Quick tips on Cloning Oracle

Quick tips on Cloning Oracle

Cloning is not cross platform
Clone usually is done in 2 phases - prepare_clone.pl in source and clone.pl in target
Clone does take care of inventory and relink so further patches can be applied on the new cloned home
For Oracle database and CRS, prepare_clone.pl is not required
ORACLE_HOME and ORACLE_HOME_NAME should be specified when clone.pl is run, in 11g, ORACLE_BASE should be specified also
If Oracle inventory is not in default location, before running clone.pl, edit cs.properties and add 

-ignoreSysPrereqs -invPtrLoc <oraInst_path>/oraInst.loc

Make sure to run root.sh after clone.pl is completed

You may need to create oraInst.loc file manually on target if the file does not exists, to do so, just create a file in default location 
   with inventory_loc=<oraInventory_path>

The alternative of running clone.pl is to use runInstaller for cloning, the format would be like this : 

./runInstaller -clone -silent -ignorePreReq ORACLE_HOME="" ORACLE_HOME_NAME="" ORACLE_BASE="" 

(in Windows it would be setup.exe)

If the server has more than one perl installed, it is recommended to set PERL5LIB 

If clone is done on target server which has inventory and the cloned ORACLE_HOME has already been used at somepoint,

first ORACLE_HOME needs to be de-attached using this command : ./runInstaller -detachHome ORACLE_HOME=

This is why it is recommended to clone in brand new directory to avoid any issue.

Clone log in target is created in $ORACLE_HOME/clone/logs

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Virtualization on Oracle Database Appliance (ODA)

Virtualization on Oracle Database Appliance (ODA)

 As you know, Early this year Oracle started supporting virtualization on Oracle Database Appliance which enhances the functionality of ODA. One of the main usage of this virtualization is to utilize ODA for Weblogic as well as database.

I had a chance to test various Weblogic offerings on ODA and I thought to share my findings with readers, hopefully it helps readers with planning and architecting the environment using ODA and virtualization. Basically, the two main versions which can be run on ODA V1 and ODA X3-2 and support virtualization are ODA Version 2.5 and ODA version 2.6. The following shows my findings on Weblogic install for each version:

ODA 2.5

• Oracle Weblogic template on ODA is available on e-delivery for Weblogic 10.3.6 and 12c
• Oracle Weblogic template includes Weblogic configurator which is a new tool (specific to ODA) to automate installation of Weblogic on ODA similar to what OAM does for database.
• Weblogic configurator only installs Weblogic in cluster mode, having non-cluster weblogic is not supported with the configurator.
• Weblogic configurator installs OTD (Oracle Traffic Director) and as of now, there is no way to skip it during installation. However after installation, it can be shutdown if it is not needed.
• Minimum installation with Weblogic configurator includes two Weblogic cluster nodes which installs 6VMs in total (1 VM for Weblogic admin,2 VMs (one per compute node) for Weblogic managed server, 1 VM for OTD admin, 2 VMs (one per compute node) for OTD)
• Weblogic configurator also creates a database for internal work on ODA_BASE.
• Weblogic configurator installs all components as root due to a bug.
• Since 6VMs are the possible minimum configuration and each VM should have at least 2VCPU, there will be total of 12VCPU (6Cores) for minimum installation 

ODA 2.6

• No Weblogic template on ODA is released for 2.6
• No Weblogic configurator for automation of Weblogic is released
• As of now, creation readhat Linux and installing Weblogic manually would be the only approach in this release

Bottom line: 

Although it is recommended to utilize automation on ODA to ensure ODA stays with Oracle standard template and to have less impact on future changes such as patching and upgrade, however Oracle Weblogic configurator looks not to be mature enough to be utilized. First of all, to use it, you end up to stay with 2.5 (not with the latest ODA release ) plus the configurator in 2.5 is buggy (installation of weblogic as root) and it has several shortcomings which are listed above as well as not much flexible. I recommend to wait (if you can) as Weblogic configurator should be out soon or use manual process for Weblogic with the risk that in long run, you may not be able to utilize patch bundle (if Oracle includes weblogic in ODA bundle) or any further automation which may be planned for Weblogic. Also consider that installation of OTD does add complexity to weblogic licensing on ODA.

At the end, I found FAQ pdf file on otn website helpful.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/weblogic-oda/overview/faq-weblogicserver-on-oda-1927929.pdf

 If you have any questions or you want to see more on this topic, please drop me a line.

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Become Golden DBA for GoldenGate environment (Basic)

 Become Golden DBA for GoldenGate environment (Basic)

Become Golden DBA for GoldenGate environment is delivered in OOW2013 and more topics around this will come which include but not limited to the following :

• Golden DBA for 2 way GoldenGate replication
• Golden DBA and troubleshooting GoldenGate
• Golden DBA and advanced configuration on GoldenGate
• Golden DBA and Tuning GoldenGate

For those of you who joined the session or would like to follow up, pdf version of the session is available on https://github.com/shervsh/Presentation/ and it will be available on OOW. 

Please drop me a line if you are interested in upcoming sessions or you would like to have ppt version.

Thanks everyone for joining the session, I will post answers to various questions in upcoming posts.

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GoldenGate DDL replication

GoldenGate DDL replication

I have to setup a DDL replication for a customer and as usual I use include to filter schema which I want to be replicated as below :'

DDL &
INCLUDE ALL OBJNAME "SCHEMA1.*" &
INCLUDE ALL OBJNAME "SCHEMA2.*" &
EXCLUDE OBJTYPE SEQUENCE

 

Interesting enough, I see that GoldenGate does not capture DDL although the filter should work fine. The following is reported in GoldenGate log with my surprise :

 

Oracle GoldenGate Capture for Oracle, ext_test.prm:  DDL operation excluded [not included by any filter]
, optype [CREATE], objtype [TABLE], objowner [SCHEMA1], objname [TAB]

 

 

The same situation does occur using different DDL options such as MAPPED. Further investigation revealed that it is a bug which is reported in Doc ID 1475618.1 and the workaround is not to use " for schema, in other words, the following works with no issue :
 

 

 DDL &
INCLUDE ALL OBJNAME SCHEMA1.* &
INCLUDE ALL OBJNAME SCHEMA2.* &
EXCLUDE OBJTYPE SEQUENCE

 

 

So no " for DDL options when you setup DDL for GoldenGate. Hope this simple tips helps.



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ODA and CPU license

ODA and CPU license

Last week, I was working on a customer with ODA x4-2 which we found 5 CPU licenses are sold for EE deployment. My first reaction was on how to put 5 CPU license (10 cores) in ODA x4-2. As you may know, the multiplier of 4 cores can be activated in X3-2 and above and multiplier of 2 in ODA v1. In this post, I am trying to explain what is the minimum core requirement for various ODA server with virtualized and non-virtualized deployment.

We all know that "pay as grow" is one of the great feature of Oracle Database Appliance. In other words, you could start with as minimum core as possible and then scale up.
However, due to CPU specification on various ODA version, there is some limitation in regards to minimum number of cores which could be setup as it is shown in below :

Min license
	V1	X3-2,3,4
EE	2x0.5=1	4x0.5=2	10 day rule
RACOne	2x0.5=1	4x0.5=2	10 day rule
RAC	2x2x0.5=2	2x4x0.5=4
EE -VM	2x0.5=1	2x0.5=1	10 day rule
RACOne-VM	2x0.5=1	2x0.5=1	10 day rule
RAC - VM	2x2x0.5=2	2x2x0.5=2

---

Couple notes :

• 10 day rule is to have all instances in EE or RAC1 only on one ODA node and without paying license to be allowed to flip over to the second node in case the first node is not available only for 10 days per calendar year.
• Since ODA platform is x86, the contributing factor is 0.5. This is where you can see all multiplier of 0.5 in the table.
• On ODA x3-2 and above odd number of CPU can not be setup unless ODA is setup as virtualized platform.
• Virtualization provides more flexibility in terms of lowering the number of the required CPU specially for EE or RAC1. If you are dealing with small customer, you may end up to go virtualized even ODA is purposed only for database deployment.

Hope this post clarifies some confusion.

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Quick tips on Weblogic

Quick tips on Weblogic

Very often I login to a customer site and I end up to search in document for couple things :

• How to setup NodeManager so the customer could use Admin console for Weblogic startup
• How to make username/password encrypted so the command line does not ask for username/password at time of startup
• Quick and easy guideline for patching
• How to check Weblogic version

Above items are nothing new but I thought to post details here for my quick access.This post is a quick reminder for myself which is copied from Oracle document.

To enable startup scripts and start Node Manager:

1.   Navigate to the following directory

2. MW_HOME/oracle_common/common/bin

MW_HOME is the directory where Oracle Fusion Middleware is installed.

3.   Run the setNMProps.sh script to set the StartScriptEnabled property to true before starting Node Manager:

4. ./setNMProps.sh

This is a one-time action. After you run this script, you can skip this step before starting Node Manager again.

5.   Start Node Manager with the startNodeManager script.

UNIX script: WL_HOME/server/bin/startNodeManager.sh

Windows script: WL_HOME\server\bin\startNodeManager.cmd

To avoid username/password at startup:

To avoid prompts for a user name and password on startup after you start a Managed Server the first time, you can create a boot.properties file in the domain-home/servers/server-name/security/ directory. This file would include the following lines:
username=USERNAME

password=PASSWORD

The boot.properties file will be encrypted the first time that the Managed Server is started.

Patching mechanism on Weblogic :

Basically bsu is the tool to apply the patches on Weblogic install. The following shows an example on how patch is applied and how it is verified.

To apply
copy patch to $MW_HOME/utils/bsu/cache_dir
unzip patch
remove patch zip file (rm p1......zip)
./bsu.sh -install -patch_download_dir=$MW_HOME/utils/bsu/cache_dir -patchlist=FCX7 -prod_dir=$WL_HOME
To verify
./bsu.sh -view -status=applied -prod_dir=$WL_HOME

Checking Weblogic version:

cd $DOMAIN_HOME/bin
[oracle@oracle2qa bin]$ . ./setDomainEnv.sh
[oracle@oracle2qa APEXDomain]$ java weblogic.version

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Documents for Oracle licensing

Documents for Oracle licensing

If you negotiate with Oracle on licensing or design/architect a solution for a customer, the following documents may come handy : 

• Oracle process core factor : http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/contracts/processor-core-factor-table-070634.pdf
• Oracle software technical support policies : http://www.oracle.com/us/support/library/057419.pdf
• Oracle partition policy : http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/partitioning-070609.pdf
• Licensing Data Recovery environment : http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/contracts/data-recovery-licensing-070587.pdf
• Software investment guide : http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/software-investment-guide/index.html
• Oracle support/certification on Vmware :http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/solutions/oracle/Understanding_Oracle_Certification_Support_Licensing_VMware_environments.pdf
• Oracle VM and hard partitioning : http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/vm/ovm-hardpart-168217.pdf

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Oracle Database Appliance - 3 Observations and 3 Resolutions

Oracle Database Appliance - 3 Observations and 3 Resolutions

During last couple weeks, I have been involved in various ODA activities from patching of an existing ODA to latest version to setting up new environments on ODA X5-2
I thought to share some lesson learnt :
 
1)  Patch failure
 
If you encounter in a situation which ODA patch fails and reports the following error 
Unable to get the nodenumber in the chassis
The resolution is to create /opt/oracle/oak/conf/node_num.conf on each compute node and add NODENUM=0 or NODENUM=1.

2) Network issue
 
If you setup new ODA and in the first boot, it should ask for fiber or copper connection and after providing the right option, ODA will keep the appropriate driver and will remove unnecessary drivers. If you do not see it in any new ODA x3-2 onwards when it is booted for the first time, you may see issue with setting up network later. 
To fix the issue, before further progress with deployment and setting up environment, run /opt/oracle/oak/lib/SetupX4Network.pl 

3)  Some oakcli commands fail
You may notice that some oakcli commands fail with the following error:


OAKERR:6000 Exception encountered in Module getMasterNode
OAKERR:6002 No master node was found 

This cause usually could be that the process cannot connect to oakd daemon on ODA. 
You could confirm this with running
oakcli show ismaster
If this command fails, it could be fixed by bouncing oakd using oakcli. As long as oakcli show ismaster does not work well, you may experience failure of some oakcli commands.

 


During last couple weeks, I have been involved in various ODA activities from patching of an existing ODA to latest version to setting up new environments on ODA X5-2
I thought to share some lesson learnt :
 
1)  Patch failure
 
If you encounter in a situation which ODA patch fails and reports the following error 
Unable to get the nodenumber in the chassis
The resolution is to create /opt/oracle/oak/conf/node_num.conf on each compute node and add NODENUM=0 or NODENUM=1.

2) Network issue
 
If you setup new ODA and in the first boot, it should ask for fiber or copper connection and after providing the right option, ODA will keep the appropriate driver and will remove unnecessary drivers. If you do not see it in any new ODA x3-2 onwards when it is booted for the first time, you may see issue with setting up network later. 
To fix the issue, before further progress with deployment and setting up environment, run /opt/oracle/oak/lib/SetupX4Network.pl 

3)  Some oakcli commands fail
You may notice that some oakcli commands fail with the following error:


OAKERR:6000 Exception encountered in Module getMasterNode
OAKERR:6002 No master node was found 

This cause usually could be that the process cannot connect to oakd daemon on ODA. 
You could confirm this with running
oakcli show ismaster
If this command fails, it could be fixed by bouncing oakd using oakcli. As long as oakcli show ismaster does not work well, you may experience failure of some oakcli commands.

 

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Access to ODA ILOM is challenging ?

TIP 117#: Access to ODA ILOM is challenging ?

New ODA is configured with ILOM IPs and network cable is plugged to Netmgt port. Everything is ready for connecting to the server via ILOM and bummer!, you may see the whole connection or at least the connection to remote console does not work as it is expected.

The following item could come handy to troubleshoot and fix the issue:

ILOM client requirements:

Per the following link, the client access should meet certain requirement.

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E24707_01/html/E24528/z40000191582334.html

I found that having right Java and registering it in browser are the key.
For new ODA (X5-2), per 888888.1, consider upgrading Java to 7 to avoid bug 20420055

After you make all necessary changes per above requirement, you may still have some problem connecting to remote console.
The following two issues are reported on several customers which we have :

Issue : ILOM remote console is blocked by rule set 

Solution : The simplest solution is to remove rule set file - The file is C:\Windows\Sun\Java\Deployment\DeploymentRuleSet.jar and it is not dependent on where Java is installed.
If the issue still stays, consider setting Java security level to medium in Java control panel (in windows in Windows control panel)

Issue : ILOM remote console errors out with "Video redirection error - no appropriate protocol found"

Solution: Comment out jdk.tls.disabledAlgorithms=SSLv3 in JAVA_folder/lib/security/java.security and restart the browser
 

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