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  • Bootstrapping a VM image in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure using cloud-init

    At the time of writing Oracle’s Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offers 2 ways to connect block storage to virtual machines: paravirtualised and via iSCSI. There are important differences between the two so please read the documentation to understand all the implications. I need all the performance I can get with my systems so…

  • Enhanced “validate” commands in Oracle’s Data Guard Broker 18c

    If you are using an Oracle Database Enterprise Edition chances are that there is at least one environment in your estate making use of Data Guard. And if you are using Data Guard, why not use the broker? I have been using Data Guard broker for a long time now, and it has definitely improved…

  • Log in to Ubuntu VMs in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

    When I learned that Oracle was providing Ubuntu images in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) I was a bit surprised at first. After all, Oracle provides a great Enterprise Linux distribution in the form of Oracle Linux. As a Ubuntu fan I do of course appreciate the addition of Ubuntu to the list of supported distributions.…

  • Terraforming the Oracle Cloud: choosing and using an image family

    For a few times now I have presented about “cloud deployments done the cloud way”, sharing lessons learned in the changing world I find myself in. It’s a lot of fun and so far I have been far too busy to blog about things I learned by trial and error. Working with Terraform turned out…

  • Ansible tips’n’tricks: executing related tasks together

    I have recently written an ansible playbook to apply one-off patches to an Oracle Home. While doing this, I hit a little snag that needed ironing out. Before continuing this post, it’s worth pointing out that I’m on: $ ansible –version ansible 2.6.5 And it’s Ansible on Fedora. Most likely the wrong way to do…

  • Using colplot to visualise performance data

    Back in 2011 I wrote a blog post about colplot but at that time focused on running the plot engine backed by a web server. However some people might not want to take this approach, and thinking about security it might not be the best idea in the world anyway. A port that isn’t opened can’t…

  • Running orachk as part of TFA with support tools bundle

    I have previously written a number of posts about OSWatcher integration in Tracefile Analyzer (TFA) w/support tools bundle (available from My Oracle Support Document ID 1513912.1). Thus far I have neglected another useful tool available to administrators in the same package: orachk. UPDATE This post covers an old version of the stack. At the time…

  • Little things worth knowing: OSWatcher Analyser Dashboard

    I have written a few articles about Tracefile Analyzer (TFA) in the recent past. As you may recall from these posts, a more comprehensive TFA version than the one provided with the installation media is available from My Oracle Support (MOS for short). As part of this version, you get a lot of useful, additional…

  • Ansible tips’n’tricks: assessing your runtime environment

    One thing that I frequently need to do is test for a certain condition, and fail if it is not met. After all, I want to write those playbooks in a safe way. Here is an example: I need to ensure that my playbook only runs on Oracle Linux 7. How can I do this?…

  • Ansible tips’n’tricks: even more output options

    In my last post I wrote about the “debug” option to format Ansible output differently. I came across this setting simply by searching the usual developer forums for an alternative Ansible output option. Having found out about the “debug” option made me curious, especially since there wasn’t an awful lot of documentation available about additional…