ODA X6-2M, the First POC and the First look

I did my first POC with one of the newest product of ODA family, ODA X6-2 M (Medium).

I must say that ODA X6 is not only an easy-to-deploy machine. That is, ODA also gives us the opportunity to deploy our databases and oracle home 's very easily.

In the previous month, I wrote an article of this new 1U ODA Machine and I was already excited. However; working hands on was a different pleasure...

Let's revisit the general specs of ODA X6-2 M;

ODA X6-2 M is a 1U machine.
It has one server for serving both the compute and storage services.
ODA X6 M has a built in 6.2 TB High Speed NVME .
It supports Oracle Database SE, SE one, SE 2 or EE . (earlier ODA environments ODA X5 and so on, could only supported Oracle Database EE -- unless they are deployed with Virutalized environment option)
ODA X6-' M can not be expanded horizontally and it can not be virtualized at the moment.

The ODA X6-2 M machine specifications are as follows;

CPU: 2x10 core (2.2 GHZ Intel Xeon E5-2630 V4)
Memory:  256 GB ( 8x32GB)
Storage: 6.4 TB(2x3.2TB) NVMe
Boot Disk : 2x480GB SSD (mirrored)
Ethernet : 4x10GBase-T
Fiber : 2x10GbE SFP+

The results of the POC are not delivered yet, but still; I will write what I have done and seen on this POC work.

First of all; the deployment of new ODA was pretty simple. It already comes configured but if we want to reimage the OS, we just do it using ILOM.
The deployment of the Grid and Oracle Home infrastructure is done through the command line and it is very simple as well.

All the necessary information is available in Database Appliance X6-2S and X6-2M Deployment and User’s Guide (https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E75549_01/doc.121/e76082/toc.htm)

The databases can be created using Oracle Database Appliance Manager Web Console, which is available in the following url :https://<ODA_IP>:7093/mgmt/index.html. (this manager interface becomes up&running just after the deployment)
--note that, Web Console is available for OXA X6-2S,M and L, ODA X6 HA doesn't have a web console.

Anything that can be done using the web console or maybe more, can also be done using the command line interface of ODA named "odacli" (formerly known as oakcli).

odacli can be used, by "cd"ing to the /opt/oracle/dcs/bin directory using root account and executing ./odacli command.

The databases deployed via the cli or web console become immediately up&running. The databases are registered to the cluster registry by default as well.. (we can directly administrate them using srvctl commands)

the default listener is started from the GRID, as it has been the new trend since last few years.

One of the new things with this new ODA is that, we can now deploy Standard Edition databases in to the ODA environment, as well.

The new ODA machine supports 11.2.0.4 and 12c databases and it is quite simple to deploy them, as said earlier.

The resources for the use of the databases (like CPU count) can be configured during the creation of the databases. So, the new ODA gives us the opportunity to configure the cpu resource utilization even in creating the database using a web interface.
ODA X6-2S and M do not provide virtualization option, at the moment.
ODA X6 also offers capacity on demand, however this is only true for Enterprise Edition. Capacity on demand can not be used with the Standard Edition.

Example: Enabling 12 cores of an ODA X6-2 HA:

cd /opt/oracle/dcs/bin
[root@oak bin]# ./odacli describe-cpucore
Node  Cores  Modified                       Job Status     
----- ------ ------------------------------ ---------------
0     20     February 20, 2017 12:10:18 PM EET Configured   

[root@odademo bin]# cat /proc/cpuinfo|grep processor| wc -l
40

[root@oak bin]# ./odacli update-cpucore --cores 12
{
  "jobId" : "b53d8ab8-c59a-48bf-805f-fe1c477d6e6a",
  "status" : "Created",
  "message" : null,
  "reports" : [ ],
  "createTimestamp" : "February 20, 2017 14:57:44 PM EET",
  "description" : "CPU cores  service update",
  "updatedTime" : "February 20, 2017 14:57:44 PM EET"
}

[root@oak bin]# ./odacli list-jobs

ID             Description                                 Created                             Status    
---------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
...
4d8bb3d     Provisioning service creation   February 20, 2017 2:01:05 PM EET    Success   
b53d8ab8-c59a     CPU cores  service update  February 20, 2017 2:57:44 PM EET    Success   

[root@oak bin]# ./odacli describe-cpucore

Node  Cores  Modified                       Job Status     
----- ------ ------------------------------ ---------------
0     12     February 20, 2017 2:57:45 PM EET Configured   

[root@odademo ~]# cat /proc/cpuinfo|grep processor| wc -l

24

The filesystems that we can use on this new ODA machine, are ACFS and ASM.

When used ACFS, the filesystems come with the autoextend configuration, so it is pretty simple to administrate it.

Let's talk about my POC...

The customer was a big Healthcare group and they were thinking to position this new 1xU ODA machine in their new datacenter located in one of their new branches.
(1U ODA X6-2 machine has also an advantage in terms price)

The customer wanted to have an engineered , easy-to-deploy and easy-to-manage solution and had a  concern about their licenses. (they had standard edition)

At this point, new ODA came in to play.

I did this POC using an ODA X6-2M.

I created a new 11.2.0.4 database using Oracle Database Appliance web console just to show the customer how easy to deploy Oracle Databases in this machine.

I also used upgraded one of their TEST databases (Standard edition, sized 200 GB) from 11.2.0.3 to 11.2.0.4 and then migrate it to ODA using "rman duplicate" method for making their own databases available in this machine for having a better POC.

Take a detailed look at the POC work;

• Upgraded the source database in place
• Created an online RMAN backup + plus archivelog.
• Exported the backup location using NFS. 
• Mounted the backup directory to ODA using NFS
• Duplicated the database from backup using RMAN in ODA.
• Configured the initialization parameters
• I used the Oracle Home that is deployed with ODA Webconsole. As the Oracle Home was deployed with the latest PSU patch applied, I executed the SQL Layer of the PSU patch from this Oracle Home and installed the PSU in the newly migrated database. (I executed only the database tier of the PSU patch, the oracle home binaries were already patched as the Oracle Home was deployed with the PSU by default)

Done!.

At the moment, the customer is their application tests and performances on this newly migrated database, which is running on ODA X6-2M.

I will revisit this blog post, once the results of this POC is delivered to me.