A few more 12c articles

A few more 12c articles went live over the last few days…

The DMU and In-Database Archiving are from the OCP syllabus. The Invisible Columns stuff seemed like a natural thing to mention, when discussing the In-Database Archiving.

The 12c journey continues…

Cheers

Tim…

 

OTN APAC Tour 2014

As well as losing the ACED OpenWorld confirmation email, it turns out my website/mailbox move also caused me to lose the email about being accepted on the OTN APAC Tour 2014. I saw a tweet this morning saying that I was on the agenda for the NZOUG event and checked with Francisco to see what was going on. That’s when I found out that yet another important email had gone missing… 🙂

The good news is I had already agreed the time off work, so everything is good for the tour.

  • Perth, Australia : November 6-7
  • Shanghai, China : November 9
  • Tokyo, Japan : November 11-13
  • Beijing, China : November 14-15
  • Bangkok, Thailand : November 17
  • Auckland, New Zealand : November 19-21

After the OTN Yathra Tour 2014, which was 7 cities in 14 days, I told myself I was too old to do all this tour stuff… So much for that idea… 🙂

Although it’s a 6 event tour, the first and last events are pretty much like being at home for me. I’ve been to the AUSOUG and NZOUG events a few times, so it will be good to meet up with everyone again… It will be my second time in Beijing, and I’ve seen the traffic in India now, so I’m hoping I will cope better with the roads in China this time. 🙂 Shanghai, Tokyo and Bangkok are all new to me, so it will be interesting to see how I cope with them…

As always before one of these tours, I am a complete mix of excitement, fear and general panic! 🙂

I look forward to seeing you all there!

Cheers

Tim…

Multitenant : PDB CONTAINERS Clause

I forgot to mention, I put another multitenant article live at the weekend.

I’m not sure I will ever use it, but it’s good to know it’s there.

I was originally working on an article on a completely different multitenant feature, but the examples I was using highlighted a bug, which kind-of scuppered that article. I’ve raised an SR and I’m waiting on the acknowledgement and possible fix. I’ll hold that article back until the fix is in place.

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle Midlands : Event #5

Just a quick reminder that Oracle Midlands Event #5 is just around the corner (Tuesday 16 September).

  • Boost Performance by Clustering Data – Martin Widlake
  • Data Virtualisation and Instant Cloning – Ron Ekins (Delphix)

Martin is always good value, so I’m looking forward to that session. I’ve seen a couple of talks on the Delphix stuff and it is seriously cool! I think this session will open a few people’s eyes… 🙂

Big thanks to the Red Gate Software folks for sponsoring the event, allowing it to remain free

You can get more details here. I’ve already registered. See you there!

Cheers

Tim…

 

To PDB or not to PDB : The final decision

After yesterday’s to PDB or not to PDB post, I decided the answer was “to PDB”. Here’s what I did…

  • Installed the Oracle 12c (12.1.0.2) software. There is an installation article here, but all I had to do was a software-only installation because the OS already met all the prerequisites because of the existing 11.2.0.3 installation.
  • Upgrade the existing 11.2.0.3 instance. See here. I could have stopped at this point, but as I said I decided “to PDB”. 🙂
  • Created an empty CDB instance on the box using “dbca”.
  • Created a new PDB as a remote clone of the non-CDB instance, as described here.
  • Turned off the non-CDB instance.

Job done. So far it’s looking good. I’m going to do some messing about tomorrow to make sure it registers with Cloud Control properly and the backup schedule is sorted. Then I’ll give it to the folks to test their apps against.

Thoughts:

  • I flippin’ love the remote cloning of non-CDBs. I’ve played with it while writing the article about it, but seeing it happen on a real database was really exciting.
  • I think we all realise that this is version 1.1 of the multitenant architecture. The question is, is version 1.1 good enough at this point? The testing will determine that, not my excitement levels.
  • The testing will be based on our use of the DB. We are a small operation with quite simple needs. If we choose to go this route it will be because it is right for us. Depending on your usage, your experience may be different.
  • If things don’t work out with this POC, we will try with the non-CDB instance.

So it was kind-of exciting, fun and scary all rolled into one… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

To PDB or not to PDB

I’m about to start a Proof of Concept (POC) for a 12c upgrade of one of our databases. The production database in question is running on Oracle Linux inside a VMware virtual machine, so the starting point I’ve been given for the POC is a clone of the whole VM…

Probably the biggest decision I’ve got to make is “to PDB or not to PDB” *. I mentioned it on Twitter earlier and got some conflicting opinions. I guess the pros and cons of the PDB approach go something like this in my head.

Pros:

  • The multitenant architecture is the future of Oracle. Depending on which rumours you believe, it’s possible that 12.2 will no longer allow the pre-12c style instances. Putting it off is delaying the inevitable.
  • As long as you only use a single PDB, there is no extra cost.
  • The multitenant architecture has some neat features related to cloning, especially remote clones. That potentially makes provisioning new environments pretty quick.
  • Even with a single PDB per CDB, there are potential advantages regarding patching and upgrades. Caveats apply as always.
  • I’m going to upgrade to a pre-12c style instance first anyway, so I will have a natural fallback position ready to go if I need it.
  • It would be good to invest the time up front to convert stuff now, rather than wait a few years to clean up the mess of CRON jobs and connections using SIDs, rather than services. This choice would force our hand.
  • If some of the technologies we are using are not going to “play well” with the multitenant architecture, I would rather know now than later.

Cons:

  • Using a PDB is definitely going to break a number of things for us, especially CRON jobs that run scripts using OS authentication. See here.
  • Once the decision has been made to “switch the multitenant architecture on”, it would be really easy for someone to create an extra PDB and incur additional licensing costs. As far as I’m aware, there is nothing to restrict the number of PDBs to 1, to prevent an uninitiated DBA from copying a script from the net and creating more. If someone knows an undocumented parameter for this I would be interested in knowing it. Note, “_max_pdbs” isn’t the answer here! 🙂
  • I’m going to upgrade to a pre-12c style instance first, so why add on the extra effort of cloning that to a PDB?
  • Why make life hard for yourself? You can use 12.1 as a half-way house and make the final step later.

I don’t think there is really a right or wrong answer in this debate. I could probably put forward a convincing argument in favour of either option. I’m leaning on the side of the “to PDB” choice. If this proves to be a no-go, then I’ll start a POC of a pre-12c style instance… 🙂

Despite my leaning for the PDB choice, I am interested to know what others think, especially those that have done something a bit more extensive than running this stuff on their laptop. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

* I forgot to mention previously, we will almost definitely be going with a single PDB per CDB (the free option) initially. So this is not a “consolidate using multitenant” issue from the outset.

More Oracle Multitenant Changes (12.1.0.2)

When I wrote about the remote cloning of PDBs, I said I would probably be changing some existing articles. Here’s a change I’ve done already.

There are also new articles.

I’m sure there will be some more little pieces coming out in the next few days…

As I mentioned before, the multitenant option is rounding out nicely in this release.

Cheers

Tim…

 

 

MySQL Upgrades

I read Wim Coekaerts post about the MySQL 5.6.20-4 this morning. I logged on to my server and did the following command as root.

# yum update -y

That’ll be the upgrade done then… 🙂

If you are using MySQL on Linux you can use the MySQL Repository for your distribution, rather than using the bundled MySQL version, to make sure you stay up to date with the latest and greatest. As long as you stay within a point release (5.6, 5.7 etc.) of the latest version, upgrades should really be as simple as a “yum update”.

I’ve started the ball rolling for the upgrades to the MySQL servers at work. That will take a bit longer because of the required testing. 🙂

Now I know that Oracle is a very different beast to MySQL or SQL Server, but the patches for MySQL and SQL Server are so much easier that patching Oracle, it’s not surprising people gravitate to them. I’m sure the pluggable database stuff in 12c is going to simplify things somewhat, but it’s still not going to be anywhere near as simple as this stuff.

Cheers

Tim…

EM Cloud Control 12c : The 24 Hour DBA

I think I’ve lived through all the ages of Enterprise Manager. I used the Java console version back in the days when admitting you used it got you excommunicated from the church of DBA. I lived through the difficult birth of the web-based Grid Control. I’ve been there since the start of Cloud Control. I’ll no doubt be there when it is renamed to Big Data Cloud Pixie Dust Manager (As A Service).

I was walking from the pool to work this morning, checking my emails on my phone and it struck me (not for the first time) that I’m pretty much a 24 hour DBA these days. I’m not paid to be on call, I’m just a 9-5 guy, but all my Cloud Control notifications come through to my phone and tablet. I know when backups have completed (or failed). I know when a Tnsping takes too long. I know when we have storage issues. I know all this because Cloud Control tells me.

Now you might look on this as a bad thing, but being the control freak I am, I prefer to get a message on a Sunday telling me something is broken, hop on the computer and fix it there and then, rather than coming in on Monday to a complete sh*t-storm of users complaining. I’m not paid to do it, but that’s the way I roll.

While walking down memory lane I was thinking about all the scripting I used to do to check all this stuff. Endless amounts of shell scripts to check services and backups etc. I don’t do hardly any of that these days. Cloud Control handles all that.

We are a pretty small Oracle shop, but I think life would be a whole lot more difficult without Cloud Control. I’ve mentioned this a number of times, but it’s worth saying again… If you have more than a handful of Oracle databases, you really should be using Cloud Control these days. It’s as simple as that.

Just in case you are wondering, this is how our infrastructure looks this morning… 🙂

em-all-green

Cheers

Tim…