Provision Oracle RDBMS software via RPM

I have always asked myself why Oracle doesn’t package their software as an RPM-surely such a large organisation has the resources to do so!

Well the short answer is they don’t give you an RPM, except for the XE version of the database which prompted me to do it myself. The big problem anyone faces with RPM is that the format doesn’t seem to support files larger than 2GB. Everybody knows that the Oracle database installation is > 2G which requires a little trick on our side. And the trick is not even obscure in any way as I remembered: some time ago I read an interesting article written by Frits Hoogland about cloning Oracle homes. It’s still very relevant and can be found here:

http://fritshoogland.wordpress.com/2010/07/03/cloning-your-oracle-database-software-installation/

Now that gave me the idea:

1. You install the oracle binaries on a reference host
2. Apply any patches and PSUs you need
3. Wrap the oracle home up in a tar-ball just the way Frits describes by descending into $ORACLE_HOME and creating a tar archive of all files, excluding those ending in “*.log”, network config files in $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin and anything in $ORACLE_HOME/dbs. We don’t want to proliferate our database initialisation files …
4. You make that tarball available on a central repository and export that with CIFS/NFS or whatever other mechanism you like
5. Mount this exported file system in /media, so that /media/db11.2.0.3/ has the database.tar.gz file available
6. Install the RPM

Simple! Piet de Visser would be proud.

Getting started with FusionIO

I have been lucky enough to do some work with Fusion IO cards in a blade server, soon to be followed by another set of tests on a full rack mounted server. I didn’t know exactly where model I was given, but powered my server down in eager anticipation of the events to come.

After the engineer plugged the card in, and powered the server up I logged in as root to find out what about the pre-christmas present. I knew it was a PCI card, so surely lspci would tell me more.

The cause for and against the Exadata simulator

I am on my way back from the best UKOUG conference I ever attended, unfortunately a lot earlier than planned. Before I start forgetting all these great moments it is time to write them up. To make use of James Morle’s words: if you weren’t there, you lose. I couldn’t agree more!

The Oak Table Network organised “Oak Table Sunday”, a hugely successful event on Sunday afternoon. This event featured some of the brightest Oracle minds, and thanks to a very relaxed atmosphere made it all a truly exceptional experience. I have to say that the audience was quite illustrious too-I didn’t recognise Paul Vallee from Pythian with his Movember moustache at first and to my great joy I finally met Piet de Visser again. After exchanging a few words with them I ran into so many people it was just great!

Unfortunately I couldn’t make it before the HA panel session, where Alex Gorbatchev, Dave Ensor, James Morle, Greg Rahn, Dan Norris, Graham Wood, Jonathan Lewis and Mogens Norgaard and all the others I just forgot to mention answered questions from the audience.