This is commonly the time at any company I discuss how I’m about to move on… Nope, not planning on going anywhere… I know, it’s odd for everyone involved, but we’ll all get used to it. Where I’ve Been I joined Microsoft two years ago, to take on the role that Patrick LeBlanc left so that he could accomplish all that we’ve observed with Adam Sexton on Guy in a Cube. It was just a bit intimidating, as I’d never done analytics or AI before, nor had I really any experience in Azure. I hadn’t even thought about the big…
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As the flood gates open up on Oracle for Azure IaaS, working in an efficient manner has become a necessity. We’re building out partners to help, but there are ways to empower our customers and those doing this work to make us all successful- hopefully this post will assist. After I posted the Estimate Tool for Sizing Oracle Workloads on Azure, I realized more guidance around AWR reports would be beneficial. These tips will provide help to any migration, not just one to Azure, so read and reap the rewards! Separate and Conquer A sizing estimate isn’t the same thing…
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A week ago, Friday was my 13 year-old Cattle Dog/Jack Russell mix, DaVinci’s time to go to doggo heaven. He was a great flurry of tri-color energy, wrapped up in a small package. DaVinci at 4 Yrs Old I adopted him from a rescue that has discovered him during a Meth lab bust in Colorado. I liked to call him “My Little Crack-Puppy” and he was known for losing his little doggy mind around any animal that called to his prey drive,…
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A DBA is only as good as their last backup…or more so, their last recovery. To celebrate #WorldBackupDay on Twitter, I’m blogging on how to backup an Oracle database directly to Azure Blob storage. Yes, you could backup on a managed disk directly connected to the VM, then copy it off, but Azure Blob Storage is inexpensive and provides considerable speed and opportunity to create an NSF mount to use the backups with other Oracle hosts for cloning, recovery, etc. Configure Blob Storage in the Azure Portal In this example, we have an Oracle database running on an Azure IaaS…
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Use the following shell script to create your Oracle VM. I chose the following parameters to create mine: Using Azure Cloud Shell and with persistent storage, which are linked on the github page, I uploaded the mk_oravm.sh script and run it after changing the permissions. chmod 744 mk_oravm.sh Provision the VM Run the script: ./mk_oravm.sh Anwser the questions from the script: What is the name for the resource group to create the deployment in? Example: ORA_GRP Enter your Resource Group name: orabkup_grp Here's the installation version urns available, including Oracle and Oracle Linux Urn ----------------------------------------------------------- Oracle:Oracle-Database-Ee:18.3.0.0:18.3.20181213 Enter the urn you'd…
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Just like with other UI’s, the Azure portal may not show you the wealth of offerings that can be found in the Azure catalog. For those Oracle DBAs hoping to build an IaaS VM image from a certified OS version, this means they need Oracle Enterprise Linux and are frustrated when they can’t locate it in the portal. Empower with the Cloud Shell Oracle DBAs rarely are fascinated with user interfaces or portals, so when you offer us something like the Azure Cloud Shell, it’s something we should embrace. I’ve spoke about it before and I will rave about it…
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As often as I use the Automatic Workload Repository(AWR) data in my day-to-day job at Microsoft, I think most can imagine how often I’m explaining its value, along with tracing to my Microsoft peeps. Its time to write a post dedicated to the Microsoft crowd who want to understand a bit more about AWR, so hopefully its helpful! What is the Automatic Workload Repository? The Automatic Workload Repository, (AWR) had been around since Oracle 10g and requires the diagnostic and tuning management pack licensing to use all of its features in Oracle’s Enterprise Edition database. Versions before 10.2.0.4 had limited…
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Some folks stated they were having trouble finding this, so I’m posting a link here for the blog I wrote on the Microsoft Tech Community Blog on my opinion about building out RAC on Azure.
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Load testing as part of a cloud migration project is expected and should be built into the requirements. The goal is to set yourself up for success. Log Latency Recently I had a Cloud Solution Architect, (CSA) escalate an Oracle performance problem after migrating from on-prem to the cloud. The information provided from the customer stated they were experiencing log sync latency in Oracle and that they hadn’t experienced this previously on-prem. They said there weren’t really any changes, just a simple lift and shift to Azure, so they were at a loss as to why the latency was being…
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In my last post, I discussed some of the unique challenges migrating Oracle workloads from Exadata to Azure posed. Engineered systems are not your everyday lift and shift and are rarely simple. Although I covered some focus areas for success, I’d like to get into the migration philosophical questions around cell offloading and IO. cell information is referred to in the average Oracle 12c AWR report almost 350 times. That’s a LOT of data to consider when migrating a workload to a server that won’t have cell nodes to OFFLOAD TO. If cell nodes are creating a ton of different…
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It was brought to my ADHD attention, that one of our community members is leaving after she was made to feel unwelcome by some who, (IMHO) have insecurities so deep, that they have nothing else better to do than do harm to others. Correcting others on preferred pronouns or even more challenging, transitioning is something I can’t imagine the difficulty around. I’ve only had the experiences as a parent of a gay son and one gender non-identifying child- the unintentional and intentional cruelty of others was impactful enough. I had more than one occasion of a child returning home, embarrassed…
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Please join me, Kendra Little and Grant Fritchey on February 12th for an awesome webinar to discuss the results from the 4th annual Redgate State of Database DevOps report. We’ll discuss the interesting insights it provides and the future of Database DevOps! You can read the here: Actual Report
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I know, I know- there’s a number of you out there thinking- I’m being brought in on more and more of these projects due to a recent change for some Exadata backup components many companies kept onsite, (parts that wear out more often, like PDUs and cell disks) which are no longer an option and that moving to Azure is a viable option for these workloads if you know what to identify and address before the move to the cloud. Engineered, Not Iron An Exadata is an engineered system- database nodes, secondary cell nodes, (also referred to as storage nodes/cell…
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We’ll start with a disclaimer here- this is my experience and my opinion. NO ONE ELSE’S, just as any link to any blog in this post is. Take it or leave it, I really don’t care, never have, never will- never been one to follow any drummer but my own anyway. 😊 Although the basis for calculating database management systems percentage of business is highly contested, there isn’t anyone contesting Oracle as having the largest percentage of the current database management system business. Don’t confuse this with cloud business or other technology platform- those are two different things. One such…
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It’s that time of year where everyone is doing a “Year in Review” post and why not? It’s good to gain perspective, plan for 2020 and celebrate all that was wonderful about 2019, (outside of politics, that was an utter failure on all fronts, pretty much most countries… :)) The DBAKevlar blog: 46 published posts for 2019 Over 800 posts on the site Over 600K in visitors for 2019 Daily views have increased steadily, with over 2500 visitors yesterday. Somehow, still awarded top 60 blog sites for Oracle database blogs with all that Microsoft content…:) Microsoft Employment for 2019: My…
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I don’t talk too much about my Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, (ADHD) brain outside of the occasional squirrel joke and more often view it as a super power, but when it is a challenge, I think it’s important to share what we go through. You can’t solve a problem if you don’t know it is one. ADHD and Autism For those that aren’t aware, I was diagnosed with ADHD/on the spectrum for autism back in 2004-2005. Its not that I wasn’t before this, I just grew up in a very rural area. I fully demonstrated traditional traits for a kid…
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I’ve been studying for over a week for my certs. It really is a challenge for my ADHD brain, as I learn by interacting and using a product, not be reading about it and guess what? Most of what the certs are on are not in my technical area. Yeah, this is not fun for me. I find that my brain hits a limit on what it can absorb before the activity levels in the temporal lobes diminish and I need to take a break, which is what I’m doing right now after a full day of Azure Synapse Analytics,…
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This is a 2-part blog post, the first in the series can be found on the Microsoft SQL Server blog here. The recently released SQL Server 2019 on Linux includes several updated features, including replication, support for Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator, and Change Data Capture (CDC) support. If you’re running SQL Server 2017 on Linux, these are great reasons to upgrade to SQL Server 2019 to take advantage of these updates. Microsoft SQL Server 2019 was subjected to significant testing and supported to run on several Linux distribution platforms: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), and…