file. It might be as simple as 11g is not supported or a problem with my VM, but I have no evidence for either of these (see update at bottom of post).
  • It would be nice if the installation listed the URLs to access the product and the default login credentials somewhere near the bottom of the output. Maybe the default URLs and login details are available on the website normally, but they weren’t today.

It would be good to see a review of this product by an expert in the security field, like Pete Finnigan. It would also be nice to see some comparison between this product and the notification rules of Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control, but I don’t think I’m really the guy to do this.

I guess it would also be nice to see a working version of the product, but I don’t know if I’m going to spend any more time on this in the near future. I’m already in the weeds and this isn’t really top of my list. I might just look out for the Sentrigo stand at OpenWorld next year. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Update: I had a message from Slavik telling me that 11g on Linux is not supported, so my problems weren’t a reflection of problems in the product. Currently only 11g on Windows 32-bit is supported, but the next version will sort this. As I said before, I’m not sure when I’ll have the time to revisit this product, but it does look neat.

RMAN Enhancements in 11g…

My trip through the 11g new features continues with RMAN Ehancements. These combined with the Data Recovery Advisor and Flashback and LogMiner Enhancements I wrote about previously show that Oracle are really putting a lot of effort into getting this area right. I guess the Data Recovery Advisor will be the most outstanding new feature for most people, but there are loads of tweaks all round that all help to make life easier for us guys on the coal face.

Cheers

Tim…

Data Recovery Advisor…

When I first saw the name Data Recovery Advisor, I thought I was going to have a really dull time figuring how this new 11g functionality worked, but it is really quite cool!

I don’t care if you are a beginner or a battle-scarred DBA, every time you have to recovery a database, you get a little twinge of doubt about whether it’s going to work. Sure, if your backups are good and you’ve practiced your recovery scenarios it should work, but what if…

The Data Recovery Advisor goes some way towards calming those jitters by automatically identifying, diagnosing and optionally repairing the problem for you. I think this is totally cool and a great move by Oracle.

Cheers

Tim…

PS. This article got on the front page before it was actually finished. I apologize if you caught the half-done version. 🙂

The Oracle DBA… A dying breed?

I’ve updated the site notes for my OpenWorld unconference session. If you fancy having a look, it’s on the Oracle Wiki.

It’s quite hard to summarize the conversation, but I think I got the gist of it down. Remember, the notes are trying to convey the opinions of the people present. I’m not saying this was a representative sample of people, but the opinions and attititudes was certainly quite interesting to me.

Cheers

Tim…

Update: The Oracle Wiki page was removed.

Fedora 8 and Oracle 11g…

My Fedora 8 escapades were delayed by my OpenWorld experience, but better late than never.

The first article is a run through of a fairly basic Fedora 8 install, showing what it looks like. The second is the Oracle install guide in my normal format. There’s one little nasty in there, but for the most part it was pretty smooth sailing, especially since a guy called “Robert W. Benton” emailed me to tell me what the problem was before I had even finished downloading the OS. Thanks for that Robert. 🙂

I’ve mentioned this before, and I’ll no doubt mention it again, but I’m really struggling to see what the Fedora distribution is aiming for. It seems to send out contradicting messages at times. For instance, it has features that make me think it is a desktop OS:

  • Looks very soft and cuddly like a desktop OS.
  • It pops up an annoying warning message if I log on as root.
  • Users get sub-directories like Documents, Downloads, Music, Videos created by default.

But for me the big contradictions are:

  • The distribution is really big. I would expect a desktop OS to come on one CD, with the extra features available for download.
  • The installation process seems rather clumsy compared to Ubuntu. It’s not a big difference, but that slight bit of extra complexity makes it feel like a server installation to me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not hard, but I’ve been doing this since Red Hat 5.2, so I’m not exactly a Linux newbie. I feel it could be simplified further.

Looking from the other angle, it could be considered a server OS, after all it is a playground for Red Hat (a bit of flame-bait there 🙂 ), but some of the previously mentioned points detract from that message. I remember all those people telling me that Windows wasn’t a real server OS because it forced you to have gizmos like Media Player etc. Fedora has this same feel to me now. Plus the DVD is missing a number of packages that I would expect an enterprise distribution to have. I know they are available for download, but as a server OS I would prefer to forgo the fluffy guff in favor of the enterprise stuff.

I can image some of the responses to this post. No doubt some Fedora fan[boys|girls] will post telling me that Fedora is a great desktop and/or server OS… blah, blah, blah… I’m not doubting that. I just think that we have to recognize that the server and the desktop are two totally different experiences and I don’t think Fedora sells itself well enough on either front.

Ubuntu is a classic example of how to do it right. I don’t believe it is significantly better than Fedora, but it had a clear message from day one. We all knew it was a desktop OS and it acted like that. They’ve subsequently gone the server route also, but they’ve kept it as a separate entity. This is no different to the way Microsoft tackled the same issue.

I really feel like Fedora must decide what its purpose is, or it’s just going to end up another one of those faceless distributions you try, think of as OK, then ditch in favor of something else that suits your purpose better…

Cheers

Tim…

OpenWorld Day 4, 5 & 6…

Day 4

I spent a lot of time in the OTN lounge just talking to people. I guess it’s what I do best.

Later in the day Mary Ann Davidson did an “Ask the Experts” session on security. It was good to see her taking notes and being genuinely concerned about the issues people were raising. This is good for Oracle on two levels. Not only is it going to make the products better, but it’s lets us users feel like we have a voice.

I went to an unconference session by Lutz Hartmann on migrating a database from the filesystem to ASM using RMAN. Lutz is a very friendly and enthusiastic guy with lots of teaching experience, so he looked really relaxed and confident. His demos were clear and simple and I think he got the point across really well.

The evening was the big appreciation party where I met up with Chris Muir and Grant Ronald. The party was a massive event, which was organised really well. Although not a real fan, I was looking forward to Lenny Kravitz. He did an adequate job, but I’m sure he’s capable of a lot more. When you’re facing a crown of non-fans, you’ve got to keep the tempo up and perform all your most popular songs. Doing a 10 minute sax solo is not really going to keep the crown interested. The last song had the crown going nuts, which is what it should have been like all the way through.

Day 5

The start of day 5 was spent back at the hospital filling out forms to request information to send to my insurance company. Not exactly the OpenWorld experience I was expecting. 🙂

When I finally made it to the event I spent most of the day in the OTN lounge catching up with people. Wim Coekaerts turned up to do an “Ask the Experts” session, which was totally cool. Getting to speak directly with people like this is what OpenWorld is all about. I guess the main points he was stressing were:

  • Oracle have no intention of making Oracle Enterprise Linux a fork of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. They are commited to binary compatibility. When you think about this it makes sense as it must reduce the resources required to produce test and certify the database.
  • Oracle VM is nothing to do with Red Hat. It’s not an RHEL clone and it is not the same as running Xen on top of Linux, like the other Linux distros do. You install it on a bare box and you get the hypervisor and a small Linux kernel running. That’s it, not a full RHEL style installation.
  • Once installed you have console access to create, modify and drop VMs, you can also use SSH to connect to the administration VM. If you want a management UI you have to install the management interface on a separate server.
  • The VM has no noticible overhead on device access, like I/O, but there is obviously some overhead as far as CPU and memory because you have the hypervisor and management VM running, but this is very small. Typically, this should be less than a 10% overhead.
  • Oracle are using this product now. It works great for Linux guests. It will run anything that will run on an Intel box (Windows, Solaris x86, maybe even Mac), but I’m not sure what the support and performance is like on these. At the moment it’s very much directed at the Linux space.

From there I went on to my Unconference session called “The Oracle DBA… A dying breed?” The provocative title did it’s job and the turnout was quite good. This was more of a discussion about the role of the DBA, rather than a presentation. It’s kind of hard to judge the success of this type of session, but the fact people started to join in means it couldn’t have been too bad. Myself and a few others continued the discussion in the OTN lounge for a while afterwards. One of the Oracle guys added some session notes to the page. In the next couple of days I’m going to add some more stuff and try and summarise the opinions voiced. Once I’m done and you can see the form of the discussion, feel free to add to it. There is no reason why the subject has to end with the session.

I hope the Unconference is included over the next few years. As people know more about what to expect, or not as the case may be, and the number and variety of presenters increases, I think this could turn out to be the best feature at OpenWorld. It’s going to take some time for both the attendees and the presenters to get used to it, but it will be worth it.

The evening was more talking with bloggers and the like. Lots of opinions, lots of view points and lots of, “I’m so tired, I really must go to bed…”

Day 6

I had breakfast with a couple of the guys, then headed for the hotel. The plane felt really cramped, but fortunately the Frankfurt leg was 9 hours, as opposed to 11 on the way there. I even managed to sleep a little bit. It’s going to take a few days of bitchin’ to get my body clock back, but that’s the price you pay. 🙂

Regardless of your opinions about OpenWorld, it is a spectacular event. Everything runs so smoothly and by the numbers. One of the guys, can’t remember who, made the point that they were feeding lunch to 44,000 people and you never had to wait for more than a couple of minutes. That in itself shows the amazing amount of organisation that goes into this event.

So that’s it. Another OpenWorld done. It was really hard, but good fun at the same time. Next year it starts in September, so there’s only 10 months until the next one. Aaaarrrggghhhh! 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

OpenWorld Day 3…

Thanks to everyone who showed their concern over my hospital incident. As the day progressed I was walking a little funny, kind of like I needed the toilet in a big way, but for the most part things were good. Last night I slept pretty well, managing about 7 hours thanks to the muscle relaxants . All in all, I would like to claim the crown for “the most jet lagged at OpenWorld”, and nobody better try and muscle in on my glory, especially that Doug Burns guy. 🙂

The events of the morning meant I didn’t really get to do much at OpenWorld. The only thing I managed to see was “Top Ten, No, 11 Newest, Coolest Features of Oracle Database 11g” at the No Slide Zone. Tom‘s presentation style really works for me. He’s so relaxed and comfortable on stage it kinda draws you in. I think I could listen to him speak for 1 hour on washing dishes and I’d still feel engaged.

In the evening I went to the bloggers get together at the Thirsty Bear. A big thankyou to Mark Rittman for organising the event and also to Vikki Lira from Oracle, whose credit card took a bit of a hammering. It was a really cool evening, spent mostly talking about OpenWorld and the current state of the blogging and the Oracle community. It’s really good to listen to other people’s take on what we do and what responsibilities, if any, we have. I downed a serious quantity of water, which was very good for the whole dehydration thing.

Better get moving or I’ll be late for the first presentation today.

Cheers

Tim…

OpenWorld Day 2…

I know it’s all a bit mixed up because I’ve already blogged about events last night, but it’s my blog and I’m allowed to alter the time-line. 🙂

I’ve decided only to blog about stand-out points for me, so here goes…

I went to the DBA 2.0 session by Tom Kyte (and others) in the No Slide Zone. This was a stand-up competition between the command line (DBA 1.0) and Enterprise Manager (DBA 2.0), which not surprisingly DBA 2.0 won. This type of presentation is really great because it feels far less scripted, it’s visually more appealing and you get the see the problems. 🙂 A few people have mentioned that once you attend a few of these presentations, the traditional PowerPoint shows seem really boring. I must admit I’m starting to feel this way. It’s hard for the presentations not to seem rather homogeneous. I think I’m going to alter my schedule and ditch a whole bunch of stuff and just seek out the “less standard” fair for the rest of the week.

I went to the Carry Millsap presentation on “Why You Can’t See Your Real Performance Problems”. He’s a really relaxed and natural speaker, so it was really enjoyable.

Later in the day I went to the “Install Fest”. Those who follow my website will know I spend a lot of time installing Oracle on Linux, so it was not instantly apparent, even to myself, why I would want to go the an event where you got to install Oracle on Linux… There was a large mix of ability, and it was very noisy (see later anecdotes), but it was quite good to hear the range of questions being asked. It gives you a better sense of your audience. The talk by Wim Coekaerts was cool, but I’ve already blogged about that. All in all, a cool event, even if I did miss the party happening next door… Doh!

I mentioned previously the Install Fest was rather noisey. At one point the doors opened and there was a lot of noise. I caught myself saying under my breath something about going away and procreating, just at the point Chris Muir sat down in the row in front of me. He then turned round, said sorry and proceeded to move. I hastily explained my comment wasn’t directed at him. Very embaressing, and a good advert for keeping your gob shut! 🙂

Fun fun fun…

Cheers

Tim…

PS. I got 4 hours sleep last night. I woke up about 04:00 this morning. I’m going to start seeing pixies and walls of fire if I don’t get my sleeping pattern back soon…

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