When applying quarterly PSUs to an Oracle database, there are generally two steps – one step that applies updates to the binaries inside the Oracle home, and one step that updates objects inside the database catalog via registry$sqlpatch. The first step has long been performed with OPatch, but beginning with Oracle 12.1.0.1, the second task… Read More »
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 »
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 »
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 »
Rene Kundersma at Oracle just published a nifty new utility named dbnodeupdate.sh that will assist with the sometimes-cumbersome process of updating the compute nodes in an Exadata environment. Starting last year with 11.2.3.1.0, Oracle introduced yum updates for the Exadata compute nodes. Previously, each Exadata storage server patch came with a “minimal” or “convenience” pack… Read More »
When the 11.2.3.2.1 release of the Exadata Storage Server software was released, I was a little excited. There were numerous oneoff patches for the previous release, 11.2.3.2.0, which was the first version to support the Exadata X3, writeback flashcache, run UEK on the X#-2 systems, etc. With that many large changes introduced in one version,… Read More »
If you missed Andy Mendelsohn’s keynote at E4 last week, you may not have heard the hubbub that surrounded one of his last slides (tweeted by Frits Hooogland here). The mention of the write-back enticed Kevin Closson to talk about the potential ramifications of such a feature. There’s a lot of information on that slide to… Read More »