Latest Presentation: Managing Exadata with Enterprise Manager 12c

Friends,

Please see the latest presentation I have uploaded on:

Managing Exadata with Enterprise Manager 12c

http://www.mediafire.com/file/4ykp0mmu75xzceq/Managing_Exadata_with_Enterprise_Manager_12c.pdf

Alternative site for download: http://ge.tt/8ZJ9oQ9?c

I have updated this with the latest pack name changes and more slides as well so this is the most upto date presentation on this topic. Original presentation was by Deba Chatterjee and Mark Ramacher in Oracle Open World, October 2011.

Exadata DBAs will understand from this. that their machines can be managed very well with the latest Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control released recently by Oracle on October 3^rd 2011.

Packs and Options included in this presentation:

• Diagnostics/Tuning Packs

• Lifecycle Management Pack (3 EM11g packs combined in EM12c)

• Cloud Management Pack (Brand-new in EM12c)

• Data Masking Pack

• Test Data Management Pack (Brand-new in EM12c)

• Real Application Testing (RAT) DB EE Option

Using Cloud Control 12c, the client will be able to see an integrated view of all the hardware and software in the Exadata machine, with a schematic of storage cells, compute nodes and switches, and a software/system view of database systems/clusters. The client can inspect performance/availability /usage by databases /services/clusters and get software alerts on the database, cluster and ASM, as well as alerts on all hardware components. The Infiniband network and switches, so important for Exadata can be fully monitored with alerts, performance metrics and configuration standards. Storage cells can be monitored and also administered via Cloud Control. All storage cells in a database are automatically placed in a group, and you can administer the cells at the group level.

The performance of the RAC databases on Exadata can be fine tuned using the Diagnostics and Tuning pack capabilities of Enterprise Manager, these include the AWR repository, the ADDM diagnostics engine, and the SQL Tuning and SQL Access advisors. The database performance page is now Exadata aware with the performance graphs showing cell offload efficiency and cell smart scan, which are extremely powerful Exadata specific features. IO activity of other databases sharing the same storage can be examined. Exadata “smart scan” relevant info is also displayed on Real-time SQL monitoring and other SQL pages. There is also a Exadata System health page for a quick overview of availability across different time periods.

The newly-combined Lifecycle Management pack has the very useful capabilities of Configuration Management, Provisioning and Patch Automation, and Change Management. The Configuration management inventory has the version summary of all Exadata components, with the ability to compare configurations – useful in trouble shooting and to enforce configuration standards. The Patch Automation capabilities can be used to patch the multiple RAC database nodes and also the OS – a real need for automation when there are so many nodes, and the Change Management capabilities of the Lifecycle Management pack can be used to seamlessly propagate database schema changes across development, test and production databases. And, optionally, the Cloud Management pack for database lets you set up an internal DbaaS (Database as a service) cloud, with full self-service, metering and chargeback capabilities. The Cloud capabilities also include IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) if using Oracle VM server pools, or, if using Exalogic servers, the Cloud Management pack for Fusion Middleware lets you set up PaaS (Platform as a service).

In this presentation we also discuss the Test Data Management pack, brand new in Enterprise Manager 12c, that lets you create test or development databases with a relationally intact fraction of the production data. This reduces the storage overhead for multiple test and development copies of large databases, and is very useful in real life situations.

Enjoy the world of Managing Exadata with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control!!

As of January 2012, this presentation has 1100+ downloads on mediafire and ge.tt on the internet.

Regards,

Porus.

Applying database and CRS patches on Exadata

A friend asked: "Could you share what is the best practise for appling rolling patches

on database, grid infrastructure and Storage cells on EXADATA environment, we

are using half rack node in our environment?"

My reply:

You can have a look at Enterprise Manager's Provisioning and Patch Automation pack,

which can automate the application of rolling patchs on database and Grid Infrastructure.

It is worthwhile to spend a few extra dollars on Enterprise Manager packs to aid

with managment of complicated Exadata machines - and EM managment of Exadata is

going to get better and better! Get the customer to agree on the management

software cost (EM). It will definitely help them in the long run. EM will be

able to centrally manage Exadata machines in the organization, find performance

issues, patch and upgrade the database, etc.

In reality, CRS/RAC patching is used extensively by Enterprise Manager Grid Control customers for RAC databases. We have had good success stories in the real world. In Exadata, there are mostly 8 nodes in the RAC database so It makes sense to use the automated patch deployment procedures in the Provisioning and Patch automation pack of Grid Control when we can have rolling patch upgrades automatically handled by the deployment procedure. It is not rocket science.

Remember to apply the OMS cumulative patches first, of course. Core DBAs should remember that this is a way to ease their manual work and their late nights, especially if CPU/PSU patches are to be applied every three months (as per Oracle recommendations) to the RAC databases. Fundamentally, give it a whirl. If the pre-reqs pass, the patching will work. If not, you can either fix the issues or do the patching manually if you prefer.

Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Grid Control simplifies RAC management in Oracle Exadata V2

In Oracle Database 11g Release 2, which is the latest version of the database used in Oracle Exadata Version 2, RAC install and management is vastly simplified especially if you are using Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Grid Control.

As an example of the installation ease, 11gR2 RAC features the new ASM Cluster File System (ACFS) on which the Cluster voting disk and Cluster Registry (OCR) can be stored seamlessly during installation, so much so that new DBAs may not even know about these files (in previous versions, they had to be stored very carefully on raw devices). This means the installation is a lot more streamlined and efficient - the improvement in each version of RAC is obvious.

The actual setup of the RAC database on Oracle Exadata V2 is done by Oracle Advanced Customer Services (ACS) at this point, a cutting-edge support team in Oracle. After the database is setup, data migration can be done using a variety of methods, including the new and powerful Oracle GoldenGate.

So the path to move to Exadata V2 has been greatly steamlined and well thought out by Oracle.