Speaker: Marc Fielding, Co-speaker: Maris Elsins. Oracle Database Appliance provides a robust, highly-available, cost-effective, and surprisingly scalable platform for database as a service environment. By leveraging Oracle Enterprise Manager's self-service features, databases can be provisioned on a self-service basis to a cluster of Oracle Database Appliance machines. Discover how multiple ODA devices can be managed together to provide both high availability and incremental, cost-effective scalability. Hear real-world lessons learned from successful database consolidation implementations.

1. Database as a Service on the
Oracle Database Appliance Platform
MARC FIELDING
MARIS ELSINS

2. Marc Fielding
• Principal consultant with Pythian’s
© 2014 Pythian Confidential
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Advanced Technology Consulting
Group
• 13+ years Oracle production
systems experience starting with
Oracle 7
• Expertise in the entire enterprise
application stack
• Blogger and conference presenter
www.pythian.com/news/author/
fielding
• Occasionally on twitter: @mfild

3. Maris Elsins
Lead Database Consultant at Pythian
Located in Riga, Latvia
DBA since 2005
Frequent speaker at conferences
@MarisElsins elsins@pythian.com
© 2014 Pythian Confidential
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http://bit.ly/getMOSPatch

4. WHO IS PYTHIAN?
• 200+ leading brands trust us to keep their systems fast, up &
secure
• Utterly elite DBA & SysAdmin workforce, 9 Oracle ACEs, 2 ACE
directors, 5 Microsoft MVPs, 1 Cloudera Champion of Big Data
• Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, Netezza, Cassandra, Hadoop and
MongoDB plus UNIX SysAdmin and Apps DBA
• Big Data Services counter includes architects, R&D, data science
and operations capabilities in one easy to buy vehicle
• Industry leading DevOps implementation practice transforms
customer dev and ops strategies to compete with velocity
• Zero lock-in, utility billing model, easily blended into existing
teams
38%
Pythian has grown an average of 38% every year for
the past five years
345
Pythian employs more than 345 leading minds in
26 countries worldwide.
1997
Pythian was founded in 1997 by Paul Vallee

5. Velocity
https://www.flickr.com/photos/fun_flying/2761918512/

7. Identifying top IT performers
• Company Survey
• 14 000 companies surveyed
• 110 countries
• Completed 2014
• 40% running 500+ servers
• Source: Nicole Forsgren Velasquez, Jez Humble, Nigel
Kersten, and Gene Kim, Velocity conference, Santa Clara,
June 26, 2014

8. Top IT performers…
• Deploy changes 30x more often
• Have 8000x faster change deployments
• Experience half the deployment failure rate
• Recover from failures 12x faster
• But also
– Twice as likely to exceed profitability, market
share, productivity goals
– 50% higher market capitalization growth

9. Source: John Jenkins, Amazon.com, Velocity conference 2011

10. What we need
• Fast, frequent environment builds
• Similar to production
• Without sacrificing
– Availability
– Reliability
– Security
– Manageability

11. Tools Available

16. Why ODA is interesting?
• Oracle Engineered systems
• Single point of support
• No single point of failure
• Built for Oracle RAC
• Relatively low cost
– 60K USD list price for an ODA
– 40K USD list price for storage expansion
– Provides capacity-on-demand Licensing
• Scalable by purchasing multiple units

17. Is ODA suitable for DBaaS?
Photo by Darren Rogers (Daz) on Flickr
Photo by Lee Morley (spookman01) on Flickr

18. Is DBaaS possible on ODA? – Hardware
ODA V1 ODA X3-2 and X4-2
ODA
ODA X3-2
ODA X4-2
CPU cores
2 x 12 cores
3.06 GHz
2 x 16 cores
2.9 GHz
2 x 24 cores
2.7 GHz
RAM
2 x 96 GB
2 x 256 GB
2 x 256 GB
Shared Storage HDD
(raw)
12 TB
4.8G TB*
18 TB (36TB)
7.2G TB*
18 TB (36TB)
7.2G TB*
Shared Storage SSD
(raw)
292 GB
800 GB (1.6 TB)
800 GB (1.6 TB)
ODA provides the HW suitable
* Max Useable in +DATA
for a small-medium private cloud platform

19. Is DBaaS possible on ODA? – Software
• Oracle Appliance Kit (OAK) 12.1.2.1.0 (Nov 2014)
– Grid Infrastructure 12.1.0.2
– Database EE 12.1.0.2
– EE options: RAC, Multitenant, In-Memory, ...
– ACFS and Storage snapshots
– Oracle Linux 5.10 and Oracle VM 3.2.8
ODA provides the technology backbone
required for implementation of DBaaS

20. Is DBaaS possible on ODA? – Tools
• “oakcli” – Oracle Appliance Kit Command Line
Interface
– Deploy software to ODA
– Patch all components of ODA
– Manage ODA configuration
– Collect diagnostics information
– Create DBs
– Clone DBs (non-CDBs only)
– *Manage CPU pools
– *Create and (snap-)Clone VMs
– *Manage vdisks and vlans
“oakcli” has been developed to provide
“as a Service” management functionality

21. Is ODA suitable for DBaaS?
Hardware
Software
Tools
?
Is ODA an “out of the box”
private could platform for DBaaS
Photo by yourcottoncandyhammer (dracena) on Flickr

22. My wishes DBaaS on ODA
• Scope: Bare Metal or Virtualized platform
• Choice of DB version: 12c or 11g
• Choice of DB type: non-CDB or CDB
• Fast / snapshot based provisioning of:
– A new DB (or a PDB)
– A clone from existing DB (or a PDB)
• Production
• Development gold image
• Using the rich features of EM 12c + Cloud Management
Pack
– The self-service
– The service catalog
– Monitoring
– Chargeback (optional)

23. Challenges

24. Challenge #0
OAK 12.1.2 is a “big jump” since OAK 2.10
Release date: November 2014
MOS: Doc Id 888888.1

25. Challenge #1: The EM
• EM 12c is not ODA-aware
– ODA is just a cluster of 2 servers to EM 12c
– no EM 12c plugin for ODA (yet)
– EM 12c can’t make calls to “oakcli”
– EM 12c does not provide snap-clone feature for
PDBs on ACFS (even with Cloud MP)
– Rumors from #DOAG 2014!
• How do we implement self-service functionality?
• Can we find an alternative to EM 12c?

26. Challenge #2: Interaction with “oakcli”
• “oakcli” must be executed as root
• Passwords need to be typed in
• No Non-interactive mode
• Can we “hack” it to automate the DB provisioning?

27. Challenge #3: Customizations
• We can “hack” it! But, we don’t want to “hack” it!
• Customization is a configuration that’s not expected by
“oakcli”
• Unclear boundaries between customizations and
supported configurations when manual changes are done
(non-”oakcli”) are done. I.e.
– Create database manually (files layout)
– Create additional ACFS snapshots
– Change the DB file layout
• Possible impact?
– patching and upgrades
– stability
• Any “customization” needs to be thoroughly tested before
allowing into production (test upgrading too)
• Can affect the supportability

28. Challenges #4: DB provisioning with “oakcli”
• ODA provisions new databases using “oakcli”
• Very limited configurability, i.e.
– Non-CDB or CDB 11.2.0.2+ and 12.1.0.2
– Choice of size (memory-wise)
– Storage quota
• All non-CDBs are stored in common ACFS volumes
– Smart use of the “empty snapshot” to segregate DBs
• Each CDB is stored it’s own 3 ACFS volumes
• All CDB data files are in a single ACFS volume
– All PDBs are in the same bucket
– Snap-cloning a PDB manually, will take a snapshot of the
whole ACFS volume, which is not efficient.
– You can create additional ACFS volume for each PDB to
avoid unnecessary snapshots of CDB$ROOT

29. Challenges #5: “oakcli” snap-clones
• Only for DB 11.2.0.4 and 12.1.0.2
• Not supported for Physical standby (yet)
• Could be used to snap-clone PROD to DEV on
another ODA
• Non-CDBs
– Done by “oakcli”
– Clever use of ACFS snapshots
• CDBs
– No “oakcli” support, but SQLPlus can be used
– Inefficient ACFS layout

30. So we can’t use ODA for DBaaS?
Photo by zeitfaenger.at (kwarz) on Flickr

31. What we can do on ODA NOW!
• Schema as a Service
• Limited self service possibilities with non-CDBs
– Provisioning features provided by “oakcli”
– Administrators need to be involved
• ODA is not ready for DBaaS with PDBs
– Limited support built in “oakcli”
– Database 12c features compensates for these limitations
– Adjust storage layout to support snap-clones for PDBs
better
– One CDB per ODA (if possible) to avoid restarts for memory
re-configuration
• Self-Service
– EM 12c - not yet
– Custom built? – Too difficult, too intrusive
– Multitenant Self-Service Provisioning (MSSP)

32. Using MSSP with ODA
• “Multitenant Self-Service Provisioning”
• Currently in beta test
• Run on Apex inside CDB$ROOT
• Install into a new CDB
• Provides self-service interface for creating,
cloning, plugging and unplugging PDBs
• Supports snapshot cloning!
• Supports user quotas!
• No DB management and monitoring L

33. MSSP: Creating a PDB

34. MSSP: Creating a PDB

35. MSSP: Creating a PDB

36. MSSP: Creating a PDB

37. MSSP: Creating a PDB

38. MSSP: Cloning a PDB

39. MSSP: Cloning a PDB

40. MSSP: Cloning a PDB

41. Extending to multiple ODAs
• Benefits
– Standardized platform
– Avoiding “surprises” during configuration, patching and
upgrades
– Predictable performance and accurate estimates
• Single database is limited to running on 1 ODA
– Use Data Guard or other replication solutions to extend or
migrate between ODAs
– Use NFS to facilitate inter-ODA provisioning
• Self-service challenge
– Managing multiple ODAs from the same tool
– One MSSP instance needed per ODA
• Some manual tasks are expected
• Horizontal scaling is not possible – buy an Exadata!

42. A possible use case (1)
1. PROD runs on 12c Multitenant
2. Automated snap-clone
create pluggable database PRODSNAP from PROD snapshot copy;
3. PRODSNAP is read-only
4. Automated PDB cloning over DB link
create pluggable database DEVGOLD from PRODSNAP@PROD_ODA_PS;
5. Prepare the DEV Gold image
– Purging and cleanup
– Data masking
– Open it as read only
– Remove PRODSNAP
6. Users can clone their environments from
the DEV Gold using MSSP.
Frequent refreshing of DEVGOLD will
exhaust space quickly. Use dedicated
volume for each clone.

43. A possible use case (2)
1. PROD runs on 12c Singletenant or multitenant!!!
2. DG redo apply to the physical standby
3. The standby is continuously updated
4. Storage snapshot
– Temporarily stop redo apply
– Sharing the ACFS volume between 2 DBs
– Possible with manual ACFS snapshot
5. Create the DEVGOLD
– DBMS_PDB.RECOVER
– Plugin the PDB with nocopy
– Purging and cleanup
– Data masking
– Open it as read only
6. Users can clone their environments from the
DEVGOLD
– Does it work “create pluggable … snapshot copy”?
– Works with manual snapshots
Frequent refreshing of DEVGOLD is possible!

44. Recommendations and lessons learned
• Start small
• Set expectations for the service levels
• Review tools included with the platform
• Plan the Storage carefully
– Multiple DB vs ACFS storage snapshots
– With storage cloning, high-volume data changes
are expensive
• Controls and resource management are important
• Many out-of-the box tools are inflexible

45. Conclusions about DBaaS on ODA
• Sufficient SW and HW
• The tools are not ready yet
• Limited DBaaS capabilities at the moment
– “oakcli” for non-CDB
– “Create pluggable database .. snapshot copy” SQL for PDBs
– No ready built Self-service
• Oracle is working on improvements
– EM 12c Plugin for ODA
– Support for snap-clones from Physical Standby
– Frequent OAK releases = new features
• Flexible VM provisioning on the virtualized platform
gives hope for more flexibility around DBs in future.

46. fielding@pythian.com
elsins@pythian.com
@mfild @MarisElsins @Pythian
http://pythian.com/blog
http://is.gd/PythianFacebook
https://www.linkedin.com/company/pythian
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