All about provisioning Oracle PaaS instances as Cloud Stacks. First presented at the DOAG 2018 conference.

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PROVISIONING WITH
ORACLE CLOUD STACK MANAGER
Simon Haslam
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ABOUT ME
Simon Haslam
• Platform / Infrastructure
Architect
• Focus includes HA, DR,
security, automation
Relevant to this session
• Researching JaaS/JCS from
Spring 2015; OTN
webcasts Autumn 2015
• Building SOA & DB CS since
May 2016 (first production
SOA CS in EMEA)
• Designed & built SOA CS
integration platform for
global use since Oct 2017,
using Cloud Stacks since
Dec

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ABOUT EPROSEED
• Focussed only on Oracle technology
• Globally distributed with centralised delivery
management and local resources
• 5 active ACE Directors, 2 Dev Champions, 8 OCM
• 19 Oracle Excellence Awards in 8 years
25 Oracle Specializations… and counting.
Local offices in UK, NL, PT…
& Head Office in Luxembourg

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3 Membership Tiers
• Oracle ACE Director
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FULLY AUTOMATED PROVISIONING OF CLOUD SERVICES
• We can already fully automate provisioning of Oracle Cloud
services from command line using REST APIs
• It’s a good thing to do as most organisations have more than
one cloud environment:
– Consistency across dev/test/production environments
– Should save administrators time overall
– Reduces the reluctance/inertia for creating new environments
– Automated provisioning can be part of CI/CD pipelines
(especially with metering like Universal Credits)
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FULLY AUTOMATED PROVISIONING OF CLOUD SERVICES
• A cloud environment typically consists of several of the following:
– Storage containers for backups
– SSH keys
– PaaS instances, such as databases
• Cloud console screens simplify provisioning but are still lots of parameters to enter
– E.g. 47 (some duplicates) for a 2 node SOA CS cluster and a single instance database
• Most organisations have a limited number of platform patterns (e.g. clustered, non-
clustered, large, small) with a few parameters to distinguish them:
– ID (e.g. number)
– Tier (dev, prod, etc)
– Environment pattern
– Front-end details6
My goal is (after customer setup) to only
need these parameters for any new
environment creation

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FULLY AUTOMATED PROVISIONING OF CLOUD SERVICES
• There are existing tools to help you build this, e.g.
• Using provisioning REST APIs is not trivial though
– APIs change periodically
– Error messages can be “obscure”
– Less parameter validation than through the console
– Powerful – can leave underlying artefacts in a strange state
• Some people have built this into a product, e.g.
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Image credit: playbuzz.com

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ENTER…
* Halo is not part of the logo

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WHAT IS AN ORACLE CLOUD STACK?
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An abstraction layer above
Oracle PaaS instances

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PROVISIONING AS CLOUD STACKS
Cloud provisioning is a significant time-saver compared to on-prem
(even when compared to scripted approaches)
• A cloud stack groups together multiple service types,
in this case SOA, DB and storage
• Managed as a single unit – create/delete, start/stop
• Custom templates allow you to control config,
e.g. topology, sizing, naming conventions
• Configured via Oracle-provided or custom templates
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Dec
2016

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WHAT IS AN ORACLE CLOUD STACK?
• Intended for multiple PaaS services (“stack”) but can use for just one
– Why would you do build a “stack of one”?
• To simplify
• To standardise
• Even one service has dependencies, e.g. storage
• Can simplify provisioning, especially from console
– Even better now that parameters can be hidden
(i.e. changed from command line if required)
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CUSTOMER USE CASE: SOA CLOUD ARCHITECTURE
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Load
Balancer
SOA
Node 1
SOA
Node 2
Database
Object Storage container
Block Storage Networking
Utility
SOA CS Instance
DBaaS Instance IaaS Instance
Cloud Stack Instance
Plain IaaS VMs aren’t currently
a stack resource type
C L A S S I C
Object Storage container Object Storage container

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STACK MANAGER - CONCEPTS
• Templates
– Describe the Cloud Stack components
– Each template is YAML file that can be imported & exported
– Built-in ones provided but you can create your own custom ones
• Resources
– Cloud Service types & other artefacts that are included in a template
– A resource can depend on another resource
• Parameters
– Inputs during the stack creation process
– Laid out on page in Parameter Groups
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Template
Parameter 1
Parameter 2
Parameter 3
Resource A
Resource B

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AVAILABLE RESOURCE TYPES (NOV-18)
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https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/paas/cloud-stack-manager/csmug/list-resource-types.html

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AVAILABLE RESOURCE TYPES – ORACLE TEMPLATES ONLY
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• Some resource types are not supported in custom templates:
– e.g. Oracle Integration Cloud
• Some templates can’t be cloned/customised – mostly Autonomous

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ORACLE-SUPPLIED TEMPLATES
• Out of the box examples:
– Database
– SOA (inc Insight and MFT)
– OIC
– IOT (several)
– LMP stack
– Mobile (inc Bots)
– VBCS
– …etc
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Oracle-Mobile-Bots-Standard-Rel
Oracle-SOACS-DBCS-Template

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WHY CREATE CUSTOM TEMPLATES?
Oracle-supplied templates cover lots of products and are a great starting point, but…
• I wanted to change:
– IP Networks instead of Shared Network
– Separate backup containers
– VM flavours (e.g. high memory usage)
• Plus I had customer-specific requirements:
– To enforce standards
– To minimise env-specific information needed (e.g. have standard storage user & DB SID naming)
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Dashboard  DBaaS ✓ SOA✓
Most Classic
PaaS consoles✓
Cloud
Stacks are
“a PaaS
thing”
NOTE: CLOUD STACK NOT YET ON ALL NAVIGATION MENUS
Compute Classic

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TIP 5:
BE AWARE THERE ARE 2 IDENTITY DOMAIN TERMS
• Prior to IDCS, now called “traditional” ID, there was one “Identity Domain”
– a short name you chose, like mycompany, or,
– for a phase Oracle allocated it, e.g. a1234567
• With IDCS (any cloud account provisioned since ~Oct 2017) you have a second “Identity
Domain” or “Identity Service ID” (terms used interchangeably)
– Generated: idcs-*******
(32 hex digits)
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C L A S S I C
For API calls know which one you need:
it’s usually the idcs-* one but docs may be out of date
From my Tips & Tricks for PaaS Admins session

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PAAS SERVICE MANAGER (PSM)
• PSM and Stack Manager completement each other
• Use psmcli, to e.g. create a stack from a template
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PSMPSM CLI
Compute
PaaS APIs
Cloud Stack InstancesPaaS
Instances

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STARTER SOA CLOUD STACK TEMPLATE
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DEMO

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INTERACTIVE TEMPLATE EDITOR
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I’ve never really used/needed this tool

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ORACLOUDPROV TEMPLATE(S)
Template is freely available on GitHub:
https://github.com/veriton/oracloudprov
Download locally & Import (URL only works for Oracle Cloud Storage)
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CLOUD STACK MANAGER TIPS
• You have to install PSM first – try Windows Subsystem for Linux #WSL ☺
• As ever don’t try to change too much at once
• Use an editor with a YAML syntax highlighter / linter
• Template is a one-use starter – can change later without affecting instances
• Use Oracle-supplied templates as a starting point (tested baseline)
• Note: when delete a Cloud Stack it doesn’t delete object storage – tidy up yourself, e.g.
with REST API <= this was changed in 18.1.6:
• Non visible parameters added in 18.1.6
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GOTCHAS
• Deleting a cloud stack still needs the stack (DB running):
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SUMMARY
• A cloud stack is a set of Cloud Service instances, managed as one
• Stack manager can easily cut down number of parameters you need & improve
consistency
• Cloud Stack Manager is production-ready for many types of Cloud Service types
Remember: Cloud Stack is not silver bullet for all automation – you still usually need to
automate customer-specific configuration of platform (e.g. TLS certificates)
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