Oracle Base Database patching to 19.17 using DBCLI

 

OCI - (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure)

Intro

Cloud platforms are booming and many organizations are planning on a cloud journey to get a competitive advantage.  The cloud market is vast, with a diverse selection of services. It's not easy to select a suitable cloud platform for an organization.  There are certain criteria you need to consider when selecting a platform. 

• Certifications & Standards
• Technologies & Service Roadmap
• Data Security, Data Governance, and Business policies
• Service Dependencies & Partnerships
• Contracts, Commercials & SLAs
• Reliability & Performance
• Migration Support, Vendor Lock-in & Exit Planning
• Business health & Company profile
• Cost of the cloud services and License.

All these factors play a huge role when selecting a cloud platform suited for your system workloads. If your IT infrastructure consists of many Oracle databases,  I would say there is no better place than OCI (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure) to host your workload.  Oracle has been there for the market for a long time and gives immense selection when hosting Oracle workloads. 

OVM - Remove stale cluster enties

 

Intro 

It has been ages since when Oracle released its own hypervisor (OVM).  OVM   technology is based on paravirtualization and uses Xen-based hypervisor.  OVM's latest release version 3.4.6.3 is the latest one available. Oracle announces extended support for OVM and the support period is March 2021 and will end on March 31, 2024.

If you need more information about OVM support read the below mentioned article: https://blogs.oracle.com/virtualization/post/announcing-oracle-vm-3-extended-support/

This is going to be the end of the OVM tree, after this there will be no release for OVM. The latest technology going to Oracle KVM.  Oracle KVM is much more stable than the OVM and gives you more flexibility in the virtualization environment. If you are still planning on staying on on-prem. I would say this is the right time to plan your journey to KVM.  

In this article, I will cover the issue we faced recently in the OVM environment.

OLVM : Create FC shared data domain

 

Intro 

Nowadays all the business markets are highly competitive and organizations want to take competitive advantages over others. When business is highly critical databases and application servers need to be up and running 24X7  . Virtualization is the technology that helps to maximize the IT infrastructure cost. High availability of VM can be achieved easily from virtualization clustering. Also, Virtualization technology will ease the cloud migration journey. 

ODA - Virtualized - DB upgrade (oakcli)

 

ODA virtualized eases the database upgrade process using oakcli orchestration utility. This tool became more stable after 19.8. All the ODA components can be orchestrated via this oakcli utility. However, 19.13 will be the last upgrade for the virtualized platform, After that oracle going to discontinue OVM and they are moving to KVM-based virtualization. This is going to be a revolutionary change for ODA.

In this article, I will cover the steps to perform database upgrades via oakcli tool.

There are pre-requisite steps that need to be performed before the upgrade.

• Gain space in /u01 for an upgrade.
• Create a new database home. I have covered this new database home creation in a previous blog post: https://chanaka-dbhelp.blogspot.com/2022/07/oda-x5-db-home-creation-error.html
• Execute pre-upgrade check.  
• Fixed the pre-upgrade issues.
• Backup database before upgrade.
• Upgrade database.

OLVM Upgrade 4.4.8 - 4.4.10

 

Intro 

OLVM (Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager) releases 4.4 is based on the oVirt 4.4.0 through 4.4.10 release. Ovirt already released version 4.5, But Oracle is behind on releasing the 4.5. Currently, they are working on testing the 4.5 release for bugs.  If you are planning to upgrade OLVM and KVMs make sure to upgrade the OLVM engine first. Once the engine is up to date you can plan for KVM upgrades.

Note: OLVM-Engine upgrade can be performed without downtime. There is no impact on running VM and KVMs.

Please find the Oracle and Ovirt documentation to read the new feature upgrade from 4.4.8 to 4.4.10.

Oracle :

https://docs.oracle.com/en/virtualization/oracle-linux-virtualization-manager/relnotes/relnotes-whatsnew.html#whatsnew

Ovirt : 

https://www.ovirt.org/release/4.4.10/

In this article, I will illustrate how can we upgrade the OLVM engine from 4.4.8 to 4.4.10. 

OLVM - Disk state stuck in finalizing state

 

Intro

It's essential to have a proper backup mechanism for virtualization infrastructure. Also, we need to test the backup and recovery method at least once in 3 months to validate that everything is working as expected. Also documenting the recovery procedure helps to avoid surprises when there is a recovery scenario.  Organizations should be ready to address unexpected failures at any time. 

For Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager (OLVM) 4+ environments you can use API v4 for invoking all backup-related tasks. Import/export mode defines the way the backups and restores are done. OLVM (with API v4) supports 3 modes:

OLVM - Troubleshoot VM startup issue

 

Intro

OLVM is a mighty engine that reduces administration overhead in managing multiple KVMs.As engineers, you clearly understand the maintenance activities and VM recovery procedures.  VM changes are very sensitive and there are changes you may face startup issues.

In this article, I will elaborate on the issue I faced while moving VM from one bond to another.

This environment was configured with two bonded networks. 

• Management network - This network transfer all the storage information and keeps the cluster heartbeat.
• VM-Network  - To network configured to access VMs.

Note:  We created a new VLAN on the management network and tried to move the VM to the management network. This VM was used as a proxy server for veem backups.

The procedure of network change on VM.

• Shut down the VM.
• Change the network.
• Reboot the VM.