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  • Device name persistence in the cloud: OCI

    Device name persistence is an important concept for everyone deploying the Oracle database. In this little series I’ll show how you can achieve device name persistence with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and block storage. I am hoping to share future parts for Azure and AWS. In the example I’m going to prepare a cloud VM…

  • Ansible tips’n’tricks: using the OCI Dynamic Inventory Plugin in playbooks

    After having covered how to configure the Ansible Dynamic Inventory Plugin for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) in the previous posts now it’s time to get it to work with my simple-app cloud application. Before I go into more detail, I’d like to add the usual caveat first. Caveat As I said in the previous post,…

  • Ansible Dynamic Inventory Plugin for OCI: where are all my hosts?

    I wrote about the configuration of the Ansible Dynamic Inventory Plugin for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) in a previous post. As it seems to happen all the time, the length of the post escalated quickly. When I finished the previous post there was still a lot to say! For example, I wanted to share the…

  • Ansible tips’n’tricks: configuring the dynamic inventory plugin for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

    As yet another preparation for a talk I’m about to give later this year I ran into a documentation bug concerning the use of the Ansible Dynamic Inventory plugin for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. It has since been fixed, but it prompted me to write the entire procedure down anyway as I couldn’t really make sense…

  • Handling kernel upgrades with Ansible prior to an Oracle installation

    As part of the process of setting up VMs in the cloud for use with the Oracle database it is frequently necessary to update the systems to the latest and greatest, and hopefully more secure packages before the Oracle installation can begin. In a similar way I regularly upgrade the (cloud-vendor provided) base image when…

  • Oracle Cloud Infrastructure: using Network Security Groups and the caveat with the subnet’s default security list

    This is going to be one of these posts I’m mainly writing to myself, in the hope that a) I don’t forget about that topic too soon and b) someone might have the same question and doesn’t want to spin up an environment to find out. Broadly speaking Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (and some other cloud…

  • Upgrading oraclelinux-release-el7 might trigger an upgrade to UEK Release 6

    While building a demo environment for an upcoming presentation I noticed an upgrade from UEK 5 to UEK 6 on my Oracle Linux 7 VM. As it turned out, the kernel change has been triggered by an upgrade of oraclelinux-release-el7 RPM. I am a great fan of Oracle’s UEK and the team behind it, so…

  • Enforcing a re-parse of a cursor in Autonomous Database. Using a hammer

    UPDATE 251208: The original post is now retired, the workaround previously described is no longer necessary. Oracle Autonomous Database 19c and 26ai both expose dbms_shared_pool to the ADMIN user, therefore the selective purging of cursors from the cursor cache described Selectively purging the shared pool in is possible. Please head over and use the script…

  • Introducing Packer: building immutable infrastructure in the cloud

    After having spent a bit of time with Packer to create Vagrant base boxes it was time to focus on the cloud. I have referenced Packer multiple times in my cloud talks as a popular way to create immutable infrastructure and/or custom images, and I wanted to share how you could potentially make use of…

  • Introducing Packer: building Vagrant base boxes hands-free

    I have referred to Packer in some of my cloud-related presentations as an example of a tool for creating immutable infrastructure. In addition to the cloud, Packer supports a great many other build targets as well. Since I work with VirtualBox and Vagrant a lot, Packer’s ability to create Vagrant base boxes is super awesome.…