Oracle Database Cloud 'How To' Webcast Series - YouTube Videos

Following is a link for a very good YouTube how to video on Oracle Cloud:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdtXkK5KBY55SLBlD39fS8530_QJB8d2f

It includes following videos:

• Choosing the Right Oracle Database Cloud Service

• Oracle Database Cloud Service Deployment Choices

• Oracle RAC on Oracle Database Cloud Services

• Oracle RAC on Oracle Database Cloud Bare Metal Services

• Oracle Database Cloud Services Security (Part 1)

• Oracle Database Cloud Services Security (Part 2)

• Service Management using the Cloud Console

• Enterprise Manager Cloud Control

• Application and Database Migration to Oracle Cloud

• Database Creation from Cloud Backup

• Oracle Database Backup Service Overview

• Pluggable Databases on Oracle Cloud

• Multitenant Application Containers

No more wait - Oracle Database 12c Release 2 is available everywhere (not only on the cloud)!

On March 1, 2017,  Oracle Database 12c Release 2 became fully available (not only on the Cloud). Here is the link for download:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/enterprise-edition/downloads/index.html

The following is the blog link from Maria Colgan about it:

https://sqlmaria.com/2017/03/01/oracle-database-12c-release-2-available-everywhere/

Also, you can check the blog from Tim Hall about it:

https://oracle-base.com/articles/12c/oracle-db-12cr2-installation-on-oracle-linux-6-and-7

So, you can try and play it on your own box.

Enjoy!

Oracle Database 12.2 available now on Oracle Cloud

At the beginning of this month (November), Oracle Database 12c Release 2 (12.2.0.1) was finally available through DBassS on the Oracle Cloud after its first offering as Exadata Express Service in September. Oracle also released 12.2 documentation. 

The ORACLE-BASE Blog from Tim Hall also provided a bit more detail about this new release. You can also check Marco Gralike's blog to get first impression of  Oracle 12.2.0.1 on the cloud.

Oracle Database 12.2 New Features

As I said in my previous blog, at OOW2016 Oracle made clear statement -  "the latest release Oracle 12.2 was officially announced to be first made available in the cloud. " The first available platform is Exadata Express Cloud Service.With this service, the customer can get Oracle Database 12c Release 2 Enterprise Edition plus options running on Exadata in Oracle Cloud.

If you have neither joined Oracle 12.2 beta program nor used Exadata Express Cloud Service, you can at least learn about Oracle 12.2.

Here are some publicly available documents from Oracle:

Database 12.2 New Features Guide – https://docs.oracle.com/cloud/latest/exadataexpress-cloud/CSDBF/toc.htm

Using Oracle Database Exadata Express Cloud Service – https://docs.oracle.com/cloud/latest/exadataexpress-cloud/CSDBP/toc.htm

Oracle runs to Cloud, where will DBA go? (3)

If you are an Oracle DBA (at least Oracle DBA in a typical company with IT department), can you think of your responsibilities?

You can easily Google the term "typical Oracle DBA works" and will get tons of results. I just pick up one from the top search result. From its "Oracle DBA Responsibilities" list, you will find lots of works done by Oracle DBA is to "create", "maintain", "install", "backup", "support" Oracle databases. I will also add "configure", "patch", "upgrade", etc.

Another chart below can also demonstrate the current "Top DBA Challenges" although the survey was a little bit old.

So, in the coming cloud era, what will be changed for the role of DBA? As said in "Cloud Considerations for DBAs", cloud "can alleviate the need for the administrator to install, configure, and provision the database. This enables the database to scale as needed." In other words, Oracle DBA will work less on the administration of Oracle database, at least the typical works of Oracle DBA.

Does it mean the companies will not need any Oracle DBAs if they build Oracle on the cloud?

About 5 years ago, Oracle Guru Julian Dontcheff already wrote an article - The role of the DBA in the Private Database Cloud.  His point is "The cloud will bring more challenges and need for DBA work to the enterprise."

Another recent article - Key Challenges Facing the Modern Database Administrator from Gerardo Dada, Vice President, Database Product Marketing and Strategy, SolarWinds gave more clear answers to the above question: "the cloud, DevOps, and other shifts in technology are making the entire IT department more application-focused. In the end, applications are what matters to the business and to end users. This means DBAs are being held accountable for application performance, not only database performance."

In the end, what will you do as an Oracle DBA in the cloud era? Oracle has some answers for you too.

When moving to the Oracle Cloud, Oracle DBA will need to understand:

• The overall architecture of the Oracle Database Cloud,
• How to migrate to the cloud,
• How to create an instance,
• How to configure connections,
• How to back up and recover databases in the cloud,
• How to use Cloud DBA tools.

For sure, the above list is not enough. As an Oracle DBA, your goal is to deliver better application performance (yes, application performance). So you will:

• Be proactive and align behind end-user experience as a shared objective across the entire IT organization by looking at application performance and the impact that the database has on it continuously, not only when it becomes a major problem.
• Measure performance based not on an infrastructure resources perspective, but on end-user wait times. Wait-time analysis gives DBAs a view into what end-users are waiting for and what the database is waiting for, providing clear visibility into bottlenecks.
• Keep the stability of databases just as other infrastructure teams or cloud providers striving on stabilizing their networks, hardware, software, etc.

Oracle runs to Cloud, where will DBA go? DevDBA. I replace the "Ops" to DBA in the popular word "DevOps". 

Oracle runs to Cloud, where will DBA go? (1)

Although I didn't attend the Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco last year, I could still hear that word "CLOUD" loud and clear. On December 2, 2015, I joined the Oracle Cloud Day in Toronto.

As Larry posted in his slide, 2015 was "A Year of Innovation in the Cloud".

• Oracle goes all in on cloud services by ComputerWorld

• Yes, Oracle is finally serious about the cloud by InfoWorld

In 2015, Oracle was all about cloud. How about 2016?

• Oracle Exec: All Our Apps Will Be Cloud Apps by Fortune

• Oracle’s New Service Turns Cloud Computing ‘Inside-Out’ by The Wall Street Journal

On April 11, Larry Ellison talked with CFOs and HR leaders on the Virtuous Circle of Cloud Innovation in Chicago.

The Oracle OpenWorld 2016 is still months away, I can almost be certain it will be almost if not all about cloud.

If Oracle runs full speed to Cloud, what will Oracle DBAs need to prepare?

Oracle OpenWorld 2014 Summary 1 - General

Oracle OpenWorld 2014 is behind us.  It ran from September 28 to October 2. According to Oracle information, there were more than 60,000 attendees from around the world.

Before the memories about the OOW14 become blurred, I tried to summarize what I learned from the event. In general, the theme of this year OOW was about Big Data on the Cloud or Cloud over the Big Data.

Cloud

As I already predicted in my previous post before the event, in his opening keynote speech on Sunday (Sept.28), Oracle Executive Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison spent most of time talking about Oracle cloud achievements and strategies. Oracle's cloud focus on PaaS and SaaS, which can help Oracle reach more small and mid-size companies and compete with other service providers such as IBM, Google and Saleforce.com.

Oracle has been working very hard to roll out an extensive set of PaaS services in recent years. Oracle is also making Oracle Database 12c as a cloud service (or called DBaaS). As Larry said, its "ISVs have been waiting for this" and its" customers have been waiting for this". Larry also claimed that 19 out of 20 largest SaaS products run on the Oracle platform except Workdays.

Regarding SaaS, Larry claimed Oracle has "the largest portfolio of applications in the cloud of anybody". while you were listening Larry's strong voice about Oracle's SaaS and criticism against its competitors such as Saleforce.com and SAP, your eyes couldn't catch all those names of cloud based applications in the slides showing on the huge screens behind him.

Overall, Ellison emphasized the extent of Oracle’s cloud infrastructure, with 30,000 computers and 400 petabytes of data and supporting 62 million users a day. “Our cloud is bigger than people think, and it’s going to get a lot bigger,” Ellison predicted. “Our cloud strategy has been about building and buying.” Larry also told us.

Big Data

I did a summary about Oracle and Big Data back to 2013. But when people talk about Big Data, they usually think about companies like MapR, Splunk, cloudera, Hortonworks and MongoDB and don't think that Big Data can really work hand-in-hand with relational database. Oracle has been definitely working hard to make Big Data more accessible to its new and old customers and most of them have used Oracle relational databases. By introducing Oracle Big Data SQL, people can create external tables over Hadoop and NoSQL data stores and write SQL against them. So non-relational data can be accessed from within Oracle database using standard Oracle SQL. Oracle also expands its smart scan mechanism (used in Exadata Storage layer) into Big Data Appliance - pre-process data on the Hadoop cluster and move only the relevant data from Big Data world for further processing.

As an Oracle DBA, you will not have any excuses to shy away from Big Data by saying something like that you don't know Hadoop, MapReduce, etc. Oracle has made your work on Big Data much easier by using your existing SQL skills. Oracle can also help itself expand market share in Big Data market since those traditional Oracle DBAs normally have some powers on the decision to buy Big Data products.


Besides the cloud and Big Data, In-Memory option for Oracle 12c (available on 12.1.0.2, I will write post separately) was hot topic. It was not a new announcement in this year's OOW, but there were many keynotes and sessions talking about it.


Overall, Oracle OpenWorld 2014 brought Cloud and Big Data to all attendees' attention. Oracle is working hard on them, so should you.

Oracle Database Cloud Service vs. Aliyun RDS

Since I have known (learned)  what Larry is going to talk about, I started to search the information about Oracle Database Cloud Service (ODCS).

From Oracle website about ODCS, "Oracle Cloud provides several Oracle Database offerings giving you the option of a single schema based service, or a virtual machine with a fully configured, running Oracle Database instance". The last option (below) is the "future direction", which Oracle will sell the most.

Database as a Service - Managed

• Essential management by Oracle
• Complete access to dedicated Oracle Database instance
• Full SQL*Net access
• Oracle managed backup with point-in-time recovery
• Oracle managed patching and upgrades

Recently a company named Alibaba is very hot so his founder Jack Ma.  By comparing Oracle's ODCS with Aliyun  (Alibaba's company) RDS (Relational Database Service), they are pretty much same in term of their offerings. The main difference right now is that Aliyun RDS only supports MySQL and MS SQLServer.

With those money getting from largest IPO in the history, Jack Ma can make the RDS business bigger and bigger in China and then compete with Oracle and Amazon directly outside China.

Larry, do you know Jack?