Data guard : RMAN-06571: datafile 1430 does not have recoverable copy

 

Intro 

In the current data-driven era, businesses leverage data analysis to seize opportunities and gain a competitive edge. This makes it crucial for organizations to have a robust disaster recovery (DR) plan. Oracle Data Guard offers significant flexibility for maintaining data synchronization with the primary database. Additionally, it allows opening the database in snapshot standby mode for testing purposes, ensuring the standby database is reliable and up-to-date.

In this article, I will discuss the issues encountered while rebuilding a standby database. While attempting an incremental recovery, we faced issues after executing the command to catalog the data files and then switching the database to the copy. This command failed with RMAN-06571.

OLVM : KVM Certificate Renewal

 

Intro

Virtualization has revolutionized the IT industry by enabling organizations to utilize server resources more efficiently. Despite the rise of cloud technology, many companies are hesitant to migrate their workloads to the cloud due to concerns about data sensitivity and business challenges. For these organizations, virtualization remains the most cost-effective solution, offering both capital expenditure (CapEx) savings and a secure environment.

To host critical database workloads securely, it's crucial to ensure that virtualization platforms are fully protected. Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager (OLVM) is a key tool for managing these virtual environments, and maintaining its security certificates is essential for safeguarding the infrastructure. Regular renewal of these certificates is necessary to uphold the security and integrity of the virtualized environment.

In this blog, I will illustrate how we renew all KVM certificates. 

This is the main meta link note that can be used for the new engine and KVM certificate.  

OLVM: How to Renew SSL Certificates that are Expired or Nearing Expiration (Doc ID 3006292.1)

Data guard (DG) : ORA-01111 - Datafile not created on standby database

 

Intro

In today's data-driven era, protecting data is paramount. Organizations must be prepared to address potential failures by implementing robust disaster recovery strategies. For those hosting critical data, having a disaster recovery (DR) site is essential. Oracle Data Guard offers a comprehensive solution for database disaster recovery, ensuring data protection and availability.

In this article, I will discuss the issues encountered after rebuilding the standby database. Our standby system suddenly stopped due to the restoration of an unnamed data file. This occurred because I forgot to set STANDBY_FILE_MANAGEMENT to AUTO after making changes to the standby redo.

I used the Metalink note "How to Resolve ORA-01111, ORA-01110, ORA-01157 in a Physical Standby Database" (Doc ID 1416554.1) to address this issue.

OLVM : Renew Engine and KVM Certificate

 

Intro

Virtualization made a significant change in the IT (Information Technology) industry. This technology helped many organizations to use server resources efficiently. Even though cloud technology is emerging some companies are not ready to move their workloads to the cloud due to data sensitivity and business obstacles. So the best cost-effective option is to use virtualization technology which helps both purposes saving IT capex costs and having a secure environment.

As organizations hosting their critical database workloads, we need to ensure virtualization platforms are fully secure. Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager has these security certificates that need to be renewed every year.  

In this article, I will elaborate on how we can renew these certificates from the OLVM engine.

OLVM : 2 node with Gluster storage with Arbitrated Replicated Volumes

 

Intro 

Virtualization made a significant change in the IT (Information Technology) industry. This technology helped many organizations to use server resources efficiently. Even though cloud technology is emerging some companies are not ready to move their workloads to the cloud due to data sensitivity and business obstacles. So the only option to save the IT infrastructure cost using virtualization technology. 

For small and medium-scale companies IT budgets are really tight.  Due to a limited budget, It's a challenging job to achieve storage systems stability with virtualization.  When organizations plan on virtualization optimal architecture needs 3 nodes; 3-node architecture gives proper fencing and high availability.  Oracle Corporation combined with open source virtualization and introduced (OLVM) Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager. For OLVM there is no restriction to having 2 node architectures.  When considering the storage availability there are three ways to archive this using OLVM.

• Fiber channel storage - FC data domains.
• Glusterfs Storage - Gluster data domains.
• ISCSI Storage    - ISCSI data domains.

Glusterfs and ISCSI it's a must to have a 10g back-end network for management.  Glusterfs Storage replication is happening via the management network.

Two-node architecture storage stability can be archived by implementing the glusterfs arbitrated replicated volumes. This mainly addresses avoiding storage split-brain conditions.

In this article, I would like to highlight the implementation steps of the gluster storage arbitrator.  

Glusterfs arbitrator implementation prerequisites. 

OCI Tablespace creation error : ORA-28361: master key not yet set for CREATE TABLESPACE in OCI DBCS

 

Intro

We are living in a data era. Every organization invests in a colossal sum of money to secure its IT infrastructure environment. protecting data is really important because all businesses are now driven by analyzing the data. Oracle came up with a technology called TDE to protect data from ransomware. TDE is part of the Oracle Advance license feature. But in the Cloud, this comes as default. Whatever database you are creating in the cloud should have TDE.  

After creating a new 12.1 environment in the cloud we faced an issue while creating a tablespace. 

Oracle EBS : Enable Unified Auditing

 

Intro

Database auditing is a critical component of data security, providing vital insights into user activity, changes made to the database, and potential threats lurking within the system. By monitoring user actions and tracking modifications, auditing ensures regulatory compliance and helps identify anomalies that may signify malicious or unauthorized activities.

Through meticulous auditing, organizations can detect suspicious behavior and promptly intervene to mitigate risks and prevent potential damage. This proactive approach not only safeguards sensitive data but also enhances overall security posture by addressing vulnerabilities and enforcing access controls effectively.

Oracle EBS Vision Instance using OCI market place image

 

Intro 

Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) is a comprehensive suite of integrated business applications developed by Oracle Corporation and Oracle E-Business Suite is one of Oracle Corp's major product lines. Also known as Oracle EBS. It encompasses a wide range of modules that cover various aspects of enterprise resource planning (ERP), including financial management, human capital management, supply chain management, procurement, project management, customer relationship management (CRM), and more. Oracle EBS is designed to streamline business processes, improve efficiency, and provide insights to help organizations make informed decisions.

OCI DB Server - Troubleshoot missing LVM

 

Intro 

We are in the cloud era and many organizations are absorbing cloud technologies to get a competitive advantage over others. The cloud market is vast, with a diverse selection of services. It's not easy to select a suitable cloud platform for an organization. 

Oracle cloud platform is the number one platform to host Oracle database workloads.  They offer many service database services types like Exadata at cloud, Exadata cloud@customer, and Autonomous database, etc... 

Oracle database service is a really efficient and effective way to host databases. Oracle has automated this service to make deployment easy and simple. 

Database Service offers two types of storage management software. 

• Oracle Grid Infrastructure -  This consists of ASM (automatic storage management).
• Logical Volume Manager.

OCI DBCS : Backup using OCI backup module

 

Intro 

We live in a cloud era and Many organizations across various industries are leveraging cloud technology to enhance their operations, improve scalability, increase flexibility, and reduce costs. Last few years Oracle has been making significant progress on hosting database workload in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Also provides many cloud services and Many companies use Oracle Object storage to store their database backups.

Backing an Oracle database for object storage is a common practice for ensuring data durability, accessibility, and scalability. Object storage services, such as Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, or Azure Blob Storage, offer a reliable and cost-effective solution for storing backups securely offsite.

Oracle Object Storage is a cloud-based storage solution provided by Oracle Corporation as part of its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) offerings. It provides a scalable, durable, and highly available storage platform for storing various data types, including files, objects, and unstructured data.

Organizations are heavily using Oracle Base Database Service to migrate Oracle database workload. Because DBCS is a robust environment and fully managed database service, Oracle takes care of tasks such as hardware provisioning, software installation, patching, backups, and maintenance. This allows organizations to focus on using the database rather than managing the underlying infrastructure.

But recently DBCS stopped supporting older database version 12c. This limits you to not having an automatic backup feature.

Oracle Base Database Service supports the following Oracle Database versions: 

• Oracle Database 23c
• Oracle Database 21c
• Oracle Database 19c

So, the only option left was to migrate database backups to object storage bucks. The easiest way to perform this using the OCI backup module.   

What is the OCI backup module? 

OCI Backup is a module within the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) platform that offers comprehensive data protection and backup capabilities for workloads running on OCI. It provides users the tools and services to protect critical data and ensure business continuity. Here's an overview of OCI Backup:

You can use this below-mentioned link to configure OCI automatic backups 

https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/paas/db-backup-cloud/csdbb/installing-oracle-database-cloud-backup-module-oci.html#GUID-8BAB6043-F8BD-44CE-AED3-87B57743AE72

The software can be downloaded using: https://www.oracle.com/database/technologies/oracle-cloud-backup-downloads.html

OLVM : Upgrade from 4.4 to 4.5

Intro 

VMware vSphere has long held the crown as the leading on-premises server virtualization solution across businesses of all sizes. Its dominance stems from being the pioneer in offering a server virtualization solution tailored for standard x86 servers. Its robust feature set, including application isolation, workload portability, scalability, top-of-rack virtualization, storage virtualization, high availability options, backup integration, and disaster recovery capabilities, has made it indispensable for modern IT infrastructures.

 
However, despite VMware's market leadership, the landscape is shifting. The cost savings traditionally associated with VMware vSphere have dwindled over time. Licensing expenses and the proprietary lock-in nature of VMware have emerged as significant components of IT budgets, causing concern among CIOs and CFOs. In an era where IT organizations are tasked with achieving more with fewer resources, the financial burden of VMware has become a pressing issue.

As a result, many organizations have explored alternatives like Microsoft Hyper-V, seeking a lower-cost solution. Yet, the disparity in costs between Hyper-V and VMware hasn't always been substantial.

Enter KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine), an open-source hypervisor gaining significant traction. As an integral part of the Linux kernel and distributed alongside Linux distributions, KVM eliminates licensing costs, akin to Linux itself. The only direct expenses associated with KVM are distributor support costs, unless organizations opt for self-support. Additionally, KVM offers further indirect cost savings over VMware vSphere, presenting a compelling cost advantage.

Price is undoubtedly a pivotal factor, but the total cost of ownership (TCO) weighs even heavier in the decision-making process. Beyond cost, several other factors contribute to KVM's rapid ascent in the market. The added advantages of the Oracle Linux KVM distribution, for instance, bolster KVM's appeal over VMware vSphere.

In essence, while VMware vSphere maintains its stronghold, the evolving demands for cost-efficiency and flexibility are propelling KVM to the forefront, with its open-source nature and cost advantages making it an increasingly attractive choice for modern IT environments.

There are many technical advantages 

• Hard Partitioning
• Oracle Linux Ksplice Zero-Downtime Patching
• Native Bi-directional Cloud Migration
• Accelerated Application Deployments
• Oracle Clusterware
• Oracle DTrace
• Straightforward Oracle Linux KVM Support Pricing

In this article,  I will illustrate the steps to upgrade OLVM from 4.4. to 4.5

MySQL - Heatwave [In Memory Query Accelerator] with Lakehouse - Part 1

 

Intro 

This is the data era and most organizations are investing more in data analytics.  Data analytics needs more processing and storage.  To get a competitive advantage over other organizations invest more to gain more performance, for analytics database performance is really a key.  OLAP (Online Analytics processing) databases are more focused on the fast retrieval of select operations. Database technologies are changing in rapidly space, and new features are booming every quarter.

Oracle came up with a new invention for MySQL database. MySQL HeatWave is a fully managed database service powered by the HeatWave in-memory query accelerator. It’s the only cloud service that combines transactions, real-time analytics across data warehouses and data lakes, and machine learning in one MySQL Database—without the complexity, latency, risks, and cost of ETL duplication. It’s available on OCI, AWS, and Azure.

Mysql HeatWave now combined with Lakehouse lets users query hundreds of terabytes of data in object storage—in a variety of file formats, such as CSV, Parquet, and Aurora/Redshift export files from other databases.

This gives an extra edge for organizations to process more data for their decision-making.

The best way to practice these features using Oracle Live.   If you are planning on learning MySQL try the below-mentioned link: https://apexapps.oracle.com/pls/apex/r/dbpm/livelabs/run-workshop?p210_wid=3722&p210_wec=&session=114672767499650

Oracle Live lab is a great initiative by Oracle, This makes you comfortable with the new feature testing.

Unified Auditing Housekeeping

 

Intro 

Data is the new currency. It is one of the most valuable organizational assets, however, if that data is not well protected, it can quickly become a liability. At an alarming rate we are seeing more and more data breaches that impact an organization’s brand, their ability to continue to deliver services and do business, and of course they are impacted financially. We know that most sensitive data is stored and managed within databases.

Organizations spend colossal sums of money to keep data within compliance standards. Also, it is crucial to have a centralized and consolidated auditing mechanism for databases.  Oracle Unified Auditing (OUA) is a comprehensive auditing solution introduced in Oracle Database 12c that consolidates database-level auditing into a single audit trail. Before Oracle 12c, auditing in Oracle databases was fragmented, with different audit trails for different types of activities (e.g., DML, DDL, system privileges). Unified Auditing streamlines this process by providing a centralized repository for all audit records, offering a more efficient and secure auditing mechanism.

For production environments auditing generates a large amount of data, housekeeping in Oracle Unified Auditing is crucial for maintaining the integrity, performance, and security of your database environment.

MySQL - Heatwave [In Memory Query Accelerator]

 

Intro 

This is the data era and most organizations are investing more in data analytics.  Data analytics needs more processing, memory, and storage.  To get a competitive advantage over other organizations invest more to gain more performance, for analytics database performance is key.  OLAP (Online Analytics processing) databases are more focused on the fast retrieval of select operations. Database technologies are changing in rapidly space, and new features are booming every quarter.

Oracle came up with a new invention for the MySQL database. MySQL HeatWave is a fully managed database service powered by the HeatWave in-memory query accelerator. It’s the only cloud service that combines transactions, real-time analytics across data warehouses and data lakes, and machine learning in one MySQL Database—without the complexity, latency, risks, and cost of ETL duplication. It’s available on OCI, AWS, and Azure.

OEM : Agent installation ( Agent registration password issue )

 

Intro 

Monitoring plays a major part in mission-critical environments. As the environments are critical IT administrators need to make sure database and application servers are up and running 24X7. OEM (Oracle Enterprise Manager) plays a critical role in monitoring and administration, For the Oracle database this best product for addressing issues proactively. 

Migrating everything to the cloud at once can be a complex and challenging process for many organizations, which is why a hybrid approach is often adopted. This involves integrating on-premises infrastructure with cloud services, allowing for a gradual transition. 

In the case of Database Cloud Service (DBCS), there are typically no restrictions on integrating it with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) OEM (Oracle Enterprise Manager) or on-premises OEM. This means that organizations can manage their database instances both in the cloud and on-premises using the same management tool, providing flexibility and ease of management.

Monitoring Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Database Cloud Service (DBCS) involves tracking various performance metrics, identifying potential issues, and ensuring the overall health and efficiency of your database. Here are some key aspects and tools you can use for monitoring OCI DBCS:

OCI OEM Installation - ( Using Market place Image )

 

Intro

Monitoring plays a major part in mission-critical environments. Most businesses depend on IT infrastructure.  As the environments are critical IT administrators need to make sure database and application servers are up and running 24X7.  OEM (Oracle Enterprise Manager)  plays a critical role in monitoring and administration, For the Oracle database this best product for addressing issues proactively. This is the era most companies thinking about migrating their IT infrastructure to the cloud environment. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is the number one provider for Oracle workloads and OCI has ease monitoring capabilities by introducing OEM (Oracle Enterprise Manager) marketplace image.  

If you want to install OEM manually need to download and stage the software. But marketplace image eases these installations.

In this article, I will elaborate on how we can install single-node OEM installation using the OCI marketplace image. 

In OCI DBCS Oracle enterprise edition comes with  Diagnostics and Tuning Packs.  I will talk about the licensing in a separate blog.

If you need to understand more details about the OEM installation, I have mentioned the link which illustrates the OEM 13.5 in OCI infrastructure.