Grid DBA

Last week I attended my very first Kscope event in New Orleans. Kscope is an annual ODTUG event originally geared towards Oracle database development but has expanded to include other areas such ADF, Essbase, EPM, BI etc. I was accepted as a speaker to present in the "The Developer's Toolbox" category where I presented on "SQL Developer for DBAs". Honestly, I had high expectations going to Kscope. I remember seeing tweets from users on last year's conference and felt a bit left out based on the buzz from some of the attendees. Fortunately, the conference lived up to the expectations. It was well organized and the events flowed without a hitch. It wasn't  as crowded as other user conferences I've attended such as OpenWorld or Collaborate - which is a good thing. The smaller size makes it more intimate and easier for attendees to network with each other. I met up with colleagues from past events as well as met new ones within my social media network...

The 20th anniversary of the Collaborate IOUG Forum will be held this year in Denver Colorado from April 7 to 11. This will be my second year attending and presenting at Collaborate. I am really looking forward to networking with peers and friends - especially those in my social media community who I interact with on a daily basis. This year I will be particularly busy with presenting two sessions and doing hosting duties for a couple of RAC SIG sessions. You can catch me at one of the sessions below. Date Start Time End Time Session ID Session Details Product Line Track 4/8/13 3:45 PM 4:45 PM 539 RAC Experts Panel Oracle Database, Real Application Clusters Database 4/9/13 10:45 AM 11:45 AM 154 Oracle Database Appliance Customer Panel Oracle Database, Real Application Clusters Engineered Systems 4/9/13 4:30 PM 5:30 PM 326 Configuring Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c for High Availability Oracle Enterprise Manager C...

Recently I was running some tests in my lab environment consisting of two Oracle 11.2.0.3 databases on separate RHEL 6.2 VMs. The databases were configured in a Data Guard configuration and used ASM as storage. However, I ran into an issue where my standby database was becoming out of sync with the primary database because the standby was out of disk space. At the time I couldn't request additional storage for my standby (that's what happens when you work at 1:00 am while everyone works normal hours) and I needed to complete my testing. The standby server had some NFS mounted shares that had plenty of space however. This is where social interaction is of benefit because I can recall having several discussions with fellow colleagues on twitter about choosing to use NFS as ASM devices and under what conditions one would choose such a route. Yury also wrote up a blog  post about it. This seemed like a good opportunity to test it out. Only this time I will be mixing ASM block de...

Thanks to @BrianPardy for tweeting the availability of the first patch set update for Oracle Enterprise Manager 12.1.0.2.0. Brian also blogged about it. The PSU Readme lists quite a number of bugs fixed in the PSU. Surprisingly the application of the patch is quite easy. I applied it to my 12.1.0.2.0 lab environment without any issues. Just to test for real application on test and production servers. Download the patch  14840279  from My Oracle Support to your OMS server. Extract the zip file Make sure opatch is in your PATH. [oracle@oem3 14840279]$ which opatch /usr/bin/which: no opatch in (/u01/app/oracle/Middleware/oms/bin:/usr/lib64/qt-3.3/bin:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/home/oracle/bin) [oracle@oem3 14840279]$ export PATH=$OMS_HOME/OPatch:$PATH [oracle@oem3 14840279]$ which opatch /u01/app/oracle/Middleware/oms/OPatch/opatch  Set your ORACLE_HOME environment variable to your OMS Home. [oracle@oem3 14840279]$ echo ...

The latest release of Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c (12.1.0.2) is accompanied by a Database template pre-configured for the repository. I was quite pleased to see this addition, since installing Enterprise Manager required some upfront footwork in configuring the database to be used as the repository. Personally, I was a bit annoyed every time the installer complained about parameters that it needed changed on the repository database during installation  (though some we not mandatory during installation). As a pre-requisite to using the template you should have a software-only installation of a Oracle 11.2.0.3 RDBMS software. The installation instructions warn that the template is suitable for a Simple Install. However you may also use it as a basis of an Advanced Installation. You can read the rest of the instructions here . Note: The instructions in the documentation has a screenshot of a Oracle Database 12c DBCA instead of the 11.2.0.3 DBCA. I suspect this...

In theme with my Collaborate 12 presentation - Learning Oracle with Oracle VM VirtualBox , I've decided to put a quick post together on using VirtualBox to learn Oracle VM Server 3.1. A VM within a VM you say? Reminds me of Inception. But yes it works! I've been wanting to learn/play with Oracle VM Server for some time now. However, due to the bare metal requirements of the hypervisor I've been unable/unwilling to procure a dedicated machine for such a hobby.  Previous attempts at installing OVM Server on VirtualBox also failed and posts by other users on several forums have also confirmed similar problems. I must say big thank to my friend @ Yuri for providing me access to his OVM Server all the way in Australia to help expose me to the technology. However, not having physical access limits the learning experience.  Wim Coekaerts tweeted about Oracle VM Manager and Server 3.1 was now available as VirtualBox templates (appliances). Now this kind of stuff makes me fe...

IOUG Collaborate 12 has come and gone and here I am two months letter without an update. As the saying goes -  better late than never. This was my first time at Collaborate and presenting to a user group. It was a very personal and professionally gratifying experience. My quick tip session (30 minutes) about RAC/Clusterware Diagnostic Tools went very well for a rookie. I received some great feedback. However, the session proved to be too short to cover the scope of the content and I'm working on preparing an extended version for anyone interested. My second presentation on Learning Oracle with Oracle VM VirtualBox was not as I expected. Maybe it was because of the massive room that I presented in - less intimate and very intimidating. Nevertheless, it was an OK presentation and I had a couple of very engaged attendees who had many questions at the end of the session. Questions are good - in my opinion. In addition to the my sessions, I found some time to attend others. A few of t...