Exachk does a number of health checks.  One of them is to verify the connectivity, settings and such of the ethernet cables in the Exadata environment.  If one is found amiss, the following will be returned in the Exachk summary report: FAIL OS Check One or more Ethernet network cables are not connected. Node_Name To validate the Exachk findings, you are asked to run the following as root on the specific node that is reporting the issue: for cable in `ls /sys/class/net | grep ^eth`; do  printf “$cable: “; cat /sys/class/net/$cable/carrier; done This command, if run on one of the…

There have been some great blog posts from folks on the RMOUG Training Days 2013 Conference, (I’ll add some links to my favorites I’ve come across at the end of this post!)  Due to this, I thought I would leave mine in my drafts folder and focus for now on the Conference from my viewpoint as the Conference Director.  John Juenette was gracious enough to send me a beginning blog post he’d started last year and I need to review it and add my own data for future “victims”, but until then, here were my experiences during this year’s run…

As I spend more and more time optimizing Exadata environments, I seem to be answering the same questions repeatedly when it comes to database design, parameter settings, etc. Here’s a few high level notes to always remember- Always have baselines from previous environments.  Don’t go into performance expectations blind.  Have AWR and ASH data from the previous environment and mine AWR data for anything when others start “guessing”. Look at the big picture-  those that focus on one thing, often find that it’s a combination of issues that brew the perfect storm. What are your top 10 goals by going…

While at conferences, I attend a lot of dinners/social events outside of the day time festivities and although the topics on the table are often technical, sometimes they veer off to those of each person’s interest.  Discussions with me often fall into one of my areas of interest, which happens to be history, (American, European or Russian…)  Many who know me realize that if I hadn’t ended up in the technical world, I might have become a history teacher.  The common question during these conversations is “Who is your favorite American president?”  When I answer “Andrew Johnson”, I always get…

I’m always taken aback how much conferences cost, even if they are way cheaper options than many formal classes.  Education costs money, we all know that, but considering how little it costs to attend RMOUG Training Days, I always tell people, this is one of the best training opportunities anyone can take advantage of. I need to remind folks of some of the highlights of this great conference that I am very proud to be the Training Days director of.  This year you have new speakers like Oracle Open World’s Technologist of the Year, Arup Nanda along with so many…

If you know Exadata and you want to present with the best of the best on the subject in one of the more exclusive and fun conferences around, come join me at the Enkitec E4 2013 conference in Irving, Tx this August 5th and 6th! This is your chance to share your Exadata knowledge with attendees who goal is to learn new Exadata skills.  Last years conference was incredibly successful and had an A+ list of presenters and attendees. To find out more and to keep up to date with the latest news on the event, check out Enkitec’s E4…

Thought I would spend my lunch hour with my Training Days Director hat on and telling folks about RMOUG Training Days 2013 today.  Tomorrow is the last day to take advantage of early bird pricing.  If interested in the details, click here. The conference, as many know will be held on February 12th and 13th with the 11th reserved for OTN Day, University Sessions and Cary Millsap’s Mastering Trace Data.  Tomorrow is the last day to get the great early bird pricing for registration, so it’s a great time to get in on the best price for 150+ sessions, take…

If you are interested in a replay for my webinar with Redgate on the EM CLI, (Enterprise Manager Command Line Interface) it can be found here. The corresponding slides, including scripts and syntax explanations are located on Enkitec’s slideshare link here. Hopefully you will start seeing more from me in the future as I’ve now recovered from the last six weeks of “fun” and am back on my feet! 🙂

I had the opportunity to speak yesterday at the NoCOUG, (Northern California Oracle User Group) Fall Conference and today at the RMOUG, (Rocky Mtn. Oracle User Group) Quarterly Education Workshop.  Why? Considering I had surgery this last Saturday, I may be a glutton for punishment, but I did enjoy both events, (RMOUG’s is still going on right now as I type this post… :)) I did the same presentation for both events, my “Sherlock Holmes for the DBA”, a favorite that goes through optimization features available in Oracle, (ASH, AWR and tracing) along with how and why to perform optimization…

I love EM12c, don’t get me wrong.  I wouldn’t post about it so much in my blog, tweet about it, working on two Apress books in support of the product if I didn’t.  The features, the broad range of support it provides the future of the database and development arena for Oracle is something that many have only dreamed about.  The problem is, some would say, is that some dreamed a bit too much and forgot to dot their i’s and cross their t’s.  Then when offered a work around to an i that wasn’t dotted or a t uncrossed,…

Upon re-entering the Oracle EBS world, I had to once again familiarize myself with patching, which, as anyone know, is the cornerstone of all Apps DBA’s activities…:)  Challenge is, the web docs on how to perform a simple apps tier patch is not often easily located, so I thought I would put this out here for others reference. 1.  Download the patch, as instructed by Oracle Support and also read the “Read Me”.  Verify that the only task is an App Tier patch, which these instructions will cover. 2.  Once you have SCP’d the patch download to the Apps Tier…