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What's So Special about the

Oracle Database Appliance?

Simon Haslam

8 December 2014 • v1.9

Winter 2014 Update

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Agenda

Introduction to ODA

ODA Architecture & Provisioning

Database: Project Experiences

Middleware: Project Experiences

Appliance? Cloud? Exa?

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Introduction to ODA

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Introduction to ODA

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Introduction to ODA: evolution

1998 Oracle

'Raw Iron'

2001 Dell/Oracle

database appliance (8i single instance)

2006 RAC-in-a-BOX

Veriton & Julian Dyke

(9i RAC)

2008 Oracle/HP Database

Machine v1

2009 Oracle

Exadata

2011 (Sep) Oracle ODA v1

2013 (Feb) ODA 2.5

Virtualized Platform

2013 (Apr) ODA X3-2 hardware

2013 (Dec) ODA X4-2 hardware

2000 2010 2014

O-box was born!

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Introduction to ODA

Aims*

Simplify and speed up Oracle database deployment

Ease patching & help customers stay on recent versions

(more recently) Provide ‘in a box’ solution for customers and

ISVs

* We don’t work for Oracle – this is our opinion only!

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ODA Strengths

Standard set of parts (most shared with Exa*, ZFSSA etc)

Oracle patches stack from firmware up to database

‘Well considered’ Oracle installations

Standard configurations – very few options

Single point of support

ODAs behave predictably from customer to customer

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ODA Weaknesses

If you want fewer cores then not the fastest clock speeds

Not huge amounts of memory by modern standards (256GB x 2)

SSD only used for REDO, none for DATA

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ODA Architecture & Provisioning

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Introduction to ODA - components

2 x 12 cores (2.7GHz) 256GB

2 x 12 cores (2.7GHz) 256GB

4 SSD 20

HDD

2 x dual 10GbE ext + 1 x dual 10GbE int + Management Port

1 or 2 storage arrays

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The Biggest ODA Decision…

Physical or Virtual?

Physical (aka Bare Metal/BM) is traditional database-only mode

Most ODA customers are running in physical mode today (historical?)

Can't easily change after deployment (need backup/restore)

Trend

…towards virtual

Non-database workload too?

You need to use virtual

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Bare Metal: for running databases only

Database

Choice of 12.1.0.2 or 11.2.x

database

…trend to supporting several

Oracle versions

Appliance Manager

UI when you first provision ODA

oakcli tool

Node 0 - Linux

• Appliance Manager • Database(s) • Grid Infrastructure

Node 1 - Linux

• Appliance Manager • Database(s) • Grid Infrastructure

Local Local Shared Storage

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Virtualized Platform: databases

Database

Each node has a “ODA Base”

DomU

Looks a lot like ODA BM – most

admin done from ODA Base

Nodes

Run a special OVS image

Appliance Manager

GUI when you first provision it

oakcli tool

Node 0 - OVS

ODA Base (DomU) • Appliance Manager • Database(s) • Grid Infrastructure

Node 1 - OVS

ODA Base (DomU) • Appliance Manager • Database(s) • Grid Infrastructure

Dom0 Dom0 Repo Repo

Local Local Shared Storage

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Virtualized Platform: databases + applications

Middleware / Applications

Run in their own VMs (DomU’s)

Shared repo so can fail-over

Supports OVM3 templates

Appliance Manager

Provides VM management

(templates, lifecycle)

CPU pools for isolation &

license management

Node 0 - OVS Node 1 - OVS

Local Local Shared Storage

Dom0 Dom0 Repo Repo

DomU

DomU

DomU

SharedRepo

DomU

DomU

DomU

ODA Base (DomU) ODA Base (DomU)

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Virtualized Platform: Oracle WebLogic/OTD

Node 0 - OVS Node 1 - OVS

Local Local Shared Storage

Dom0 Dom0 Repo Repo

WLS Admin Svr

WLS Managed Svr

Traffic Director

SharedRepo

Traffic Director AS

WLS Managed Svr

Traffic Director

ODA Base (DomU) ODA Base (DomU)

VIP

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Overview of Database Provisioning

Configure network & copy over software

Download Oracle software

Run Oracle Appliance Manager

Database (EE, RON or RAC)

set up

DB only: stop here!

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ODA Provisioning

Physical Virtual Virtual with WebLogic

Re-image with Virtual image Re-image with Virtual image

Run oakcli firstnet Run oakcli firstnet Run oakcli firstnet

Install End User Bundle Install ODA Base Install ODA Base

Run OAM Run OAM Run OAM

Install WLS & OTD templates

Run ODA WebLogic Config Utility

Transfer your data

Transfer your data Transfer your data & deploy your applications

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Winter 2014 Update

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Database

Database 12c

including Grid Infrastructure 12c

Container, aka pluggable, database support

In-memory database option

ACFS 12c supports database files, e.g. for snapshots/cloning

ACFS is default when you create 11.2.0.4+ databases using oakcli

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Virtualised Platform

vDisk management, e.g. to add new disks to VMs

ACFS support from oakcli

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WebLogic on ODA

WebLogic 12.1.3 (i.e. choice of 10.3.6, 12.1.2 & 12.1.3)

Coherence option

Admin Server on Managed Server node option(!)

WebLogic Standard Edition option

Faster provisioning through ACFS clones

Fusion Middleware Infrastructure in progress

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Other

ODA plug-in for Enterprise Manager in progress

Oracle Sun X5-2 server was launched on 3rd December

Intel E5-2600 v3 processors

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Database: Project Experiences

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Veriton Customer’s ODA Journey

UK health insurance provider

1700 employees, 3M customers

Main app covers Product/CRM/Finance

Used by ~1000 agents, typically 600 active

Highly Available

RAC Database (~2TB) + Data Guard

Oracle Fusion Middleware (WebLogic, IDM & Reports)

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Customer’s ODA Journey

Goals Replace EoL servers & FC SAN

Migrate from Database 10.2 to 11.2 to stay supported

Improve performance (batch primarily)

Three POC success criteria defined Time and ease of setup

Performance 30% better minimum

No concerns regarding performance and load

Approach Compared ODA to ‘2 servers & NAS’

Database was driver; WebLogic etc could be additional benefit

Oracle loaned ODA for 1 month for POC

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Proof of Concept Conclusions

Quick to set up & deploy

It just worked out of the box

Application load testing good

No surprises

Batch load testing very good

4x faster than (EoL) hardware

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Observations & Outcome

Experience

Fiddly initial set-up (VP), ILOM, imaging etc

(confirmed by O-box partners)

Character set constraint so used DBCA with own template

Performance more than good enough

Live in <3 months (included 10.2 to 11.2 migration)

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Experiences since Go-Live

Sept 2013: node evictions on ODA 2.7 VP, resolved in ODA 2.8

2 HDD failures in 14 months (out of 80 disks)

Huge Pages sizing in ODA Base (50% of memory may be too low

for systems with lots instances but small numbers of sessions)

Been through several patches now – very straightforward

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Middleware: Project Experiences

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O-box Partner - OPITZ customer: Project Aims

2 data centres

Several Engineered Systems (ODA/Exadata) in use

Web applications running on Apache Tomcat

Some apps are mission critical and 24 x 7

Evaluated: WebLogic on ODA VP (2 x ODA)

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Findings (1)

ODA + WLS-ODA 2.9.1 - a single problem

Installer ran properly but VMs could not be accessed: network is

not configured, WLS/OTD processes not started

SR raised & solution came after two weeks: new WLSODA image!

...and the problem was gone!

Conclusion: A good wine waiting to mature

WLS-ODA is newer than rest of ODA stack but has evolved rapidly over 2014

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Findings (2)

Complex environments are easily installed

Patching for the ODA VP system is very helpful

Very high-performance cluster communication

Need a Disaster Recovery plan in addition to Data Guard

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First product (end 2013):

SOA Suite

Second product (end 2014):

WebCenter Content

W E B CE N T E R A P P L I A N C E

O-box Products – Middleware Appliances

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O-box Products’ ODA Journey

Goals Faster time to market of SOA Projects

Easy patching

In compliance with EDG

SOA-in-a-box

Success criteria Time & ease of setup (no manual intervention)

Highly available

Secure

Approach Worked closely with Oracle product management

Take care to keep it supportable by Oracle

Add value by adding control (not just ‘running a few scripts’)

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O-box Experience Putting an application on ODA

Database

Some Fusion Middleware products can be database heavy, e.g.

BPEL, but the mid-tier is processing oriented

good mix for ODA

ODA GI & database provisioning just works

Easy to choose between EE, RON or RAC

WLS ODA template can have GridLink (i.e. FCF, RCLB) example

pre-configured to an ODA db

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O-box Experience Putting an application on ODA

WebLogic

WebLogic domain build is very good

Most shortcomings resolved by WLS ODA 2.9.1

Multiple domains & multiple clusters possible

Can only run configuration once (or else clean and restart)

Traffic Director – Load Balancer

Only available on ODA or Exalogic

Stable product – LB features comparable to HW

Super fast!

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O-box Experience Putting an application on ODA

Some constraints, e.g. size of the Oracle Home (3GB) & no API to

add disk space

Lean/limited RPMs (we added RPMs from Oracle Linux ISO)

We had to tune memory & CPU allocation

WLS ODA Designed for Java EE application deployment, not tuned for Fusion Middleware platform like SOA

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Appliance? Cloud? Exa…?

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Cloud*** versus Appliance versus DIY

0

50

100Control

Patching

Support

Security

Privacy**

Cost*Cloud

Appliance

DIY

*Cost depends on the size of your organization ** in case of a public cloud ***Public or private cloud

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ODA versus Exadata

ODA Exadata (1/8 rack) Exadata (full rack)

2 database servers 8 database servers

48 cores 24 cores 192 cores

512 GB RAM 1024 GB RAM 4096 GB RAM

No storage servers 24 disks (or 48 disks)

3 storage servers 18 disks

14 storage servers 168 disks

10 GbE interconnect InfiniBand interconnect & RDMA

Database + optionally apps Database only (use Exalogic for apps)

$60K US (+ $40K for extra storage array)

$220K US $1,1M US

X4-2 models as of June 14

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Summary

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What’s So Special about ODA?

• quick Modern, high spec hardware

• fewer things to go wrong Self-contained appliance

• DB EE/RON/RAC, WLS are all easily deployed Pre-packaged

• simpler, less time consuming process Bundled patches

• less time spent in arbitration Single point of support

• price isn’t a stumbling block Sensibly priced

• elegant ‘in a box’ solutions like O-box Virtualization option

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Is ODA Suitable for You?

Size Your biggest prod database needs << 48 RAC/24 EE cores

Your IOPS reqs aren’t extreme

You have a relatively small number of DBs, esp if RAC

You don’t need more than 3 or 4* at one site

License You have/need DB Enterprise Edition

Consolidation You want to consolidate DB & perhaps middle tier to one hardware platform

Appliance

You want simplified patching & are happy to patch at least every ~6 months

* This is not a limitation just our opinion

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Any questions?

Thank you for listening!

@oboxproducts

http://o-box.com