Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Oracle OpenWorld 2014

This year has passed by faster than I would have liked.  If you can tell by the sparatic posting in my blog.  But yet again, Oracle OpenWorld 2014 is upon us.  This the largest gathering of Oracle professionals in the world held every year in San Francisco, CA.

I have been selected to present twice, which is really exciting.  The first session is in conjunction with my favorite user group IOUG.  For those not familure, user groups are external organizations not run by Oracle, that have independent leaders, and are focused on helping their members through leraning, sharing, mentoring, and networking.  The IOUG also provides access to Oracle internal resourcses through it's Special Interest Groups or SiG's.  The SIG range from hardware to software for Oracle and provides a voice for it's members to sway Oracle product and support.

So back to my presentations:

Sunday, Sep 28, 10:00 AM - 10:45 AM PDT- Moscone South - 308

In this session I'll be joined by a panel of Oracle experts reconized in the industry and by Oracle through their ACE program; Kirby McCord, Charles Kim, Kai Yu, and Tariq Farooq.  We will be doing a panel discussion or debate on modern infrastructuer architecture.  What if you could build your data center from scratch?  Would you go all cloud?  How about engineered systems?  Maybe low cost commodity hardware and virtulization?  
This will be a condensed version of the two hour session we did at Collaborate (the user group conference), see my previous post about that session.  Bring your questions and lets get the conversation started.

The second session is in conjunction with Oracle

Tuesday, Sep 30, 3:45 PM - 4:30 PM PDT - Moscone South - 270

Here again I'll be on a panel joined by fellow users of the Exalogic platform discussion our experineces with running Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) on Oracle Engineered systems.  Specifically we will be talking about the impact on system reliability.  Hear from existing customers on the Exalogic platform, how they have adopted the engineered system into their application ecosystem.

Through conferences and user groups I have had the pleasure to meet many of the experts in the field and work with them on volunteer opportunities.  I'm excited to be at OpenWorld again, and I look forward to seeing you there.

Friday, September 12, 2014

Oracle Database backups, OEM Cloud Control, and LDAP

So I need to make more of a habit out of posting short blogs every week.  So this week I'm putting out a little tidbit that we discovered this week.

Our environment is a new Exadata X4-2 and we were trying to configure database backups through Oracle Enterprise Manger Cloud Control (OEMCC).  This is a standard backup job scheduled / setup through the database management pages in OEMCC, and is not really unique to Exadata.  But what we ran into is partial to Exadata and partial to just OEMCC.

As with many large corporations, users and passwords for our environment are stored in LDAP.  In general this is transparent to all applications.  Well there are a few exceptions, and this really gets into some low level details on how Linux security (specifically PAM in this case) and applications like OEMCC interact.

While setting up the jobs in OEMCC and trying to test the backup using OS credentials we kept receiving invalid password errors.  We then worked to verify the password from the OS level, and found that it worked fine.   So clearly this was a standard error message, not specific to the real problem.

Thanks to our team we found two specific My Oracle Support (MOS) notes that resolved this issue:

  • Error 'incorrect password' reports when run command su after inputting correct password on exadata server (Doc ID 1460921.1)
  • How to Configure the Enterprise Management Agent Host Credentials for PAM and LDAP (Doc ID 422073.1)
Both of these changes were made, and then our backup jobs were working fine.

A few notes on the document 422073.1 which is slightly vague on the PAM setup / changes for the OEM Agent.  Our systems worked by using the RedHat version of the /etc/pam.d/emagent file such as this:

#%PAM­1.0
auth   required  pam_ldap.so 
account   required  pam_ldap.so 
password  required  pam_ldap.so 
session   required  pam_ldap.so

And the update to the agent commonenv file, we used the lib64 version of the pam library located here: /lib64/libpam.so.0

We did not need to install the pam-devel rpm as the note mentioned, we just used the above libpam.so.0 that was installed with the normal pam rpm.

Another interesting feature of the Oracle eco system.

Gary

Sunday, July 27, 2014

Exalogic Elastic Cloud Virtual + Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c

Ok, so now for a little bit more technical post.  I'm currently getting the opportunity to work with a lot of new (or newer) Oracle technology.  One of these is an Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud - virtual of course.

This system has a lot of built in technology utilizing Oracle Virtual Machine (OVM) which requires Oracle Virtual Machine Manager (OVMM) console, and Oracle Enterprise Manager Operations Center (EMOC).  All of this will be pre-installed and configured with your Virtual edition of the Exalogic.  But now what if you want to integrate this with Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control (OEMCC or just OEM). or how do I get my EECV to work with OEMCC?

(Ok slight pause while we catch our breath from all of these acronyms)

So there are instructions in the OEMCC manual "Oracle® Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Managing and Monitoring an Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud Machine"

Donald Forbes has a ok blog post on Exalogic with OEM.

But overall I found these to be confusing, unorganized, and hard to follow.
So I won't try to go through all the details, but I will at least try to organize the instructions some.

  1. You need to have OEMCC installed.  This is kind of a no-duh statement, but the manual go over it in detail for some reason.
  2. You need the following plug-in's installed in OEMCC
    1. Oracle Virtualization 
    2. Exalogic Elastic Cloud Infrastructure 
    3. Oracle ZFS Storage Appliances
  3. You need to install a OEMCC Agent on the management vServer of you Exalogic system (this is the server that hosts the EMOC URL)
  4. Deploy the above three plug-in's to the OEMCC agent on your EMOC vServer
  5. Import security certificates for EMOC and OVMM into your OEMCC Agent on your EMOC vServer
  6. Setup OVMM to not be administered by OEMCC due to the usage of EMOC (this is very tricky, and involves directly executing java commands into the OVMM).  Be sure to read the instructions and review the MOS note: " How To Configure Oracle Virtual Machine Manager (OVMM) for read-only access by Enterprise Manager Cloud Control (Doc ID 1533415.1)"
  7. In OEMCC, discover the ZFS storage appliance, only the first storage head that is the active needs to be discovered.
  8. In OEMCC, discover the Exalogic Elastic Cloud (this is done by having OEMCC talk to EMOC)
  9. In OEMCC, discover the OVMM
If all goes right you will have a pretty visual of a Exalogic rack in your OEMCC and access to view vServers and other information on the systems.  Then you can work on the many setups of metric thresholds, notification rules, and the general benefits of OEMCC.

Good Luck, not a task for the faint of heart.
Gary

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Collaborate 14 - reflections

Sorry this is a little latter to publish than I wanted.  It has been a very busy month with lots of travel.  

Another year of Collaborate has passed, yet again I meet many new people.  Experienced great in person learning from the experts spanning the fields of engineered systems, database, PL/SQL development, cloud, and more.  It was a great week, and a big thank you to all the speakers, volunteers, and staff that helped make everything work so well.  Thanks to everyone at IOUG!
I'd like to say thank you to everyone that attended my session on infrastructure architecture, session 507 "You Bet Your Datacenter".  We had a great participation from our in-person and on-line audiences.  Without you, this session never could have worked.  Of course, the session would have been nothing without the panel members, my extreme gratitude goes out to Tariq Farooq, Kirby McCord, Arup Nanda, and Kai Yu.

So for those of you that missed the session, the goal was to have a high level conversation about infrastructure architecture.  Daily in our jobs we are influenced if not dictated by the infrastructure and architecture choices made by our organizations.  Some of these are strategic decisions, some are living with history. 

Since it is hard to abstract these discussions from our day to day realities, I created an artificial company that was used for our discussion, and our panel played four possible Chief Technology Officer (CTO) with different plans for the company.

Out CTO's had a mixture of engineered systems, virtualization and external cloud.  Although these sound simple, common, maybe guessable?  But the reality is much more complex.  Our CTO's all had virtual servers, some utilizing commodity hardware, others using purely engineered systems.   Some pushed heavily into externally hosted applications, but all had moved to externally hosted basic services like email.  Three of the CTO's kept all databases separate on either engineered systems or non-virtualized commodity hardware.

So what did our attendees want to discuss?  Lots of great questions.
Is cloud model sustainable over time, vs one time cash infusion?
Our fake company was going through a major change, a one time cash infusion to completely remake the IT infrastructure from legacy systems.  Externally hosted cloud is a on-going monthly cost, basically for the life of the company.  The short answer is that financial models for the company have to take this into account.  Internal hardware is generally purchased or leased, but either way there is a known cost with a beginning and a end.  Hosted applications have a continuous cost, in fact they can have a variable cost if you are paying by utilization.  This is not a good or bad thing, it's just a realization that traditional IT cost models probably need to adjust.

How do you take cost out with your model?
Most companies have ups and downs, there will be times when you will have to adjust your budget.  This is never easy, can purchased hardware just be returned?  Ending leases early is not always a great answer for multiple reasons.  For those heavily invested in external hosting, you may have fixed contract costs that can not be easily modified.  Closely watching contract terms and working with vendors including hosting companies, hardware vendors, even leasing companies is critical to costs.

How long will implementation take?
Yet another amazing question, and far from an easy one.  There is a lot of discussion about how much time it takes to bring hardware into a data center, or how quickly a cloud vendor can bring a system online.  Our panel took a good look at this question and come back with the reality that change in the company takes time.  Retraining the workforce, both in IT and the users of the systems where needed.  Migrating systems from old hardware to new, or possibly moving the data from internal to external systems.  Integrating systems, possibly connecting multiple external vendors to each other, or to internal systems.  After some good back and forth everyone seemed to agree that at least a year would be required.

What about competition between vendors and integration with cloud vendors?
This topic came up a few times in different guises and with different intentions.  First, how do you integrate between internal systems and externally hosted systems in the cloud.  Depending on what applications are internally hosted and eternally hosted this can get very complex or even costly due to telecommunication charges.  Second to this topic is if applications are hosted at multiple external vendors or clouds.  Then you have to deal with integration's across vendors, and may run into even more telecommunications costs or headaches.  Finally, what if the decision is made to migrate from one cloud vendor to another?  How do you transfer your system?  Will you have to re-architect it?  Unfortunately the cloud era is still pretty young to have many answers to these questions, but the CTO panel was split on their answers.  Some focused on the need to stay with internal systems that eliminate some of these concerns, while others noted that these concerns are being addressed and as the industry matures these concerns will be resolved.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention one CTO's heartfelt push towards both cloud and engineered systems.  Pointing towards the head winds of the market.  As he stated, the trends at least for now all point towards a heavy shift to could based externally hosted systems and specialized pre engineered infrastructure both in the virtualization spaces and data management spaces.  On that front I must agree, as history of IT has shown us change is rapid.  Identifying true winners and losers in IT trends is almost impossible.  Having knowledgeable, impassioned, and talented people is always the best way to make technical trends into business realities.  Thanks again to everyone that participated in our session, and the amazing panel.

Hope to see you next year at Collaborate 15!

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Infrastructure Architecture in the modern world

Infrastructure architecture is a vast and deep topic.  Much of our day to day lives in IT are driven by previous decisions in this area.  How do I backup my system?  What types of servers can I order for my project?  What version of OS am I allowed to use?  These are all generally dictated by the infrastructure that has been chosen in your company, data center, or IT shop.

As DBA's and application admins we ask why can't I backup my system faster?  Why can't I bring in a new server or storage technology?  Why doesn't my system work just like the powerpoint diagram the vendor gave me?

Well the answer is the architecture, the standards set forth and the technology choices we have at hand.  Often these rules and choices are dictated by much bigger business forces and decisions, not really for technical reasons.  How much investment budget does the company have at hand to change from one vendor to another?  How will the existing staff adapt to the new technology?  Will the technology work for everything in the data center?  Not just one database, one technology, or one application?

Over the years I've had conversations like this with many experienced IT professional both in my company and at conferences.  These topics are deep, and no one answer is right.  The reality depends on the company, the size of the teams, the size of the budgets, the ability for teams to understand and change, and many other factors.

This year at Collaborate I'm pleased to be working with industry experts and Oracle ACE's.  Join myself along with Tariq Farooq, Kirby McCord, Arup Nanda, and Kia Yu as we try to discuss this topic in a two hour panel session Thursday at 3:00 in Lido 3105 and also with IOUG Plug in to Vegas.

Since these topics can often get sided with the limits we have in our daily jobs, our session will use a fake company made up for the discussion.  We will talk about the options of engineered systems, virtualization, commodity hardware, and external clouds.  Why choose these architectures, and what some of the impacts on future business decisions would be.

Hope to see you there.

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Collaborate 14 #C14LV

So to say this year has been hectic would be an understatement.  But here it is April already and time once again for the IOUG, Quest, and OAUG user group conference.  I mentioned in my opening blog post that in the old days there were no separate groups to send tickets to and there were not experts to run to.  Well that was not 100% true, the experts were not generally in the same company you were.

The experts were out in the field at other companies.  There was no internet to search for them, or social sites like linked in to find them.  As a
long time member of IOUG I have always been grateful for generosity of experts that have fought their way into learning, and then share their experiences.

I've been a member of IOUG for about 17 of their 21 years, and a volunteer for the last 8.  Being a member of IOUG has allowed me to work with and meet some of the most talented people in the Oracle community.  These are not opportunities you get by just posting to a blog, or talking to people only in your company.

So get out, be involved, and be a member.

With that in mind, sorry to the IOUG staff that I'm so late with this post, it has been a hard year. For those of you I'll see over this next week at Collaborate, please say hi, please pull me aside and grab some of my time.  It's a very busy week, but do reach out, and do connect.

I'm the lead of the development track this year, so for those of you that submitted proposals, thank you.  Even if you didn't get selected, thank you for sharing and keep trying.  We have a limited number of slots and we try our best to have a diverse and talented set of speakers for our audiences.  For the 17 of you that were selected and are presenting, if I don't get a chance to say hello or thank you in person, thank you for presenting and sharing your knowledge.

I'm also the associate editor for the IOUG magazine SELECT Journal.  So for all of you that are presenting, or submitted proposals, please consider authoring an article.  We are also looking for new authors and great article ideas.  This is your opportunity to be published in a industry leading magazine, that is peer reviewed.  Like a professor getting published in a scientific journal, we take this very seriously and we appreciate every submission.

I've also been asked to help with the new Solaris Special Interest Group (SIG) in IOUG.  For those of you in the SIG, I'll see you on Thursday and we discuss what is next for the SIG and I can decide if I can help out or not.

To Arup, Tariq, Kia, and Kirby; thanks for volunteering to help with our panel discussion on Thursday.  We should have a great two hours discussion infrastructure architecture and how it impacts the business.  From cloud, to engineered systems, virtualization and commodity hardware.  I'm expecting a heated but fun discussion on the larger impact of these items, not just the marketing hype.

And for everyone else going to the conference, have fun, learn a lot and got to at least one session out of your comfort zone.  if your a developer, go to a project management meeting.  If you are a DBA, go to a developer meeting, if you are a manager, go to a DBA tuning sessions.  Learn something that you never would have learned had you not come to Collaborate 14.
See you in Vegas.

COLLABORATE 14 has 1,250+ sessions, 5,000+ top Oracle users and lots of other cool events. Join me at #C14LV! http://bit.ly/19P4l0W @ioug

So it begins

So I'm starting off my new blog, in the world of millions of blogs.  It's been a hectic year, and this initial post is somewhat late.

Let me start with a little background, I've been working with computer and IT technology my whole life, my first computer was a Tandy TRS-80 and I've been lucky enough to work with many people that have experiences that pre-date even that.  But needless to say, I grew up in computers and I come from a background of having to make everything work.  There was no separate group you sent a ticket to, or another expert to call.

In this carer I've worked with Oracle products for about 23 years now, starting with Oracle database version 6.  In the vein of database administration I've built, setup and managed almost every possible technology that is required to use a database.  Inclusive of storage, network, server, directories, operating system, backup, clients, development tools, data modeling, data transfer tools and so on.

My roles in the last 12 years have really been in the areas of infrastructure and architecture for very large environments.  Support many databases simultaneously as well as very large or heavily used databases.  This includes everything from the power to the server up to the application working and deploying change controls for code changes.  I have also spent a lot of time doing performance tuning of applications from end to end, and working in very large global corporate environment.

So what's this blog going to contain, well in general things that fit into my background.  As you can see it could be just about anything in the IT corporate world, with an emphasis on Oracle technology.  But since Oracle has over 4,000 products now, I'm sure we won't run out of things to discuss.  There will probably be the occasional mention to beer, as that is one of my favorite hobbies.  But I'll try to remain focused.

See you in the inter-webs.