I’m passionate about making technology easier to understand, a mission I’ve pursued on my blog since 2008. However, I’ve faced challenges when educating newer Oracle users about the differences between single-instance (older architecture) and multitenant (newer architecture) models, as well as how these two architectures are connected. For those of us with extensive Oracle experience, these concepts may feel straightforward. This is especially true for professionals who work across multiple platforms, as Oracle was relatively late to adopt multitenancy. For instance, SQL Server has embraced this model since its earlier versions—going back to my experience with SQL Server 6.0—making it…
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In the midst of us needing to do more with less every day, many of us are incorporating clones to simplify data refreshes to non-production database environments. Working harder is just not an option when we can use newer technology to get more by doing less. Knowing Your Environment Doing less effectively requires some planning for Oracle and a few questions to be asked: Will you need to deploy to a new host/VM target as part of a clone? Will an image with Oracle be used for the new Host/VM target or will you need to build out the Oracle…
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After six months of collaboration, deep intensive script writing, slide content and video recordings, the Complete Guide to Oracle 23ai is available on LinkedIn Learning! You can access the course directly here. If you’re new to Oracle, this course will teach you all the basics and as a seasoned professional, it will take you through the new, advanced features connected to this fantastic release!
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First things first- The following opinions expressed in this post are my own and in no way connected to my employer. I’m getting slaughtered with questions about the multiple news stories and releases on the announcement for the Oracle Database Service for Azure, which is a rebrand and updated OCI Interconnect with an Azure Portal overlay in OCI. It allows the customer to deploy and monitor an Oracle Autonomous database or ExaCC and then have the application tier in Azure. This is touted as a multi-cloud solution, and I’m going to write this post and point people to it with…
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I just finished an interview with a friend for a blog post where he was surprised how differently I was viewed in the Oracle community, (a multi-platform DBA who wasn’t very loyal to Oracle like she should be) vs. the Microsoft community, (that odd Oracle girl.) The truth is, I’ve always enjoyed database technology and few know that my first database (MSSQL 6.5) as well as my first book was in Microsoft SQL Server (Pro SQL Server 2012 Practices). I’m not platform centric at all, work mostly in Oracle, SQL Server/Azure SQL and MySQL, but I’m just CUSTOMER centric. Azure…
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I had an interesting opportunity with a complex Oracle environment that exemplified the challenges of technical debt and dependency on database platforms. There are those that believe a database should only be used to hold data and should be completely platform interchangeable. As DBAs, we know this results in very little usage of relational database features and platform strengths and rarely, if ever can scale. I fully support using the strength of RDBMS platform features, but what happens when we embrace what a feature does and attempt to build it better at the database layer than the RDBMS vendor? …
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Disclaimer: I’m not a big fan of benchmark data. I find it doesn’t provide us as much value in the real world as we’d like to think it does. As Cary Milsap says, “You can’t hardware your way out of a software problem” and I find that many folks think that if they just get the fastest hardware, their software problems will go away and this just isn’t true. Sooner or later, it’s going to catch up with you- and it rarely tells you what your real database workload needs to run most efficiently or what might be running in…
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With my upcoming session on “Migrating Oracle Workloads to Azure IaaS” this week at PASS Virtual Summit 2020, I wanted to take some time to dig deeper onto the performance side. The last thing you want to have happen is to migrate your database to the cloud and have it just screech to a halt. The truth is, its often a combination of database and infrastructure issues that are the cause. Although many of you may want me to dig into database performance data, I’m actually going to first focus on infrastructure, as it’s the area that most aren’t privy…
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It’s not uncommon for different recommended practices to arise in technical sizing and optimization practices. For many, it’s a compromise between most optimal data and ease of access vs. impact on production environments, which is no different from what we face when sizing Oracle on Azure. As we know it’s important to lift and shift the workload vs. moving the hardware, we must have as simple way to perform this task. The question comes up repeatedly as to our preferred method of working with a one-week Automatic Workload Repository, (AWR) report to do so. This post will be focused on…
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There’s so much I need to get written down these days, but there’s only so many hours in a day and days in a week and I’ve totally failed in this area. Well, I have a little time right now, so going to try to get something down. It only took me four times to get this published! 🙂 I’m often asked how I migrate an Oracle database to Azure and although each database is unique, there are some things that are pretty consistent that need to be identified and some that should be resolved before migrating to the cloud.…
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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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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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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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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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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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I’ve been very busy allocating 60% of my time towards Oracle on Azure migrations. The biggest challenge right now isn’t getting Oracle on Azure, but keeping my percentage of time allocated to only 60%. I love Oracle technology- yes, a Microsoft employee who LOVES Microsoft and Azure cloud, also LOVES. Oracle. I won’t apologize and I know I’m not the only one. Every company I’ve worked for, even when I worked at Oracle, required my multi-platform skill set. I’ve never worked anywhere that had ONLY Oracle, only Linux, only Microsoft, only SQL Server, etc. I saw it only as…
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Microsoft has done a great job of documenting how to create a VM with the appropriate VM image and Oracle version, then how to log in, startup the listener and create the database. I just have some enhancements I’d like to make to it, hoping to help it move up one level. I Bequeath to You All instructions provided by the Microsoft documentation show how to connect to the database using a bequeath, (BEQ) connection. This is done by the following command, using SQL Plus, (or similar): sqlplus / as sysdba It bypasses the need for a connection string, only…