A presentation most recently delivered by Simon Haslam at the UKOUG Tech14 conference, though given elsewhere in various forms including Oracle Gebruikersclub Holland and an online RAC SIG seminar. The slides introduce the Oracle Database Apppliance (ODA) and discusses how you can use it to easily deploy both databases and WebLogic Server. Three case studies are covered and the presentation wraps up considering when the ODA might be most suitable for your organisation. This latest Winter 2014 version includes ODA 12c updates (database and WebLogic).

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1 • 50
What's So Special about the Oracle Database Appliance?
Simon Haslam
8 December 2014 • v1.9
Winter 2014
Update

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Agenda Introduction to ODA ODA Architecture & Provisioning Database: Project Experiences Middleware: Project Experiences Appliance? Cloud? Exa?

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Introduction to ODA

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Introduction to ODA

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Introduction to ODA: evolution
1998 Oracle 'Raw Iron'
2001 Dell/Oracle database appliance (8i single instance)
2006 RAC-in-a-BOX Veriton & Julian Dyke (9i RAC)
2008 Oracle/HP Database Machine v1
2009 Oracle Exadata
2011 (Sep) Oracle ODA v1
2013 (Feb) ODA 2.5 Virtualized Platform
2013 (Apr) ODA X3-2 hardware
2013 (Dec) ODA X4-2 hardware
2000
2010
2014
O-box was born!

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Introduction to ODA
Aims* Simplify and speed up Oracle database deployment Ease patching & help customers stay on recent versions (more recently) Provide ‘in a box’ solution for customers and ISVs
* We don’t work for Oracle – this is our opinion only!

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ODA Strengths Standard set of parts (most shared with Exa*, ZFSSA etc) Oracle patches stack from firmware up to database ‘Well considered’ Oracle installations Standard configurations – very few options Single point of support
ODAs behave predictably from customer to customer

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ODA Weaknesses If you want fewer cores then not the fastest clock speeds Not huge amounts of memory by modern standards (256GB x 2) SSD only used for REDO, none for DATA

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ODA Architecture & Provisioning

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Introduction to ODA - components
2 x 12 cores (2.7GHz) 256GB
2 x 12 cores (2.7GHz) 256GB
4 SSD
20 HDD
2 x dual 10GbE ext + 1 x dual 10GbE int + Management Port
1 or 2 storage arrays

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The Biggest ODA Decision…
Physical or Virtual? Physical (aka Bare Metal/BM) is traditional database-only mode Most ODA customers are running in physical mode today (historical?) Can't easily change after deployment (need backup/restore)
Trend …towards virtual
Non-database workload too?  You need to use virtual

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Bare Metal: for running databases only
Database Choice of 12.1.0.2 or 11.2.x database …trend to supporting several Oracle versions
Appliance Manager UI when you first provision ODA oakcli tool
Node 0 - Linux
•Appliance Manager
•Database(s)
•Grid Infrastructure
Node 1 - Linux
•Appliance Manager
•Database(s)
•Grid Infrastructure
Local
Local
Shared
Storage

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Virtualized Platform: databases
Database Each node has a “ODA Base” DomU Looks a lot like ODA BM – most admin done from ODA Base
Nodes Run a special OVS image
Appliance Manager GUI when you first provision it oakcli tool
Node 0 - OVS
ODA Base (DomU)
•Appliance Manager
•Database(s)
•Grid Infrastructure
Node 1 - OVS
ODA Base (DomU)
•Appliance Manager
•Database(s)
•Grid Infrastructure
Dom0
Dom0
Repo
Repo
Local
Local
Shared
Storage

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Virtualized Platform: databases + applications
Middleware / Applications Run in their own VMs (DomU’s) Shared repo so can fail-over Supports OVM3 templates
Appliance Manager Provides VM management (templates, lifecycle) CPU pools for isolation & license management
Node 0 - OVS
Node 1 - OVS
Local
Local
Shared
Storage
Dom0
Dom0
Repo
Repo
DomU
DomU
DomU
SharedRepo
DomU
DomU
DomU
ODA Base (DomU)
ODA Base (DomU)

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Virtualized Platform: Oracle WebLogic/OTD
Node 0 - OVS
Node 1 - OVS
Local
Local
Shared
Storage
Dom0
Dom0
Repo
Repo
WLS Admin Svr
WLS Managed Svr
Traffic Director
SharedRepo
Traffic Director AS
WLS Managed Svr
Traffic Director
ODA Base (DomU)
ODA Base (DomU)
VIP

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Overview of Database Provisioning
Configure network
& copy over software
Download Oracle software
Run Oracle Appliance Manager
Database (EE, RON or RAC) set up
DB only: stop here!

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ODA Provisioning
Physical
Virtual
Virtual with WebLogic
Re-image with Virtual image
Re-image with Virtual image
Run oakcli firstnet
Run oakcli firstnet
Run oakcli firstnet
Install End User Bundle
Install ODA Base
Install ODA Base
Run OAM
Run OAM
Run OAM
Install WLS & OTD templates
Run ODA WebLogic Config Utility
Transfer your data
Transfer your data
Transfer your data & deploy your applications

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Winter 2014 Update

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Database Database 12c including Grid Infrastructure 12c Container, aka pluggable, database support In-memory database option ACFS 12c supports database files, e.g. for snapshots/cloning ACFS is default when you create 11.2.0.4+ databases using oakcli

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Virtualised Platform vDisk management, e.g. to add new disks to VMs ACFS support from oakcli

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WebLogic on ODA WebLogic 12.1.3 (i.e. choice of 10.3.6, 12.1.2 & 12.1.3) Coherence option Admin Server on Managed Server node option(!) WebLogic Standard Edition option Faster provisioning through ACFS clones Fusion Middleware Infrastructure in progress

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Other ODA plug-in for Enterprise Manager in progress Oracle Sun X5-2 server was launched on 3rd December Intel E5-2600 v3 processors

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Database: Project Experiences

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Veriton Customer’s ODA Journey UK health insurance provider 1700 employees, 3M customers Main app covers Product/CRM/Finance Used by ~1000 agents, typically 600 active Highly Available RAC Database (~2TB) + Data Guard Oracle Fusion Middleware (WebLogic, IDM & Reports)

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Customer’s ODA Journey
Goals Replace EoL servers & FC SAN Migrate from Database 10.2 to 11.2 to stay supported Improve performance (batch primarily)
Three POC success criteria defined Time and ease of setup Performance 30% better minimum No concerns regarding performance and load
Approach Compared ODA to ‘2 servers & NAS’ Database was driver; WebLogic etc could be additional benefit Oracle loaned ODA for 1 month for POC

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Proof of Concept Conclusions
Quick to set up & deploy It just worked out of the box
Application load testing good No surprises
Batch load testing very good 4x faster than (EoL) hardware

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Observations & Outcome
Experience Fiddly initial set-up (VP), ILOM, imaging etc (confirmed by O-box partners) Character set constraint so used DBCA with own template Performance more than good enough
Live in <3 months (included 10.2 to 11.2 migration)

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Experiences since Go-Live Sept 2013: node evictions on ODA 2.7 VP, resolved in ODA 2.8  2 HDD failures in 14 months (out of 80 disks) Huge Pages sizing in ODA Base (50% of memory may be too low for systems with lots instances but small numbers of sessions) Been through several patches now – very straightforward

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Middleware: Project Experiences

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O-box Partner - OPITZ customer: Project Aims 2 data centres Several Engineered Systems (ODA/Exadata) in use Web applications running on Apache Tomcat Some apps are mission critical and 24 x 7 Evaluated: WebLogic on ODA VP (2 x ODA)

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Findings (1)
ODA + WLS-ODA 2.9.1 - a single problem Installer ran properly but VMs could not be accessed: network is not configured, WLS/OTD processes not started SR raised & solution came after two weeks: new WLSODA image! ...and the problem was gone!
Conclusion: A good wine waiting to mature 
WLS-ODA is newer than rest of ODA stack but has evolved rapidly over 2014

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Findings (2) Complex environments are easily installed Patching for the ODA VP system is very helpful Very high-performance cluster communication Need a Disaster Recovery plan in addition to Data Guard

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First product (end 2013):
SOA Suite
Second product (end 2014):
WebCenter Content
WEBCENTER APPLIANCE
O-box Products – Middleware Appliances

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O-box Products’ ODA Journey
Goals Faster time to market of SOA Projects Easy patching In compliance with EDG SOA-in-a-box
Success criteria Time & ease of setup (no manual intervention) Highly available Secure
Approach Worked closely with Oracle product management Take care to keep it supportable by Oracle Add value by adding control (not just ‘running a few scripts’)

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O-box Experience Putting an application on ODA
Database Some Fusion Middleware products can be database heavy, e.g. BPEL, but the mid-tier is processing oriented  good mix for ODA ODA GI & database provisioning just works  Easy to choose between EE, RON or RAC WLS ODA template can have GridLink (i.e. FCF, RCLB) example pre-configured to an ODA db

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O-box Experience Putting an application on ODA
WebLogic WebLogic domain build is very good Most shortcomings resolved by WLS ODA 2.9.1 Multiple domains & multiple clusters possible Can only run configuration once (or else clean and restart)
Traffic Director – Load Balancer Only available on ODA or Exalogic Stable product – LB features comparable to HW Super fast!

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O-box Experience Putting an application on ODA Some constraints, e.g. size of the Oracle Home (3GB) & no API to add disk space Lean/limited RPMs (we added RPMs from Oracle Linux ISO) We had to tune memory & CPU allocation
WLS ODA Designed for Java EE application deployment, not tuned for Fusion Middleware platform like SOA

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Appliance? Cloud? Exa…?

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Cloud*** versus Appliance versus DIY
0
50
100
Control
Patching
Support
Security
Privacy**
Cost*
Cloud
Appliance
DIY
*Cost depends on the size of your organization
** in case of a public cloud
***Public or private cloud

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ODA versus Exadata
ODA
Exadata (1/8 rack)
Exadata (full rack)
2 database servers
8 database servers
48 cores
24 cores
192 cores
512 GB RAM
1024 GB RAM
4096 GB RAM
No storage servers
24 disks (or 48 disks)
3 storage servers
18 disks
14 storage servers 168 disks
10 GbE interconnect
InfiniBand interconnect & RDMA
Database + optionally apps
Database only
(use Exalogic for apps)
$60K US
(+ $40K for extra storage array)
$220K US
$1,1M US
X4-2 models
as of June 14

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Summary

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What’s So Special about ODA?
• quick
Modern, high spec hardware
• fewer things to go wrong
Self-contained appliance
• DB EE/RON/RAC, WLS are all easily deployed
Pre-packaged
• simpler, less time consuming process
Bundled patches
• less time spent in arbitration
Single point of support
• price isn’t a stumbling block
Sensibly priced
• elegant ‘in a box’ solutions like O-box 
Virtualization option

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Is ODA Suitable for You?
Size Your biggest prod database needs << 48 RAC/24 EE cores Your IOPS reqs aren’t extreme You have a relatively small number of DBs, esp if RAC You don’t need more than 3 or 4* at one site
License You have/need DB Enterprise Edition
Consolidation You want to consolidate DB & perhaps middle tier to one hardware platform
Appliance You want simplified patching & are happy to patch at least every ~6 months
* This is not a limitation just our opinion

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Any questions? Thank you for listening!
@oboxproducts
http://o-box.com