Grid DBA

Just a short post linking to my presentations at Oracle OpenWorld 2014 and St. Louis Oracle User Group (SLOUG) Big Bash. Oracle Enteprise Manager Cloud Control 12c - Setting Up Metrics and Monitoring (Top 10 Features for DBAs v1.1) from Leighton Nelson A Second Look at Oracle RAC 12c from Leighton Nelson

Uploaded slide from my KScope 14 presentation: "Databases for the Masses: Self-Service Oracle Multitenant with APEX" Here are a couple of short demos on using the PDBSS application.

For the past couple of months I've been working on a project to automatically clone a three node RAC database on AIX to a single instance database from storage snapshots. The clone was to be done daily after our ETL process had completed and was used to offload reporting as well as other purposes. Initially I thought this would be quite straightforward having done clones using RMAN before. How hard could it be? The procedure to clone the database is summarized as follows: 1. Generate controlfile  creation script 2. Identify cloned LUNS 3. Rename cloned disk groups e.g. DG_DATA -> DG_DATA_CLONE 4. Mount cloned disk groups 5. Modify/Create pfile or use existing pfile for clone 6. Setup environment variables for clone 7. Create audit directories for clone 8. Startup clone instance in nomount mode and re-create controlfile from script 9. Recover clone database (Apply archivelogs from source DB) 10. Open database with resetlogs 11. Rename database using NID ...

Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) has now become a buzzword in the IT industry. Organizations are starting to r ealize the benefits of database as a service thanks to the ubiquity of "The Cloud". Companies relying on Oracle databases for managing their data can also get on the DBaaS fast track thanks to Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c. Using EM12c you can enable self-service and rapid provisioning of Oracle databases and enjoy all the benefits (well most) of Cloud computing.  EM12c supports both IaaS and PaaS models. These are also tightly integrated with Oracle VM Server along with their engineered systems including Oracle Exadata Database Machine. Setting up and configuring DBaaS requires several steps. While these are well-documented , it seems like a daunting task for those who are unfamiliar with process. A list of steps required to setup DBaaS include the following: ■Create Roles and Users ■Setup Privilege Delegation ■Add Hosts ■Configure Software Lib...

This is a quick note on some useful EMCLI commands for enabling and managing Pluggable Database-as-a-Service (PDBaaS). Get Paas Zone details emcli get_paas_zone_detail -name="DBA_Test_Zone"   Name                               DBA_Test_Zone   Named Credentials                NC_HOST_2012-10-20-160312   Number of Hosts                  5   Roles                            CLOUD_DBA   Maximum Memory Allocation (%)    90   Maximum CPU Utilization (%)      8 0 Update PaaS zone placement policy constraints ...

Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c allows us to customize the page that self service users see when logging in instead of the usual EM Console login page. This is useful for Cloud Providers who offer private cloud services to their clients. With just a few small steps you can have your own customized login  page. Enable the SSA login page $ emctl set property -name oracle.sysman.ssa.logon.ssa_oms -value true Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 2 Copyright (c) 1996, 2012 Oracle Corporation.   All rights reserved. SYSMAN password: Property oracle.sysman.ssa.logon.ssa_oms for oms oms.example.com:4889_Management_Service has been set to value true OMS restart is required to reflect the new property value Set a custom alternate text message for the Cloud Provider on the login page.  $ emctl set property -name oracle.sysman.ssa.logon.cloud_provider_alt_text -value "Nelson Cloud Provider" Oracle Enterprise Manag...

Disclaimer: The steps described in this post have only been tested in a lab environment. Verify that your organization's security policy isn't being violated when doing any of these steps. Twitter is a public social networking platform and has inherent security risks. I will not accept responsibility if you perform this in your production environment. Many applications built in the past couple of years have integrated social networking widgets (useful or not) to connect a social world via Twitter, Facebook, Google+ etc. However, most enterprise applications still rely on email as the primary notification method. Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c allows us to send notifications for incidents, events, jobs out of the box via email. In addition, EM12c supports advanced notification methods including OS scripts, PL/SQL scripts and SNMP traps. For the complete description of Notification Methods you can read the chapter in the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control...