KVM Upgrade issue : 4.4.10.22– 4.4.10.30

 

Intro

Virtualization has significantly transformed the IT industry by enhancing the efficient utilization of server resources. Despite the rapid adoption of cloud technology, many organizations hesitate to migrate their workloads to the cloud due to concerns regarding data sensitivity and operational challenges. For such businesses, virtualization continues to be the preferred solution, offering substantial cost savings in capital expenditure (CapEx) and a secure operational environment.

Ensuring the security of critical database workloads hosted in virtualized environments is paramount. Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager (OLVM) plays a crucial role in managing these virtual environments, and maintaining its updates is vital for safeguarding infrastructure integrity. Regular KVM upgrades are essential to uphold the security and reliability of these virtualized environments.

While upgrading our KVM hosts, we encountered several issues, particularly with hosts that previously utilized Gluster data domains.

OCI immutable backup : version control

 

Intro

In today's 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. Most organizations leverage cloud backup features to store their data securely. When backups are in the public cloud, it is essential to ensure they are not altered and can be retrieved even after a ransomware attack. Oracle Cloud Object Storage provides an excellent feature of object versioning to ensure backups are safe and can be restored at any time during ransomware attacks.

Here are several reasons why immutable backups are important:

Measuring Storage Performance for Oracle DBs

 

Intro

Storage vendors often provide extensive product performance data, but this information may not accurately predict how the storage will perform with an Oracle database. This article offers practical methods to evaluate storage system performance, including Oracle-provided utilities.

There are two main methods to analyze the performance of storage.

• Oracle Orion
• Oracle procedure: DBMS_RESOURCE_MANAGER.calibrate_io.

I will show you how to measure IO using both methods in this article. 

The easiest way to use procedure DBMS_RESOURCE_MANAGER.calibrate_io. 

In Oracle, the DBMS_RESOURCE_MANAGER package provides procedures to manage database resources. To generate a read-only workload to measure the maximum number of IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) and MB/s (Megabytes per second), you can use the CALIBRATE_IO procedure. This procedure helps in determining the I/O capabilities of the storage subsystem.

Oracle 23ai : SQL Firewall - Part 1 : Intergrate SQL-Firewall with Data-Safe

 

Intro 

We live in the data era, where every organization invests significant resources in securing its IT infrastructure. Protecting data is crucial because modern businesses rely heavily on data analysis. Ensuring the security of sensitive data has become the primary responsibility of security engineers and database administrators. Due to the critical nature of this data, hackers often attempt to gain control through :

• SQL injection attacks 
• Compromised accounts. 

Even OCI introduced the Web application firewalls (WAFs) claim to mitigate SQL injection attacks, but attackers can bypass these pattern-matching techniques. Allowlist-based and network-based SQL firewalls provide stronger protection but are ineffective for local and encrypted traffic. Additionally, they need more run-time context to thoroughly analyze SQL queries.

Oracle's latest long-term release 23ai came up with the latest features to integrate SQL firewall into the database. This enables the database administrator to elevate their database protection.

Oracle 23ai : SQL Firewall - Part 2

 

Intro

We live in the data era, where every organization invests significant resources in securing its IT infrastructure. Protecting data is crucial because modern businesses rely heavily on data analysis. Ensuring the security of sensitive data has become the primary responsibility of security engineers and database administrators. Due to the critical nature of this data, hackers often attempt to gain control through :

• SQL injection attacks 
• Compromised accounts. 

Even though OCI introduced Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) to mitigate SQL injection attacks, attackers can still bypass these pattern-matching techniques. Allowlist-based and network-based SQL firewalls offer stronger protection but are ineffective for local and encrypted traffic. Moreover, they require more run-time context to thoroughly analyze SQL queries.

In this article, I will demonstrate how to enable the firewall and block suspicious access.