On tap for Tuesday is a 2-hour master class from Michael Abbey, along with an all-day drop-in RAC attack workshop with Alex Gorbachev and the RAC SIG.

Read the rest of this entry . . .

In early 2005 I worked for an SQL Server and Windows shop that wanted to transition to Linux and Oracle for the improved high availablity and scalability. We had exactly one SA who knew Linux, two SQL Server DBAs and one database developer.

The new manager of the DBA team also wanted to go for RAC.

We knew we didn’t have the necessary expertise, so after discussing with Oracle’s sales team, we decided to get a consultant to install it for us.

A week of consultant work later, countless of server re-provisions, and we still didn’t have a working RAC.
Not the consultant’s fault, but at the time Oracle’s RAC installation was both very senstivite to OS and HW configuration, and wasn’t very good at detecting problems and notifying the users. It also wasn’t easy to uninstall and re-install. Mix that with a team that has no experience with the underlying OS, and you have a guaranteed disaster.
Our SAs simply couldn’t understand and implement the installation requirements, and the DBA team couldn’t communicate this to them very well.

Fast forward six years:
Read the rest of this entry . . .

Oracle Database Appliance (ODA) is in many ways similar to an Exadata quarter rack: they both use two similar compute servers in an engineered system configuration, with shared storage and flash storage. But in other ways, especially networking and storage, they differ significantly. In particular:

• Storage connectivity: ODA uses SAS direct attachment, while Exadata uses an InfiniBand backbone connected to dedicated storage servers
• Flash memory: Exadata has significantly more flash memory than ODA does. While both can store ASM diskgroups in flash, Exadata also has flash cache capability. ODA’s default configuration uses flash to store redo logs; this helps compensate for ODA’s lack of
  battery-backed disk write cache in the latency-sensitive redo write workload.
• Expandability: ODA currently comes in a single 2-server, 12TB configuration. An Exadata quarter-rack configuration has
  2 compute servers and a minimum of 21TB raw storage. Both compute capacity and storage are expandable virtually without limit, given sufficient number of racks and network backbone.

Read the rest of this entry . . .

I’ve started putting together some information about the Oracle Database Appliance in question-and-answer form. If you have an unanswered question, ask away in the comment section below.

(Update: Oracle has come out with their official FAQ as well)
Read the rest of this entry . . .

When I first heard about Oracle Database Appliance and what it does, I got really excited — I saw great potential in this product. When we got our hands dirty and started testing the appliance, I become confident that this product will be a hit. Now it’s finally the time when I can share my thoughts and experience along with other Pythian folks.

This article is targeted primarily on system architects and managers explaining what they get with Oracle Database Appliance as well as what they don’t get.

So what you do get with Oracle Database Appliance

This is why you would want the appliance — if some the bellow solves your headache.

Standard platform — highly repeatable solution

Oracle Database Appliance is the same hardware, same software up to the drivers, components firmware, hardware components revisions and etc — the same for all customers around the world. This means that you are very unlikely to encounter unique infrastructure issues. You will take advantage of all customers’ experience running Oracle Database Appliances in their data-centers. This is similarity to Exadata platform but Oracle Database Appliance has even less variations so more leverage from standards.
Read the rest of this entry . . .

PYTHIAN NEWS

Pythian is happy to announce today the achievement of three new Oracle PartnerNetwork Specializations bringing the total to seven under our Platinum level membership of the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) program.

Now added to the list are Oracle Exadata, Oracle Data Warehousing, and Oracle GoldenGate.

Complementing the added specializations is Pythian’s launch of new Oracle Exadata-focused products and services including an Oracle Database 11g Release 2 migration calculator, Oracle Exadata Smart Flash Cache Monitoring Tool, and an Oracle Exadata Managed Services program that extends the company’s Oracle Exadata-readiness services.

Pythian’s most recent Oracle Exadata clients include a major financial services company in New York and an e-commerce company specializing in data aggregation for the travel industry. Pythian’s Oracle GoldenGate expertise is supporting Western Union currently.

• Read the PR about our newest Specializations
• Read about our first series of Specializations
• Hear us our Specialized experts in person at OOW11

To find out how we can put our specialized Oracle expertise to work for you, contact us, send us an email or call 1-866-798-4426 ext. 2.

In this post:

• General – the presentation file
• Australia and Europe Webinar is scheduled (July 27^th 2011)
• SCAN Questions and Answers

General

This is a follow up post to answer questions you asked during my “Oracle 11G SCAN: RAC SIG webcast” at June 16th.

You can get the full presentation HERE – “Oracle 11G SCAN: Concepts and implementation experience sharing”. If you are not a member please feel free to join the RAC SIG. The membership is free and it will take you just couple of minutes to get registered (hint: check your spam folder if you don’t see password email from RAC SIG).

Australia and Europe Webinar is scheduled (July 27th 2011)

If you missed the “Oracle11G SCAN: Sharing successful implementation experience” Webinar then you have a chance to see it. For Australia – Europe time zones I am repeating it at July 27th. Read the rest of this entry . . .

Collaborate 2011, Orlando, Florida – April 10-14, 2011
Pythian is happy to welcome Michael Abbey back to our team. He joins our list of distinguished speakers below. Keep an eye out for Pythian founder Paul Vallee who will also be making his annual appearance at the show.
Read the rest of this entry . . .

Update: recordings are now available

Following up on my earlier webinar Implementing Oracle Exadata – Strategies for Success, I’ll be giving another webinar to present the results of the Exadata implementation at LinKShare. I’ll be talking about actual performance results, our zero-downtime go-live, compression experiences, and performance tuning in an Exadata environment.

The webinar will be on Thursday, November 4 at 12 noon, eastern time (the time in your timezone).

Registration link

After over a hundred hours of hard work, Pythian has achieved multiple specializations under our Platinum membership level of the Oracle PartnerNetwork’s OPN Specialized program. We’re proud to be recognized by Oracle as a value-added services partner.

We’d like to shout out a big thank you to Pythian’s dedicated team of database experts who continue to demonstrate and prove why Pythian is trusted by so many clients for Oracle database and applications infrastructure support and consulting services. And, we’d like to give an even bigger thank you to our valuable customers, for your ongoing partnership and confidence in our company.

Check out our shiny new badges of honor, below:

But there is no rest for the wicked. Stay tuned for more news as we announce the next round of specializations.