Once Upon a Time, Oracle shared container images in the kingdom of Docker Hub. They were freely available and easy to pull from a magical well that held a bounty of images that came together from every corner of the land. These were the Good Old Days, when containers were still new (but not yet very popular in the database community). One day, a lawyer visited the kingdom of Docker Hub and saw that the people were getting Oracle images without first accepting the License Agreement. This made the Lawyer unhappy, and over time, the Lawyer caused the spring that fed Oracle images into the well to ..read more

In older Oracle database releases, you would use the clone.pl script to create a copy of your Oracle Home. This process is much faster (and easier) than installing the database software and patches on a new host and guarantees that the new installation is identical to the old one. This functionality was deprecated with the release of Oracle Database version 18c. It still works, but Oracle recommends using runInstaller’s -createGoldImage option instead. With good reason—it’s a multi-step process that includes manually removing configuration files present in the original home. Creating a Gold Im ..read more

Earlier this year, Oracle announced the release of Oracle Database 23c Free. This free edition of the database software replaces the old Express Edition and allows developers to start exploring the many innovations and improvements introduced in 23c. Last month, Oracle announced the general availability of Oracle 23c production within Oracle Cloud Infrastructure's Base Database Service. We can expect a downloadable version to appear for Linux x86 soon, with other platforms to follow. But... what if you don't want to wait? What if you want to start experimenting with a production version of the ..read more

Did that headline get your attention? Good! I’m a huge fan of Oracle’s Autonomous Health Framework (AHF). It’s a wonderful tool with utilities and features that can make a DBA’s life easier. It’s simple to use and—best of all—free, a “Swiss Army Knife” for the DBA. If you aren’t taking advantage of AHF, I highly recommend starting, particularly since Oracle requires customers to provide an AHF diagnostic collection for certain Service Requests. I realize this seems like an extra step. Still, over the years I’ve used AHF and its predecessor, Trace File Analyzer (TFA), submitting a diagnostic co ..read more

On Linux, you can change where Docker persists its resources from /var/lib/docker to a different directory. This directory contains all of your images, container layers, and volumes, and if your boot volume is small, Docker can quickly dominate the disk. Most references I’ve seen tell you to update the location by editing the /lib/systemd/system/docker.service configuration file and change the following line: ExecStart=/usr/bin/dockerd -H fd:// --containerd=/run/containerd/containerd.sock …by adding an entry with the -g or --graph flag: ExecStart=/usr/bin/dockerd -g /docker -H fd:// --conta ..read more

The day is here at last! My book, “Oracle on Docker: Running Oracle Databases in Linux Containers,” is available for purchase through Apress, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble! Click on the image below to download your free sample chapter, Persistence. Click on the image above to download your free sample chapter on Persistence for Oracle Databases in containers ..read more

Oracle Data Guard protects critical database environments with exact, physical standbys, or copies, of production databases. Business continuity and disaster recovery are a matter of switching or failing over to the standby database when the primary system goes offline. Fast-Start Failover (FSFO) automates these activities. FSFO monitors participants in Data Guard configurations and, when it detects that the primary is unavailable, performs the switch automatically. It’s more responsive and durable than manual intervention. The time it takes for a DBA to acknowledge a page, log in to the envir ..read more

A client’s Data Guard environment fell out of sync when archive logs went missing from the standby. A number of factors played a part: Undersized redo log files. The environment switched as often as five times per minute. Frequent RMAN archive log backups. The backup schedule performed archive log backups every five minutes. Aggressive archive log retention and deletion settings. Several years ago, the DBA team grew hypersensitive to archive logs filling FRA. They responded with an aggressive deletion policy of backed up 1 times to tape but omitted applied on standby. Alert fatigue. Th ..read more

I recently built an API to automate Oracle database installation and patching on Linux containers running on local and cloud infrastructure. This would normally involve pulling media from a local repository, with all required install files and patches pre-staged. However, this project wasn't limited to predefined configurations. The API specification allowed users to pass a list of patches at runtime. The solution needed to automatically download anything not already in the local software catalog. To download a patch from MOS, I needed to automate these steps: Log into the site and save a co ..read more

Let me guess… You’re upgrading to Oracle 19c using the Database Upgrade Assistant and it failed at roughly the 44% mark with this error: *** WARNING: ERRORS FOUND DURING UPGRADE *** 1. Evaluate the errors found in the upgrade logs and determine the proper action. 2. Rerun the upgrade when the problem is resolved REASON: ERRORS FOUND: During Upgrade FILENAME: /u01/app/oracle/cfgtoollogs/dbua/upgrade2020-05-29_06-51-35PM/orcl/catupgrd0.log AT LINE NUMBER: 1217733 ------------------------------------------------------ Identifier CATALOG 20-05-29 06:57:33 SCRIPT = [/u01 ..read more