Tag Archives: Engineered Systems

Exadata X8M, Workshop

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When Exadata X8M was released during the last Open World I made one post about the technical details about it. You can check it here: Exadata X8M (this post received some good shares and reviews). If you read it, you can see that I focused in more internal details (like torn blocks, one side path, two sides read/writes, and others), that differ from the normal analyses for Exadata X8M.

But recently I was invited by Oracle to participate exclusive workshop about Exadata X8M and I needed to share some details that picked me up. The workshop was done directly from Oracle Solution Center in Santa Clara Campus (it is an amazing place that I had an opportunity to visit in 2015, and have a rich history – if you have the opportunity, visit), and cover some technical details and with the hands-on part.

Unfortunately, I can’t share everything (I even don’t know if I can share something), but see the info below.

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ZDLRA, Manual Clone to Tape

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In my previous post, I showed how the clone to tape occurs for ZDLRA. But as explained, the clones occur through the scheduler and follow some rules. For full backup, as an example, it clones the last available.

But sometimes,  it is needed to call the clone for some specific backup, maybe to do long-term storage to follow some regimentation/law. And if we leverage this for the clone, jobs can maybe take to long, or clone more that you need.

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ZDLRA, OSB and Clone to Tape

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As you saw in my last post, the configuration to enable clone to tape for ZDLRA it is not complicated, but you need to take care of some details to avoid errors. Besides that, ZDLRA relies on OSB to do that (when configured with native tape support) and this has some details that you need to be aware of.

In this post, I will show how the clone to tape works for ZDLRA. And how you can check some details about OSB.

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ZDLRA, Configuring Tape Library

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With ZDLRA you can clone your backups to tape using two ways. The first is using third-party software and the second is using Oracle Secure Backup (OSB). This integration from ZDLRA and OSB is the native way to do that.

Cloning backups to tape will help to offload backups from ZDLRA (reducing the space usage if you need to sustain long recovery windows), and add another layer of protection (since you can put tapes in a third site).

Here I will show how easy is to configure the OSB backup and how to integrate it into your backup policy.

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19c Grid Infrastructure Upgrade

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Upgrade GRID infrastructure is one activity that usually is postponed because it involves a sensible area that, when not works, causes big downtime until be fixed. But, in the last versions, it is not a complicated task and if you follow the basic rules, it works without problems.

Here I will show a little example of how to upgrade the GI from 18.6.0 to 19.5. The steps below were executed at Exadata running version 19.2.7.0.0.191012 and GI 18.6.0.0, but can be done in every environment that supports Oracle GI.

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ZDLRA, Protection Policies

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For ZDLRA the protection policies have a significant role in the appliance management, but not just that, for the architecture design too. And usually (and unfortunately) policies do not take a lot of attention as deserved.

To create a good ZDLRA design, and avoid future problems, it is important to understand all the requirements for the protection policies and all the impacts. You can check the official documentation for this, but I will explain deeply the details that can pass without you notice them in the documentation.

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ZDLRA, Virtual Private Catalog User – VPC

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The Virtual Private Catalog (VPC) user is a key piece for a good ZDLRA architecture design. The detail is not how to create it, but how to correctly integrate it in your design, and this is more important if you have replicated ZDLRA or using Real-Time redo transport.

Here I will show and discuss VPC implications for your architecture design when deploying ZDLRA. Even for a complete and new implementation (together with database) or adding ZDLRA at your already running environment. All points here try to show some perspectives and key points that can help you to correct use and define VPC’s.

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ZDLRA, Webinar

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On 18/Dec/2019 I presented a webinar about ZDLRA: Understanding ZDLRA. This was done through the Luxembourg Oracle User Group (LUXOUG).

In this webinar, I covered some details about what it is, and some features that are part of ZDLRA. Besides that, I showed internals details about how it stores and indexes the backups. 

If you lose it, you can watch now. It is free. Just check these two links:

You can download the presentation here too: Understanding ZDLRA.

Fell free to follow my website and check more details for ZDLRA and other posts about EXADATA, MAA, and Oracle.

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Exadata, Missing Metric

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Understand metrics for Exadata Storage Server is important to understand how all the software features are being used and all the details from that. Here I will discuss one case where the FC_IO_BY_R_SEC metric can show not precise values. And I will discuss one missing metric that can save a lot.

If you have doubts about metrics, you can check my post about metrics, it was an introduction, but cover some aspects of how to read and use it. You can check my other post where I show how to use metric DB_FC_IO_BY_SEC to identify database problems that can be hidden when checking only from the database side.

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Exadata, Understanding Metrics

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Metrics for Exadata deliver to you one way to deeply see, and understand, what it is happening for Exadata Storage Server and Exadata Software. Understand it is fundamental to identify and solve problems that can be hidden (or even unsee) from the database side. In this post, I will explain details about these metrics and what you can do using them.

My last article about Exadata Storage Server metrics was about one example of how to use them to identify problems that do not appear in the database side. In that post, I showed how I used the metric DB_FC_IO_BY_SEC to identify bad queries.

The point for Exadata (that I made in that article), is that most of the time, Exadata is so powerful that bad statements are handled without a problem because of the features that exist (flashcache, smartio, and others). But another point is that usually, Exadata is a high consolidated environment, where you “consolidate” a lot of databases and it is normal that some of them have different workloads and needs. Using metrics can help you to do a fine tune of your environment, but besides that, it delivers to you one way to check and control everything that’s happening.

In this post, I will not explain each metric one by one, but guide you to understand metrics and some interesting and important details about them.

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