I ran in to a small issue while applying the July 2016 quarterly patch to a couple of Exadata racks last week. The systems were running GI 12.1.0.2, previously with the January 2016 PSU. The patches applied successfully, and we were beginning the process of running the post-patch scripts on the databases in the cluster. This… Read More »
By default on an Oracle RAC installation, the listeners are configured to allow any database to register with them. There is no security out of the box to determine which databases may register. While this makes it easy to create new databases without worrying about listener registration, this can cause potential problems in a real environment.… Read More »
I had the pleasure of rebuilding an Exadata rack for a customer a while back, and it provided a pretty good refresher in backup and recovery for me. As DBAs, we back up databases all the time, but the restores are performed much less frequently. In the case of this rack, there were several databases… Read More »
If you’ve run an exachk report, y0u may have seen the following message with regard to your databases: Status Type Message Status On Details FAIL Database Check Database parameter CLUSTER_INTERCONNECTS is NOT set to the recommended value db01:dbm011, db02:dbm012 View This check is commonly seen when a database is created on Exadata without using the custom… Read More »
There has recently been a lot of news about the exploit revealed in the bash shell. While the fix is very quick to implement, there are a couple of tricks that are required to install this update on an Exadata environment. According to Oracle support note #1405320.1, Exadata storage server versions 11.2.3.x.x and 12.1.1.x.x are susceptible… Read More »
I noticed something for the first time tonight when I was playing around in the Enkitec lab – something that I have been doing wrong for a while. When working in the lab, I often rely on the crsctl command to shut down the entire cluster stack for me. It’s really easy to use “crsctl… Read More »
We had a client that was running into a strange issue on their Exadata where new connections coming in through the SCAN were failing. After doing some troubleshooting, it was discovered that it was related to one of the SCAN listeners not properly accepting requests from new sessions. The VIP and listener were running, and… Read More »
Oracle has released the much-anticipated version of cellsrv compatible with Oracle Database 12.1.0.1 (patch #16980054). Before thinking about upgrading, read MOS note #1571789.1 carefully. Unless you are planning to run database 12c on your Exadata, it would be advisable to continue down the 11.2 branch of the cellsrv software, which currently has a latest version… Read More »
Today, Oracle announced the Exadata X4-2 model. The X4 has some considerable improvements, namely: 12-core Intel Xeon e5-2697 CPUs, up from the 8-core models found in the X3-2 (hello, database licenses!) 256GB RAM per database server, upgradeable to 512GB 96GB RAM per storage server 800GB Sun Flash F80 cards – 3.2TB of storage per cell… Read More »
I heard a strange report from a client late last week – they weren’t getting any smart scans on their Exadata – a data warehouse, no less (and we checked to see if cell_offload_processing was set to true). Queries would run normally, but for some reason, the “cell physical IO interconnect bytes returned by smart… Read More »