How to Patch Oracle Database on the Oracle Cloud

I was waiting the latest PSU for Oracle Database 11.2.0.4 on the Oracle Database Cloud Service, and today I noticed that it’s available. So let’s see how we can update our Oracle Databases in the cloud.

First we go to the database home to see if any updates is available. As you can see, in the administration box, there is an available patch. We click on it to see the details of the patch.

It’s the PSU Update 11.2.0.4.161018! I can read the readme file of the patch (from Oracle support) when I click the readme link. On the right side, there’s an action menu to run a precheck (prerequisites check) and to apply the patch. I run the precheck first, so I can be sure that I won’t have any problem when applying the patch.

Oh, the prerequisites checks failed!

Honestly, this is not my first time to apply a patch on Oracle Database Cloud Service. In my previous try about 2 or 3 months ago, I applied the latest PSU without any problem. It was a very smooth process, took less than hour. This time, the prerequisites failed.

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EM13c: Unique Database Service Names on DBaaS

When creating Database through Oracle Enterprise Manager Self Service Portal, we need to enter a “unique” value as database service name. After I set up DBaaS on EM13c, I made several tests until I fix the provision problems (based on my own faults). On each test, I cleaned up failed request, entered a unique service name and submitted a new request. I thought there’s no validation about the service name but then I got an error message complaning “non-unique service name”.

remove_reserved_artifact

As we can see, I tried to enter “murtaza” and it says “murtaza” is not available. I knew that I have already cleaned up failed requests, and there is no service named “murtaza”. Anyway I wanted to be sure and decided to check the existing database services. I noticed that there’s no page showing the existing service names! So I had to enter each database service and check the service name. I had only 3 database services, so it didn’t take so much time.

connection string

The connection string (which we’ll share with the request owner), contains the service name. I couldn’t find any service named “murtaza”. It must be used for a failed request. As I said, I have already cleared and deleted all failed requests, but somehow the service name was stored in the repository. Good thing is, EMCLI verb “dbaas_artifacts” can show and remove these service names which belongs to failed requests:

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Book Review: Managing IaaS and DBaaS Clouds with Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c

Managing IaaS and DBaaS Clouds with Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c I try to read and review all books about Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c (EM12c). The last one I read is, “Managing IaaS and DBaaS Clouds with Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c”. As you can understand from the name, the book focuses mainly on how you can build and manage IaaS and DBaaS using EM12c and it is about only 110 pages. The author, Ved Antani works as Technical Director with Electronic Arts. While reading the book, you may feel that all topics are approached with a perspective of a software developer not by a system (database) administrator.

List of chapters:

  1. Setting Up Enterprise Manager: As expected, the book starts with the installation chapter about EM12c but unexpectedly, it doesn’t cover how to set up EM12c step by step. It doesn’t give any details, only covers the concepts.
  2. Infrastructure as a Service: One of the best chapters of the book, it covers almost all topics about registering and using Oracle VM Manager, but still lack of some information such as installing required plugins.
  3. Database as a Service: In this chapter, the author explains how to build a DBaaS. The topics are organized to build any PaaS. It includes registering/creating storage servers, and give some information about chargeback system
  4. Enterprise Monitoring: This chapter covers the topics to build an automated monitoring system using Oracle Enterprise Manager. Incident handling is also mentioned in this chapter.
  5. Cloud APIs: Most interesting and promising chapter is surely “cloud APIs”, but unfortunately this chapter doesn’t go into details but just give some sample RESTful calls and JSON results.

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TROUG Day 2012

I’ll be speaking at Turkish Oracle User Group (TROUG) Annual Meeting on Thursday (October 11th). The event will be held at Bahçeşehir University, Istanbul. This year, we organized two parallel tracks. So both developers and DBAs will enjoy the event. Syed Jaffar Hussain (Oracle Certified Master, Oracle ACE Director) will make the keynote speech. Oracle ACEs from Turkey, Husnu Sensoy, Zekeriya Besiroglu, Talip Hakan Ozturk will also speak in this event. I’ll speak about how we can implement Database as a Service using Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c.

Here’s the schedule:

To learn more about the event, you may visit: http://www.troug.org/?p=278 (in Turkish)

Oracle,