ERP Things

What is Zero Trust Architecture?

2023-02-07T15:46:00.006-06:00

When we talk about information security, we always refer to the CIA triad- the relationship between Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability.

Zero trust Architecture drastically increases the Integrity arm of the triangle; it relies on the assurance that with all the technological advances, the availability arm will catch up.

It relies on the understanding that the IT infrastructure will require a significant investment over a period to ensure that the accessibility of the system is optimized even after the trust in the identity shifts from being implicit to Zero.

We'll look at how you can help your team understand the basic concepts, issues, and review creative solutions. We will specially focus on repurposing existing systems to adapt them to the ZTA model.

Through the whole series I will emphasize how you can do this yourself within your organization.

Or, if you are planning to use an outside agency or product, you can use the information to help evaluate which of these agencies and products are most likely to help your team out.

I've got lots of information for you on how ZTA fits into business and IT processes. So, let's get started.

Sachin
Chief Architect
Oracle Apex Enthusiast
BuzzClan

Zero Trust Architecture - How does your security posture compare?

2023-02-07T15:44:00.003-06:00

As the CISO or head of security for your organization, you are likely always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve your company's security posture. You have probably heard a lot about zero trust architectures in recent months and may be wondering what all the hype is about. In this blog post, we will compare zero trust architectures to traditional, perimeter-based security models and discuss the benefits of moving to a zero trust model. We will also provide tips on how you can start transitioning your organization to a zero trust architecture. read more....

As businesses continue to move their operations online and into the cloud, traditional security models that rely on keeping sensitive data behind locked perimeters are no longer feasible. Zero Trust Architecture is an alternate approach that eliminates the need for trusted insiders and instead focuses on verifying identities and authorizing access on a case-by-case basis. This approach can be substantially more secure than traditional security models, as it does not rely on assuming that all users are trustworthy just because they are employees or have been granted access to certain systems or data.

In this blog post, we will compare zero trust architectures to traditional, perimeter-based security models and discuss the benefits of moving to a zero trust model. We will also provide tips on how you can start transitioning your organization to a zero trust architecture. Stay tuned!

Sachin
Chief Architect
Oracle Apex Enthusiast
BuzzClan

What should be included in every company's data breach response plan

2022-11-22T13:48:00.001-06:00

No organization is immune from a data breach. In the past year, we've seen a significant uptick in the number of companies that have been affected by cyber-attacks. If your company doesn't have a data breach response plan in place, now is the time to develop one. This blog post will outline what should be included in every company's data breach response plan.

A data breach is the unauthorized access or theft of customer or company information. This can happen when there's a cyberattack on a company's networks or systems, or when an employee accidentally exposes data. Data breaches can have dire consequences, including identity theft, loss of revenue, and damage to reputation.

As a result, it is important for organizations to have a plan in place for how to respond in the event of a data breach. A good response plan will help to minimize the damage caused by a breach and protect the reputation of the organization. It will also help to speed up the recovery process and get the organization back on track as quickly as possible.

There are a few key elements that should be included in every data breach response plan:

- Identify who is responsible for leading the response effort and assembling the response team. This should be someone with the authority to make decisions and access to all of the necessary resources.

- Establish protocols for quickly identifying and containing a breach. This may involve setting up systems for monitoring activity on company networks and devices, as well as employee education on spotting signs of a potential breach.

- Develop procedures for notifying individuals whose data has been compromised, as well as regulators and law enforcement if required.

- Have a plan for restoring systems and retrieving lost data. This may involve having backup systems in place so that you can quickly resume operations after a breach.

- Put procedures in place for assessing the damage caused by a breach and taking steps to prevent future breaches from occurring. This includes conducting a post-breach analysis to identify what went wrong and making changes to systems and processes accordingly. Testing your plan regularly will help to ensure that it is effective and that employees are familiar with what they need to do in the event of a breach. Training employees on how to spot signs of a potential breach and what to do if they suspect one is occurring is also important. By taking these steps, you can help to minimize the risk of experiencing a damaging data breach.

To protect your business, you need to create a data breach response plan that includes steps for identifying, containing, and recovering from a breach. You should also test your plan regularly and train employees on what to do in the event of a breach. Do you have a data protection plan in place? What kind of precautions have you taken to prevent or mitigate the effects of a potential data leak? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below.

Sachin
Chief Architect
BuzzClan

OCI-Oracle ATP- Import Data from on-prem

2019-10-27T16:39:00.000-05:00

The primary method to move data to the Oracle ATP instance is by using Data Pump.

You export data from your On-Prem database. Use the following parameters for faster and easier migration to ATP

exclude=cluster,db_link
parallel=n
schemas=schema_name
dumpfile=export%u.dmp

For larger data size, use parallelism. Use the number of CPU's you have in your ATP. For a 16 CPU ATP instance, here is an example of export. Other parameters like compression can also be used.

expdp sh/sh@orcl \
exclude=cluster,db_link \
parallel=16 \
schemas=sh \
dumpfile=export%u.dmp

Once the export file(s) is ready, move the files to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage.

You can use 10 GiB of Object Storage and 10 GiB of Archive Storage for free in your home region. If you use more than 20 GiB and have not upgraded when your Free Trial ends, your data is deleted.

If You are participating in a Free Trial and can store unlimited data. When your trial ends, you are converted to an Always Free account. An Always Free account is limited to 20 GiB of combined Object Storage and Archive Storage in your home region. If you are using more than 20 GiB when your account is converted, your data is deleted. Reduce your usage to 20 GiB or less before converting to Always Free.

Storage usage is the approximate total size of all objects in the region. Usage is updated periodically. You will see a lag between what is displayed and the actual usage.

Oracle Data Pump v18.3 or above supports importing data into ATP. See (https://erpthings.blogspot.com/2019/10/oci-oracle-atp-connect-via-sqlplus-on.html) for details on how to get Oracle Instance Client.
Steps:

Store Credential Argument so that Data Pump can authenticate to the Object Storage services

BEGIN
DBMS_CLOUD.CREATE_CREDENTIAL
  DBMS_CLOUD.CREATE_CREDENTIAL(
    credential_name => 'objectstore',
    username => <'userid'>,
    password => <'password'>
  );

  dbms_cloud.enable_credential(credential_name => 'objectstore');
  ALTER DATABASE PROPERTY SET default_credential = 'ADMIN.objectstore';
End;
  exit;

Determine the Native URI for your dump file(s) (See this post)
Run Data Pump import

impdp admin/password@ATPC1_high \       
     directory=data_pump_dir \       
     credential=def_cred_name \       
     dumpfile= https://objectstorage.us-ashburn-1.oraclecloud.com/n/atpc/b/atpc_user/o/export%u.dmp \
     parallel=16 \
     transform=segment_attributes:n \
     transform=dwcs_cvt_iots:y transform=constraint_use_default_index:y \
     exclude=cluster,db_link

I got a few errors that were eluding to the fact that the user is not authenticated. To work around the issue, I used a few support documents:

How to validate Object Storage URI and Credentials Are Correctly Set for ATP (Doc ID 2468298.1)

NOTE:2113967.1 - How To Validate A DataPump Export (EXPDP) Dump File ?
NOTE:2416814.1 - ADW: Getting "ORA-17500: ODM err:ODM HTTP Unauthorized" error during import to ADW Instance
NOTE:2446550.1 - ATP : Import to ATP From Object Store Fails with 'ORA-17500: ODM Err:ODM HTTP Unauthorized'

Finally, I used a pre-authenticated url for the dmp file as discussed in the last note.
Once this was done, here is the new impdb command which imported the data:

./impdp admin@buzztaqdev_high \ dumpfile=default_credential:<pre-authenticated url > \
transform=segment_attributes:n transform=dwcs_cvt_iots:y \
transform=constraint_use_default_index:y exclude=cluster,db_link

Sachin
Chief Architect
Oracle Apex Enthusiast
BuzzClan

Oracle OCI - Object Storage - Access via Native URI

2019-10-26T13:30:00.000-05:00

To be able to access objects in the Oracle Cloud Object Storage, we need a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) ('a string of characters that unambiguously identifies a particular resource')

Native URI

https://objectstorage.region.oraclecloud.com/n/object-storage-namespace/b/bucket/o/filename

Tip:

You can view the Native URI of an object (such as an uploaded file) in its Object Details dialog:

Go to the Bucket Details page of the bucket containing the object.
In the bucket's list of objects, click the action menu icon and choose View Object Details.

The URL Path (URI) field displays the object's Native URI value.

Sachin
Chief Architect
Oracle Apex Enthusiast
BuzzClan

OCI-Oracle ATP- Connect via SQLPlus on Linux

2019-10-15T18:18:00.002-05:00

Continuing from my OCI series: Moving On-Premises Oracle Apex application to OCI Oracle Autonomous Transaction Processing

To connect to the ATP instance from a Linux machine, we have to do a little more leg work.

Some things to review before we get started.
The client software should be 11.2.0.4 (full install) or higher to be able to connect to the ATP instance. Instant Client can be downloaded and installed from these links:

Oracle Instant Client Downloads
Instant Client Downloads for Linux x86-64 (64-bit)

Downloads

Download the appropriate version per your requirements. I have installed the 18.5 version.

Basic Package - All files required to run OCI, OCCI, and JDBC-OCI applications
Tools-optional Package SQL*Plus Package - The SQL*Plus command-line tool for SQL and PL/SQL queries
Tools Package - Includes Data Pump, SQL*Loader and Workload Replay Client

I downloaded it to my local machine and then uploaded it to the Linux machine via FTP. There are ways to do "wget", but require more work as Oracle Authentication is required.

Once installed, I unzipped in the oracle user home

/home/oracle/instantClient

If you have the other client also installed on the machine, you may have to set-up things slightly different, but basic steps are the same.

Setup Wallet and configuration files

Download the client credentials (Wallet Zip) to the machine, and uninstall it to the home directory for oracle

drwxrwxr-x 2 oracle oracle 4096 Oct 13 17:28 Wallet_BuzzTAQDev
-rw-rw-r-- 1 oracle oracle 19814 Oct 13 17:25 Wallet_BuzzTAQDev.zip

Change the underlying file permissions to 600

chmod 600 *
[oracle@ip-172-30-0-39 Wallet_BuzzTAQDev]$ ll
total 36
-rw------- 1 oracle oracle 6669 Oct 12 23:21 cwallet.sso
-rw------- 1 oracle oracle 6624 Oct 12 23:21 ewallet.p12
-rw------- 1 oracle oracle 3244 Oct 12 23:21 keystore.jks
-rw------- 1 oracle oracle 87 Oct 12 23:21 ojdbc.properties
-rw------- 1 oracle oracle 114 Oct 12 23:21 sqlnet.ora
-rw------- 1 oracle oracle 1751 Oct 12 23:21 tnsnames.ora
-rw------- 1 oracle oracle 3336 Oct 12 23:21 truststore.jks

If Oracle database or client is already installed, we can put the tnsnames and sqlnet files in the current admin/network directory in ORACLE_HOME
If not, we will move the files to the instant client network/admin/ location

/home/oracle/instantClient/network/admin

Change the sqlnet.ora file :

WALLET_LOCATION = (SOURCE = (METHOD = file) (METHOD_DATA = (DIRECTORY="/home/oracle/Wallet_BuzzTAQDev")))

#SSL_SERVER_DN_MATCH=yes

Make sure that all the tnsnames in the downloaded file are in the final tnsnames.ora file

<>_high

<>_low

<>_mediom

<>_tp

<>_tpurgent

Client configuration:

Add the location of the client install in the current path variable:

export PATH=$PATH:/home/oracle/instantClient >> /home/oracle/.bash_profile

add the library path

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/home/oracle/instantClient >> /home/oracle/.bash_profile

If you already have sql client installed, you may have to rename the key files to ensure you are running the proper version

mv sqlplus sqlplus18

Going forward, we will use the sqlplus18 instead of sqlplus to run our scripts.

Test your connection

[oracle@ip-172-30-0-39 instantClient]$ sqlplus18 admin@buzztaqdev_medium
SQL*Plus: Release 18.0.0.0.0 - Production on Tue Oct 15 18:13:44 2019
Version 18.5.0.0.0
Copyright (c) 1982, 2018, Oracle. All rights reserved.
Enter password:
Message 1549 not found; product=SQLPlus; facility=SP2
Connected to:
Oracle Database 18c Enterprise Edition Release 18.0.0.0.0 - Production
Version 18.4.0.0.0
SQL>

Happy testing!!

Sachin
Chief Architect
Oracle Apex Enthusiast
BuzzClan

OCI - ATP Database - Basic connectivity - SQL Developer

2019-10-14T12:21:00.004-05:00

Continuing from my OCI series: Moving On-Premises Oracle Apex application to OCI Oracle Autonomous Transaction Processing

Once the database is provisioned, you can connect from various clients.

Credential Zip File

The Credential zip contains the following files:

Wallet and keystore:

cwallet.sso

ewallet.p12

keystore.jks

truststore.jks

Configuration

sqlnet.ora

tnsnames.ora

TNS entries are as follows:

High

Low

Medium

TP

TPurgent

Connecting to SQLDeveloper

Various versions will have different options when it comes to the connection type. I am sharing a couple of things I have seen. Either way, here are a few pointers.

Download the latest SQL Developer. Cloud connections and secure connections are not available in older versions.

SQL Developer 19.2

SQL Developer 18.4

Open SQL Developer on your local computer. In the Connections panel, right-click Connections and select New Connection.

Note:

Depending on your version of SQL Developer, do not right-click Cloud Connection or Database Schema Service Connections. That menu selection is for connecting to a different Oracle cloud service, the Oracle Database Schema Service.

To start a new connection, start with New Connection, not the Cloud Connection.

The New/Select Database Connection dialog appears. Enter the following information:

Connection Name - Enter the name for this cloud connection.

Username - Enter the database username. Use the default administrator database account (admin) that is provided as part of the service.

Password - Enter the admin user's password that you or your Autonomous Transaction Processing administrator specified when creating the service instance.

Connection Type - Select Cloud Wallet. (or Cloud PDB)

Configuration File - Click Browse, and select the Client Credentials zip file, downloaded from the Autonomous Transaction Processing service console by you.

Service - In the drop-down menu, service selections are prepended with database names. Select the tpurgent, tp, high, medium, or low menu item for your database. These service levels map to the TPURGENT, TP, HIGH, MEDIUM and LOW consumer groups, which provide different levels of priority for your session.

Click Test, Save and Connect.

Link to the ObE - Connecting SQL Developer to Autonomous Transaction Processing

Next: OCI-Oracle ATP- Connect via SQLPlus on Linux

Sachin
Chief Architect
Oracle Apex Enthusiast
BuzzClan

OCI - Creating a ATP Database instance

2019-10-14T10:33:00.002-05:00

Create Database Instance

Continuing from my OCI series: Moving On-Premises Oracle Apex application to OCI Oracle Autonomous Transaction Processing

We will provision a 'Serverless deployment' instance of the database.

On the navigation menu on the left, select Autonomous Transaction Processing under Database
Click "Create Autonomous Database"

Compartment: Use default (for new accounts, you will need to provide a name)
Display Name: Descriptive name for the database
Database Name
Workload Type: Select 'Autonomous Transaction Processing'
Deployment Type: Serverless
Configuration: Always Free
(OCPU:1, Storage: .02TB-2GB)
User Name/Password
License Type: Included
Tags

Create Database

The Create Autonomous Transaction Processing Database dialog closes. On the console, the State field indicates that the database is Provisioning. When creation is completed, the State field changes from Provisioning to Available.

For details see the official documentation here:

Provisioning Autonomous Transaction Processing

Now that the database is ready, let's connect to it:

OCI - ATP Database - Basic connectivity - SQL Developer
OCI-Oracle ATP- Connect via SQLPlus on Linux

Next: OCI-Oracle ATP- Import Data from on-prem

Sachin

Chief Architect
Oracle Apex Enthusiast
BuzzClan

Overview of OCI services - Focus on Always Free Tier

2019-10-14T09:01:00.001-05:00

Continuing from my OCI series:
Moving On-Premises Oracle Apex application to OCI Oracle Autonomous Transaction Processing

Once you have signed up on OCI, you can see the various links to the services being offered:

There are a lot of services available on this list. We will be introduced to the following during the course of this series:

Database - Autonomous Transaction Processing (ATP)

This will allow us to get a serverless database instance. Oracle autonomously operates all aspects of the database life cycle from database placement to backup and updates. Here is the link to the Oracle Help Center page for ATP: Getting Started with Autonomous Transaction Processing

Object Storage

The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage service is an internet-scale, high-performance storage platform that offers reliable and cost-efficient data durability. The Object Storage service can store an unlimited amount of unstructured data of any content type, including analytic data and rich content, like images and videos.

As we will be migrating from an existing application, we will use the OS to import data from our existing database (expdb/impdb)

Here is the link to the official documentation: Overview of Object Storage

The Always Free limitations are:

Database:

2 Database instances
1 OCPU per database
20 Gb Exadata storage per database
Doesn't support full backup and restore
Deactivated after 7 days of inactivity, and maybe permanently deleted after 9- days. Banner and email notifications are sent before this happens.
It can be upgraded to paying status, which will remove these restrictions.

Storage:

You can use 10 GiB of Object Storage and 10 GiB of Archive Storage for free in your home region.

Next: Creating ATP Database Instance

Sachin
BuzzClan LLC

Moving On-Premises Oracle Apex application to OCI Oracle Autonomous Transaction Processing

2019-10-13T18:41:00.001-05:00

Oracle Apex is now available on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and is very easy to set up by itself. I will explain the various steps in the following blogs.

As we progress, I will also document the process to migrate an application I have which is currently on a compute node in AWS.

The current architecture is as follows:
AWS - EC2 compute node with AWS Linux
Oracle 11g XE
APEX 18.1

My goal is to migrate the application on this server to OCI cloud Autonomous database.

Oracle is promising the following 'Always Free Tier'
New Always Free Services you can use for an unlimited time.

Two Oracle Autonomous Databases with powerful tools like Oracle Application Express (APEX) and Oracle SQL Developer
Two Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Compute VMs; Block, Object, and Archive Storage; Load Balancer and data egress; Monitoring and Notifications
Object Storage: You can use 10 GiB of Object Storage and 10 GiB of Archive Storage for free in your home region.

We plan to take benefit of the Oracle Autonomous Database instance and provision APEX on it to migrate our application.

So here is your link to signup:
Sign Up for Oracle Cloud

It will need your credit card so be prepared to provide that. Oracle does not charge anything 'just yet'.

Let's come back when you have signed up so we can follow through creating our database instance.

Next Blog: Overview of OCI Services

Sachin
Chief Architect
BuzzClan LLC

OBIEE Tuning - Under the hood

2015-05-24T11:08:00.000-05:00

Monitoring what to tune:

Monitor performance using Enterprise Manager,
OBIEE Admin/Session tool
Usage Tracking
Fiddler browser based client developer add-on's - see where is most of the time being taken for a page load and plan accordingly.
Use Oracle Application Testing Suite (OATS) for Load Testing using a test strategy reflecting the load and type of usage.

Understanding Monitoring is very important because Oracle's documentation is not very clear on how the settings effect the overall performance. They at best provide two values - default, and suggested, without much explanation. So if we want to customize these for the situation at hand, we should be able to monitor the effects of changes and tweak it to the what best applies to our situation.

Apply latest patches

Upgrade to the latest patch set - follow Support documentation (Upgrade advisory) to plan major upgrades.
Stay on approved Java version

Delegate work away from OBIEE server

Reverse Proxy/OHS Cache: OBIEE prevents the browsers from caching its content. This is a desired tract to ensure fresh reports data, but overloads the BI Presentation server/OHS as all the static content now needs to be served for each and every request.

This can be mitigated by implementing a Reverse Proxy server or enabling caching on Web server.

Optimized connections

The Connection Pools to the underlying databases should be enough to be able to reasonably service the expected number of concurrent users. Pools also exists for network connection and here, the timeout should be reduced so that they can be freed more often and made available for subsequent calls. There are various parameter based on the underlying OS to achieve this:

Database Connection Pools for these should be reviewed:
Database connection in the physical layer:

Init-Block Connection Pools
Physical DB Connection Pools
BIP/MDS Connection Pools (others if Essbase/ODI are installed)

Inter-Process connection pool:increase the bridge connection pool for Presentation server to sufficient level
Enable compression at web server to ensure high throughput
Ensure sufficient search depth within the AD of choice. This can be result in additional complexity if there is a cyclic membership.

Thread Management

Manage Stuck thread trigger time:

Account for long running queries from the usage tracking parameters
Ensure that the system doesn't flag threads as stuck in that time frame.

Increase thread pool for charting engine, job manager

Turn Off Debugging features on production:

Log levels
Wrap Data Type (JDBC)
Lock down production RPD to read only mode
Database client libraries - disable signal handling

JVM - Memory

Increase Heap
Compressed Reference
Thread Local sizes based on available physical memory for OBIEE

Cache management:

Move cache and temp directories(javaHost/BIP/BIPS) to RAM disk (~256 GB)
Use cache seeding. Automate using SASeedQuery after ETL process.
Adjust maximum cache size based on frequently used/first page reports
Increase number of open files limit in OS to allow for multiple concurrent processing of cache/sort/logs etc.

Aggregate data

Reduce Database's processing cycles, and the network bandwidth needs.

Hardware Optimization

Maximize Memory and Networking capability of each server.
OBIEE licensing is core based. Addition servers will result in added licensing cost. So maximize the memory and network capacity on the serve before scaling out.
Throw in more hardware, vertically scale the system for performance, get high availability as an added benefit.

Sizing of Server

Factors used to determine the capacity of a server:

Total Named user vs Concurrent users
SSL turned on or not.
complexity of the Report formats
Underlying database and the connection between the two servers

BI Publisher

Ensure appropriate JDK/JVM
Optimal memory and disk space allocation
Use BI Publisher's XSLT processor (Enable scalable feature of XSLT processor)
Divide optimization efforts by

Online/Concurrent Usage
Report size - Small(~10 Pages)/Medium(~50 Pages)/Large(> 100 pages)/ Extremely large (> 100,000 rows)
Bursting - Total number of report vs. time window

Run-time optimization

Enable XSLT Processor, enable scalable features
Enable Muti-Threading
Increase Thread Count
Increase FO Buffer size
Increase Pages in Caches setting
Enable Run-Time Cache
Disable Autorun

Use JNDI over JDBC
Push database functions like Joins to Database (Use OBIEE models)
XML

Use short names (smaller overall XML)
Use Unique names across structures
Avoid XML attributes
Use Absolute paths for Searches rather than Relative paths

Scale out
Configure debug settings to minimal for production

Finally some functional optimization

Rearrange dashboards so that the smaller/faster reports are rendered first
Show summary reports (from aggregates) first
Force users to put appropriate filters in prompts
Partition database
Index appropriately
Run Statistics and keep them current

Moniter, Adjust, Repeat!

Sachin
Architect - Oracle Engineered Systems
Exalytics/Exalogic/Exadata
BuzzClan LLC

BuzzClan is a business consulting company collaborating to provide Oracle software advisory services & implementation services. BuzzClan LLC is committed to providing substantive business value on each and every client engagement. We do this through a combination of industry-specific business expertise, technical skills, proven project management methods and our “onsite - off site - offshore” delivery model. We strive to work in partnership with our customers to build high-performance teams and create business solutions that will last.

Exalytics - Patch Set 5 ( Exalytics PS5)

2014-11-14T13:53:00.001-06:00

Oracle released the PatchSet 5 for Exalytics last week.

Here are some highlights:

Base Image upgrade

Majority of the patch is confined to the Base Image.

New base image - 1.0.0.7 to include kernel upgrade to 2.6.39-400. additional drivers and firmware upgrade for X4-4 machines.

It comes with an Upgrade utility which will allow for patching a PS4 machine to PS5.

Virtual Deployments Upgrade

VM server upgrade to 3.2.8, and guest kernel to 2.6.39-400

Additional software certification

Oracle Database In-Memory:

Oracle database 12c EE (rel 12.1.0.2) with in-memory edition is now certified with Exalytics when run in Data Warehouse mode. (No OLTP support)

Does this mark the end of TT on Exalytics?

I will update this as we upgrade a client's machine to PS5!

Sachin
Architect - Oracle Engineered Systems
Exalytics/Exalogic/Exadata
BuzzClan LLC

BuzzClan is a business consulting company collaborating to provide Oracle software advisory services & implementation services. BuzzClan LLC is committed to providing substantive business value on each and every client engagement. We do this through a combination of industry-specific business expertise, technical skills, proven project management methods and our “onsite - off site - offshore” delivery model. We strive to work in partnership with our customers to build high-performance teams and create business solutions that will last.

Engineered Systems VS. NIST Definition of Cloud Computing

2014-06-22T22:04:00.003-05:00

According to the NIST,

Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models.(http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-145/SP800-145.pdf)

In this blog, I will examine how each of the five essential characteristics defined by NIST (in bold/italics) applies to the engineered systems - Exalogic, Exadata, and Exalytics.

On-Demand Self-Service:

A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service provider.

This refers to the ability of cloud services consumers to configure and maintain the landscape presented to them. This allows for distributed administration capabilities. While the centralized team concentrates on managing the infrastructure tasks like initial setup, capacity planning and resource quota allocation, backup, disaster recovery, patching, libraries of Virtual Machine (VM) templates, middleware code, etc., the application-level administration is delegated to the consumers. They can create VMs from the template library and extend them according to their needs.

To enable the consumers to do this, several administration consoles are provided by the Cloud Infrastructure to allow for GUI, Command Line Interface (CLI) or scripted interaction with the system.

Oracle’s engineered systems provide the following self-service capabilities:
• Cloud admin account access
• Enterprise Manager Operations Center (EMOC) access
• Virtual Data Center (vDC) Management tab with access to pre-built Virtual Machine templates for frequently used functions
• Base VM templates to build upon
• Command Line Interfaces (CLI and dCLI) access to most of these tasks for automation and one-touch unilateral provisioning

Broad Network Access:

Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and workstations).

Oracle’s engineered systems are generally used for private cloud offerings within secured corporate or public sector settings. Therefore, access to these is not required on a mobile device. The systems provide the access over SSL/SSH using the following:

Browser-based interfaces (EMOC/VM Manager/ZFSManager)
CLI interface over SSH

Resource Pooling:

The provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. There is a sense of location independence in that the customer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of the provided resources but may be able to specify location at a higher level of abstraction (e.g., country, state, or datacenter). Examples of resources include storage, processing, memory, and network bandwidth.

This, I believe, is the most important characteristic of a cloud offering. With commodity servers running independently, we have seen that there is often a heterogeneous usage of resources. Most of the servers are underutilized while some can never have enough resources to service the load, creating a bottleneck referred to as 'underutilized server sprawl'. With an IaaS scenario, this can be fixed by dynamically rearranging the load on a particular resource. The engineered systems allow for resource quota for the users/accounts (Account Resource Limit).

Oracle Virtual Machine Server - Virtualizer
Virtual CPU/CPU oversubscription
Common memory pool
Common storage
Shared network access

Rapid Elasticity:

Capabilities can be elastically provisioned and released, in some cases automatically, to scale rapidly outward and inward commensurate with demand. To the consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be appropriated in any quantity at any time.

We currently follow these steps in order to change the memory, vCPU, and/or the Network resource allocation for an existing guest vServer (Reference - Exalogic: Changing the Memory, vCPU and Network Resources for an existing guest vServer (Doc ID 1586296.1)):

Stop the vServer
Create a template
Create a vServer type with the required memory and vCPU resources
Delete the old server
Create a new vServer by using the template in step #2 and the vServer type created in step #3

I am hopeful that upcoming releases will make this process more streamlined and easier to manage.
Ideally, to ensure elasticity, the virtual servers should have memory, vCPU, network bandwidth, and storage quotas within a range. The servers should also have a priority definition which will help mitigate resource contention issue in case multiple vServers are trying. The vServer should be able to negotiate the resources based on its priority among other servers, the current load on the vServer, and the Virtual Server as a whole.
The disk space is shared among all the compute nodes and virtual machines. Shares and projects can be created by the cloud admins to be mounted on the VMs. These shares can also be shared among multiple VMs.
Resource quotas are established at a cloud-account level. Any VM created within the account has access to the resources allocated to the account.
What’s missing?

Networking quota
Prioritization (if a resource is oversubscribed, which account/VM/process gets access to the resource if the physical limit is reached)
Time slot-based allocation

Measured service:

Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, and reported, providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service.

Enterprise Manager 12c provides the capability to meter the usage and calculate chargeback of different resources (targets). A universal charge plan contains rates for CPU, Memory and storage. Extended charge plans can be used across various target types. Details can be found in the OEM - Chargeback Administration.

What’s missing?

This functionality is not available for Exalytics servers yet. However, in an OBIEE implementation, certain Usage Tracking reports can be configured to provide this functionality.

Tech Term of the Day

NIST - National Institute of Standards and Technology

Sachin
Architect - Oracle Engineered Systems
Exalytics/Exalogic/Exadata
BuzzClan LLC

BuzzClan is a business consulting company collaborating to provide Oracle software advisory services & implementation services. BuzzClan LLC is committed to providing substantive business value on each and every client engagement. We do this through a combination of industry-specific business expertise, technical skills, proven project management methods and our “onsite - off site - offshore” delivery model. We strive to work in partnership with our customers to build high-performance teams and create business solutions that will last.

Certified - Exalytics In-Memory Machine X3-4 Implementation Essentials

2014-05-27T13:47:00.000-05:00

Hurrey!!

Today I got the result of the Exam I gave back in Dec.

I have cleared the "Exalytics In-Memory Machine X3-4 Implementation Essentials" exam!, earning a OPN Certified Specialist designation in this field.

Together with the "Exalogic Elastic Cloud X2-2 Certified Implementation Specialist" certification, it helps me differentiate myself as a proven expert in the field of Oracle Engineered Systems implementations.

Getting ready to crack the Exadata certification next!

Sachin
Architect - Oracle Engineered Systems
Exalytics/Exalogic/Exadata
BuzzClan LLC

BuzzClan is a business consulting company collaborating to provide Oracle software advisory services & implementation services. BuzzClan LLC is committed to providing substantive business value on each and every client engagement. We do this through a combination of industry-specific business expertise, technical skills, proven project management methods and our “onsite - off site - offshore” delivery model. We strive to work in partnership with our customers to build high-performance teams and create business solutions that will last.

OBIEE - Multi-tenancy User Authentication and Authorization

2014-05-16T17:34:00.000-05:00

To facilitate Multi-Tenancy in OBIEE, a few new roles have been introduced in OBIEE. A new layer has been added which allows for administration at a tenant level, and another one to define users/authors at the tenant.

BI Global Administrator
Tenant Administrator
Tenant User

Earlier posts in this series:
OBIEE - Multi-Tenancy implementations - What is it
OBIEE - Multi-Tenancy - Presentation Catalog

When OBIEE is configured for Multi-tenancy, there are two administration are available to configure the application. BI Global Administrator role (BIGlobalAdministrator) is used for overall global administration. This administrator controls privileges for all tenants and can access the Presentation Services Administration page, Oracle BI Administration Tool, Job Manager, Catalog Manager, and all content. This administrator is not associated with a specific tenant.

The new role, BITenantAdministrator have specific privileges that are granted in the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog for administering a tenant. Users in this role can perform.

This role enables users to perform self-service administration tasks on one tenant. These administrators cannot access overall Presentation Services Administration page or the Privileges page. These administrators organize content for tenant users within the catalog by granting access to, creating, moving, and copying objects and folders.

Another User role, Tenant User, are equivalent to the BIAuthor and BIConsumer roles, but gives access to the artifacts within a particular tenant.

Each Tenant in the system is assigned a GUID, and the users assigned to the tenant are also assigned GUID's to ensure that OBIEE sees them as distinct users and is shielded from name clashes and name changes. The user is based on the Tenant GUID. This GUID is also available as a session variable.

This way the user maintenance tasks are delegated to Administrators within each Tenant. Persons taking on this role should understand the OBIEE artifacts and the authorizations available

Not all the features are Currently - multi-tenant - enabled. Here are a few:

Catalog groups
KPIs, scorecards,
BI Mobile,
BI Composer,
Oracle BI for Microsoft Office,
Act As functionality,
Direct database requests.
Oracle RTD, BI Publisher, and Marketing Segmentation.
Full-text catalog search with Oracle SES and Oracle Endeca Server. The basic catalog search is available.
Oracle Essbase Components (including Financial Reporting, Calculation Manager, and Workspace).

These features are not available for BIGlobalAdminstrator for administration:

Oracle BI Administration Tool
Catalog Manager
Job Manager.
Usage tracking
MapViewer

Other limitations:

Application Roles are defined system wide, and not tenant specific. Any roles defined will be available to all the tenants for selection through the dialogues.
There are no 'Tenant' Specific configurations in the instanceconfig.xml file. These changes include privileges in the catalog, skins, and front-end customization.

Multi-Tenancy is disabled by default. A few entries needs to be added to the configuration files and domain configuration files.

A detailed documentation can be found at: Configuring for Multiple Tenants

Sachin
Architect - Oracle Engineered Systems
Exalytics/Exalogic/Exadata
BuzzClan LLC

BuzzClan is a business consulting company collaborating to provide Oracle software advisory services & implementation services. BuzzClan LLC is committed to providing substantive business value on each and every client engagement. We do this through a combination of industry-specific business expertise, technical skills, proven project management methods and our “onsite - off site - offshore” delivery model. We strive to work in partnership with our customers to build high-performance teams and create business solutions that will last.

SSO - how does your Driver's License stand up to the challenge

2014-05-09T09:50:00.004-05:00

As a frequent traveler, I can't imagine my life without one piece of plastic in my wallet- my Texas Driver's License.

On the day of travel, I use it to get past the airport security, get into my rental car, check into the hotel, get cash from my bank (I do not carry any debit cards as a safety measure), get past the paranoid girl at the check out counter who insist on seeing my id before she can swipe the credit card for that bottle of water, and prove that I am of legal drinking age as I sit down at the hotel bar after a long day.

In all of these transactions, I whip out my trusted Texas DL and authenticate myself as Mr. Sachin Jain. Some people look at the id, some run it under devices that pop up the various security features embedded within the card, and almost all of them look up to match the photo on the card with my face and confirm that I am who I am saying I am.

I was authenticated by the system using a token(my Texas Driver's License) issued by a central/trusted token provider (Texas Department of Motor Vehicles).

Once the authentication is done, my identification is confirmed. There is almost always a second piece of token which then authorizes my access to the service I am seeking- my boarding pass, notations on the boarding pass giving me premium access, TSA pre-check privileges, my reservation confirmation to a particular car for certain period of time, a hotel booking, my credit card, or my date of birth on the DL itself, .

Imagine if I had to carry a separate piece of identification for each of these interaction! My wallet would be bursting at the seams. I would have to go through the hassle of bringing the right id that will work for a particular encounter. i would have missed opportunities because I don't have the ID for the most popular joint that yelp suggested, or for that hotel I bid for on Priceline as I am walking out of the office on Monday afternoon.

Driver License - SSO

Similarly in computer security, SSO is a way of authenticating a user based on a Central Directory. When a user requests access to a resource, a certain web site, their HR records, email, etc. the provider redirects the user to a login page hosted by the SSO authority which presents a challenge-response, mostly in the form of a id/password combination or additional mechanisms. Once the user gets past this screen, the SSO authority confirms the user authentication and passes a token identifying the user to the servicing application. The application can then bounce this token against its provisioning store and give access to the user to the appropriate resources based on the authorization.

Several applications can subscribe to the SSO server, thus eliminating the need for the user to maintain multiple authentication tokens (id/password) to get access. Most of the time, if the user has already been authenticated once to an application, the SSO provider can leave a token on the browser session user tries to access another application with the same SSO provider, no log-in is necessary. This provides seamless access to multiple applications

This is a very simplistic, 10,000-mile high description of how an SSO echo-system works, I hope this helps you grasp the basic concept and find similarities/differences between a real-life and virtual SSO implementations.

Tech Term of the Day
SSO:- Single Sign On

OBIEE - Multitenancy - Presentation Catalog

2014-05-08T08:59:00.002-05:00

As discussed in the previous post, OBIEE: Multitenancy Implementations generally involve a varied user base with different needs from the underlying data warehouse. Furthermore, the users are also able to expand the presentation catalog on their own during the lifetime of this implementation.

So, ideally, the provider will present the users with a basic set of reports and dashboards which will be deemed universal for the subject areas being covered. These will be designed after consulting with various user groups from different target audience (tenant groups). The provider should also generate basic templates which can be extended for ad hoc analysis to ensure that the users are utilizing the power of the underlying BI platform.

As this blog is focused primarily around OBIEE and supporting Oracle echo system, I will say that this should be given to the users so they can benefit from the ad hoc capabilities provided by OBIEE. With proper training, the users can form a 'power user' group within their rank-and-file. These power users can create custom reports for specific tenants or groups within them. In addition, the provider can offer custom consulting for a fee and come up with reports and dashboards for specific tenants.

To summarize:

Global reports and dashboards for all
Global templates for everyone to use as the starting point for ad hoc analysis
Personal space for each users where they can save

frequently used ad-hoc analysis
work-in-progress before the artifacts are released for use with others within the tenancy

Directories for each tenant to share

Custom reports among themselves
Proof-of-concept reports for validation (access may be restricted to certain auditors only)
Custom development done by the provider - often for a fee - available only to users of the particular tenant. Artifacts from this section may eventually find its way into the global area, depending on popularity, maturity of the offering, etc.

Of course, all of these need to be properly secured. There will be sub-directories/sections which will have appropriate authorization considerations based on the user’s role within the tenancy.

OBIEE - Multi-Tenancy Implementations - What is it

2014-05-06T17:28:00.002-05:00

What is a multi-tenancy:

Lets take a few use cases:

A large organization has multiple units, each maintaining a separate business application and underlying transactional database. Each one has a different user base, and security considerations when it comes to data access. Data can be collected in individual data marts and a BI solution can be built on top of these data marts. This way the different departments have independent control on the development, release and usage of these BI solutions. This is not an ideal solution, and eventually these data marts should be converged into a central data warehouse, but until than...

A product offering decides to offer a self service BI add-on. The product runs on a distributed database mode where each client has its own physical database/schema running off a common data model. This can be implemented two ways, one by bringing all the data into a central Data Warehouse, or by creating parallel data marts for each clients. In the second scenario, the BI implementation can have a common RPD and Presentation catalog, connecting to the individual data marts, with provision for custom reports in the catalog.

BI on the cloud. Many states are centralizing their IT functions into a 'technology' agency. The rule of thumb is that if any two or more agencies use a platform, that platform should be handed over to this central agency for hosting, management etc to conserve costs. In this scenario, the agency can host various BI servers and allow the agencies to buy time, space and bandwidth in these servers.

A large financial institution manages retirement and benefits plans for various companies. The data warehouse is central, but the BI dashboards are customized for each client. The security implementation is also different and there are various level of support and custom/self-service solutions that the clients can buy into. The clients can negotiate a different upgrade timeline for their dashboards which may result in different micro release cycles effecting development/testing and other SDLC lifecycle.

Each of these use cases presents a Multi-tenant implementation scenario. The site(s) needs to be envisioned, designed, developed, deployed and managed in sync with each other.

Oracle's OBIEE documentation defines 'Multitenancy' as:

Multitenancy refers to a principle in software architecture where a single installation of the software runs on one server or clustered servers, serving multiple client organizations. With a multitenant architecture, each client organization operates independently of other organizations that share the same infrastructure. Multitenancy offers the ability to host multiple companies (even competitors) in one deployment without them knowing of each other..

Issues: Code Management

One of the major issues comes wrt code management. To run a successful multi-tenant implementation, the central administration should be able to cope up with multiple release schedules, dependencies during the deployments and coordinating rollbacks and out of schedule/emergency deployment requests.

One installation/implementation of an OBIEE server can only support one RPD - the model against which the users can create reports and dashboards.

RPD is a piece of monolithic code, which is deployed as a single item. Internally for the ease of multi user development, the code can be structured as project. A project can be worked upon as a smaller rpd to shorten and simplify development effort and unit testing.

The RPD is a three layer model consisting of a physical, business and presentation layer. A project consists of Presentation layer subset areas and their associated Business and physical layer. A project can be defined in a way that it serves a particular 'Tenant' in an implementation, thus isolating the deployable unit of code.

Ideally, multiple deployments will have common Dimension tables and some fact tables, and that can throw a spanner in this while design, but then that may also gravitate towards consolidating things into a single Data Warehouse. That is a topic for another blog.

That said, experience tells that RPD is still a monolithic piece of code when it comes to deployment, and on the other hand the presentation catalog is very fragmented. The deployable artifacts are

Folders
Reports
Prompts
Filters
Dashboards
Security
...

With one deployable file for each of these and their corresponding security metadata. To add to the mix, the Presentation catalog has an organic growth pattern. Users can create new artifacts, and modify existing ones in production.

it is a challenge to simultaneously manage a deployment with two code units, one monolithic and the other fragmented.

Next I will discuss the Presentation Catalog implementaion- OBIEE - Multi-Tenancy - Presentation Catalog

What Constitutes an Exalytics Implementation

2014-05-06T13:11:00.000-05:00

This is part 2 of a series of articles discussing Exalytics components:

Part I - Exalytics In Memory - Software Features

After defining Exalytics In-Memory Software in a previous post, let's continue the discussion by identifying the Exalytics machine's hardware and software components.

Side-by-Side Comparison of the Various Exalytics Systems (i.e. X2-4, X3-4 and T5-8)?

Feature	Exalytics X2-4	Exalytics X3-4	Exalytics T5-8
Processors	4 Intel XEON E7-4870 40 Cores	4 Intel XEON E7-4800 40 Cores	8 SPARC T5 128 Cores
Dynamic Random-Access Memory	1 TB	2 TB *	4 TB
Hard Disk Drive	3.6 TB	5.4 TB *	7.2 TB
PCI Flash Storage	None	2.4 TB *	3.2 TB
Networking	40 Gbps InfinBand - 2 Ports 10 Gbps Ethernet - 2 Ports 8 GbpsFibre channel - 2 Ports 1 Gbps Ethernet - 4 Ports	40 Gbps InfinBand - 2 Ports 10 Gbps Ethernet - 2 Ports 8 GbpsFibre channel - 2 Ports 1 Gbps Ethernet - 4 Ports	40 Gbps InfinBand - 4 Ports 10 Gbps Ethernet - 4 Ports 8 GbpsFibre channel - 4 Ports

*upgrade kits available for additional memory and flash storage

Pasted from <Oracle Exalytics BI In-Memory Machine Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) (Doc ID 1435778.1)>

Software Certification Matrix: (Certification Matrix)

	Exalytics X2-4 Exalytics X3-4 -OR- Exalytics X3-4 with Upgrade Kits	Exalytics T5-8
Server Operating System	Exalytics Base Image on Linux x86-64 1.0.0.6	Exalytics -Oracle Solaris 11.1 SRU11.4 (64 bit)
OS Kernel Version	Exalytics -Oracle Linux 5.8 (UL5) with UEK Linux Kernel Version Number: 2.6.32-400.11.1.el5uek	N/A
Exalytics Base Image for Oracle VM	2.0.1.3	N/A
Exalytics Base Image Kernel for OVM	Oracle Linux UL5 with UEK - Oracle Linux Server release 5.6 Kernel 2.6.39-300.32.6.el5uek on an x86_64	N/A
Exalytics Oracle VM Template (Guest)	2.0.1.3	N/A
Exalytics Oracle VM Template (Guest) Kernel	Oracle Linux UL5 with UEK - Oracle Linux Server release 5.6 Kernel 2.6.32-200.21.2.el5uek on an x86_64	N/A
BI Foundation	OBIEE 11.1.1.7.x, TimesTen 11.2.2.5.x, 11.2.2.6.x Essbase 11.1.2.2.200+/11.1.2.3.001+
TimesTen	TimesTen 11.2.2.5.x, 11.2.2.6.x
BI Application	11.1.1.7.1 7.9.6.3 7.9.6.4
EPM	11.1.2.2 or 11.1.2.3 (depends on module/component)
OVM Manager	3.2.4 (X2-4), 3.2..7(X3-4)
EM	Agent - 12.0.1.3+
Endeca	3.0/3.1

Taken from <Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine Certification Matrix (current as of 2/18/14)>

We can use Exalytics to perform the following:

1. BI Apps Implementation: The Enterprise Data Warehouse connected to the ERP system in use (PeopleSoft, EBS, JDE, SAP, etc.). Oracle has pre-built analytics comprised of a DW Schema, ETL/ELT for bringing the data from the ERP Database to the Data warehouse, OBIEE Model (RPD), and the Reports and Dashboards.

2. Custom BI Applications: Many organizations have custom BI implementations over their applications. This is comprised of a Data Warehouse/Data Mart, the ETL/ELT process, the OBIEE Model, and the Reports and Dashboards.

3. EPM Implementation: Oracle's Financial Planning, Budgeting and Forecasting tool for the enterprise. This includes Essbase, OBIEE, and Hyperian Financials.

4. Endeca

I will discuss the OBIEE/BI Apps (#1/#2) implementations in the next blog.

Elastic Cloud vs. Not-So-Elastic Cloud: CPU Over-subscription

2014-04-28T13:39:00.000-05:00

This is Part III in my series of articles about implementing Exalytics as a private cloud. The first two that laid the groundwork for this concept are:

Part I – Exalytics: The Promise of BI on Private Cloud

Part II - Classify the Exalytics Application Requirements and Cloud Offerings

The idea is to create a system which can host various OBIEE/EPM implementations and can adjust according to the current load and the VM’s priority/quota. Each VM is assigned a range of resources from the available pool. Instead of saying that a VM can have 2 cores/CPU, we can virtualize the resources by creating a virtual unit?the vCPU?and allocate available threads. This vCPU is the key ingredient in an elastic cloud.

vCPU Configuration - EMOC vDC Management

We allocate to each VM the resources it needs to run optimally. However, instead of assigning an absolute number of resources, it is done virtually in terms of CPU threads rather than cores. This allows two important things:
• dynamic reallocation of the resources at runtime without the need to recycle the server
• VMs compete for the CPU cycles/threads on the basis of priority allocated to them at design time.

If we have a VM hosting the EPM Suite, another VM hosting BI for the North America, and another VM hosting BI for the Asian operations, we can schedule the priority of the North America VM and the Asian server to be high priority based on time of operations. The EPM server can have overall priority so that users on the EPM server will get a better throughput whenever they are on.

Account Resource Limit

One caveat is that the vCPU memory and storage quotas (Account Resource Limit) are set at the account level rather than at the VM level. This enables a cloud user to create multiple VMs within the quota allocated to them.

The vCPU priority and cap are defined when creating VM profiles.

VM Proile - CPU Priority/Cap

This profile will be used to define a VM hosting a service which can run in the background and yield to a higher priority task when needed. A deployment plan is created with this profile and applied while creating a virtual machine.

When creating a new VM Server, the following can be applied to benefit from a real elastic cloud implementation:

1. Change the CPU/vCPU ratio
2. Configure an Account Resource Limit for individual accounts
3. Create VM profiles with vCPU priority

Further explanation of this concept can be found in Donald Forbes’s article on Exalogic and CPU Oversubscription.

Sachin
Architect - Oracle Engineered Systems
Exalytics/Exalogic/Exadata
BuzzClan LLC

BuzzClan is a business consulting company collaborating to provide Oracle software advisory services & implementation services. BuzzClan LLC is committed to providing substantive business value on each and every client engagement. We do this through a combination of industry-specific business expertise, technical skills, proven project management methods and our “onsite - off site - offshore” delivery model. We strive to work in partnership with our customers to build high-performance teams and create business solutions that will last.

Exalytics In Memory - Software Features

2014-04-16T14:09:00.001-05:00

The Exalytics In-Memory Software is the pre-requisite software required for Exalytics (except for Endeca on Exalytics) because it enables Exalytics-specific enhancements for BI Publisher, OBIEE and Essbase Plus (note restricted use Essbase is included in Planning Plus and HPCM) . All customers who run BIFS, OBIEE, Essbase, Planning Plus and/or HPCM on Exalytics are required to license the Exalytics In-Memory Software.

The following software features are provided with Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Software.

Feature	Description	Product/Component
Summary Advisor for Oracle Business Intelligence Server	Summary Advisor monitors Business Intelligence usage patterns, analyzes them and recommends the optimal data mart for best overall performance improvement.	Oracle Business Intelligence Administrator
Aggregate Persistence (CREATE AGGREGATES, and DELETE AGGREGATES commands) when run against the TimesTen In-Memory Database for Exalytics	The Aggregate Persistence feature enables automated creation of data marts by using Business Intelligence server commands.	Oracle Business Intelligence Server
Exalytics-specific optimizations enabled by "Oracle Hardware acceleration" flags for Oracle Business Intelligence Server	Optimizations to match system architecture resulting in higher query throughput, lower latencies in query processing. Enhanced memory usage for cache.	Oracle Business Intelligence Server
Enhanced Bursting within Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher	Enables piped document generation. Enabled by setting OPTIMIZE_BURST flag in xmlp-server-config.xml file	Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher
Exalytics-specific optimizations enabled by "Oracle Hardware acceleration" flags for Oracle Business Intelligence Presentation Server	Optimized default configuration to use large footprint memory to speed up page rendering and caching.	Oracle Business Intelligence Server
Exalytics-specific optimizations enabled by "Oracle Hardware acceleration" flags for Oracle Essbase Plus	Memory usage optimizations for loading entire data into memory, concurrency improvements to match Exalytics architecture enabling efficient distribution of processing.	Oracle Essbase Plus

Pasted from <Oracle® Exalytics In-Memory Software Licensing Information>

Classify the Exalytics Application Requirements and Cloud Offerings

2014-04-15T11:54:00.003-05:00

This is Part II in a series of articles discussing private cloud options on Exalytics:

Part I - Exalytics - The Promise of BI on Private Cloud

Part III - Elastic Cloud vs. Not-So-Elastic Cloud

If you are involved in the architecture team of a big organization taking care of BI arena, you know that BI implementations are very fragmented. Everyone needs to be able to make sense of the data that they are collecting and the different ways they can get around to doing that.

Implementation varies by the business group: accounting, planning, or finance. Some rely on Excel while others gravitate towards a combination of Excel and Access. Some even have custom applications that are painstakingly built using .NET/ASP.NET, JSP, Oracle XE and others, depending on the level of IT resources available to the business and their core skills.

Once you start designing an enterprise solution and start collecting feedback from these groups, they tend to gravitate towards these 3 bins:

• Enterprise BI applications

• Custom, high-value BI applications requiring independent control

• Smaller datamarts

The classification is easier said than done. The first bin is pretty simple and normally revolves around the enterprise ERP solutions. One builds a data warehouse connected to the ERP and provides a set of analytics on that.

The distinction between the second and the third bins can lead to a fierce battle. Everyone wants their application to be autonomous.

Ideally, the private cloud should be able to do metering and chargeback, with an internal cross-charge to “cost centers” based on how the system resources were being used. Once this is in place and a cost is associated with the different modes of operating the Analytics Solution, one can negotiate the applications category by adjusting the "cost" associated with each model.

There are several ways to host applications on a central Exalytics system. We can present a few options for the agencies to choose from:

1. Exalytics running bare metal implementation

• Single BI instance

• Multiple BI Instances

2. Virtualized Exalytics (OVM)

• Single-Instance VMs, one for each application

• Multiple BI Instances on one shared VM

• Single-Instance VMs, shared for multiple applications

I will discuss the pros and cons of these in the next blog.

Sachin

BuzzClan LLC

Architect - Oracle Engineered Systems

Exalytics/Exalogic/Exadata

BuzzClan is a business consulting company collaborating to provide Oracle software advisory services & implementation services. BuzzClan LLC is committed to providing substantive business value on each and every client engagement. We do this through a combination of industry-specific business expertise, technical skills, proven project management methods and our “onsite - off site - offshore” delivery model. We strive to work in partnership with our customers to build high-performance teams and create business solutions that will last.

Exalytics - The Promise of BI on Private Cloud

2014-04-14T16:52:00.001-05:00

Oracle came out with a neat infomercial touting the features and benefits of Exalytics - Extreme Analytics with No Limits.

The ability to have more than 50,000 users and cut analysis time from monthly to daily are impressive. This type of an appliance should be a great tool for exposing Enterprise Analytics in a private cloud setting, enabling users to keep up with the demands of implementing the OBIEE and EPM suite of products.

Originally, Exalytics didn't support virtualization. Patchset 1 introduced the base image concept that enabled virtualized Exalytics implementation, but it had one deal-breaking limitation: InfiniBand connectivity was not supported if the boxes were virtualized.

“Exalytics virtualization does not support Exadata access via InfiniBand connection. This feature is planned for Exalytics Release 1 Patchset 4 (v1.0.0.4). However, Exadata can be accessed via the 1G or 10G interfaces.”

I have yet to see a customer who bought the Exalytics machines without Exadata as the database server, so taking away the InfiniBand connection meant that nobody had the incentive to virtualize.

Oracle came out with Patchset 4 in early 2014. Exalytics boxes can now be virtualized while keeping the InfiniBand connectivity into Exadata and/or Exalogic (as traffic cop). There is a lot of excitement about being able to run the BI system as a private cloud offering.

In a state department where I am currently consulting in, one of their goals is to

“gain efficiencies through creation of a Private Cloud and encourage adoption of public cloud platforms, when appropriate.”

So when the PSU4 came out, the stakeholders were very excited to present the recent Exalytics acquisition and rewire them as private cloud offering for various agencies looking to use it to serve their BI content.

Oracle's recommendation has been to limit the VMs on an Exalytics box to a maximum of 4 on X2/X3 machines and 12 on X5 (@10 core/VM). The configurations are as follows:

• 1 VM for BI
• 1 VM for Essbase (planning)
• 1 VM for Endeca
• Each VM instance to run a minimum of 10 cores

It is still unclear if this is a licensing limitation or a result of an internal benchmark. If an organization is using an Exalytics box to run OBIEE, BI apps, and the EPM suite, there go the 4 VMs. They would need to allot one for each of these: BI apps (one central implementation), EPM (one central implementation), OVM, and custom OBIEE machines.

In the succeeding weeks, I will share our experience with this state department client and how we meet one of their goals by eliminating duplication and lowering costs. Stay tuned for these upcoming posts:

Part II - Classify the Application Requirements and Cloud Offerings - Exalytics
Part III - Elastic Cloud vs. Not-So-Elastic Cloud - CPU Over Subscription

Tech Term of the Day

Exalytics base image: an image that consists of the operating system, virtualization software, and device drivers pre-configured for the respective appliance.

Sachin
BuzzClan LLC
Architect - Oracle Engineered Systems
Exalytics/Exalogic/Exadata

BuzzClan is a business consulting company collaborating to provide Oracle software advisory services & implementation services. BuzzClan LLC is committed to providing substantive business value on each and every client engagement. We do this through a combination of industry-specific business expertise, technical skills, proven project management methods and our “onsite - off site - offshore” delivery model. We strive to work in partnership with our customers to build high-performance teams and create business solutions that will last.

Oracle Database Version Suffix

2013-10-30T23:11:00.001-05:00

Ever wonder what the letter suffix means in the Oracle Database version numbers?

Starting Oracle 8, release 1 Oracle starting adding a single letter suffix to its DB versions
Oracle 8i
Oracle 9i
Oracle 10g
Oracle 11g
Oracle 12c

The i stood for internet, or Internet ready this version debuted in the late 90's and matured in the early 2000's
g stood for Grid architecture,
The current version has c - indicating the move towards a cloud ready database and platform. PDU's is a major functionality enforcing this move.

More on PDU's later!!

Sachin

BuzzClan LLC

Log to Weblogic logs files from your code. | Weblogic - Java programming: Tips

2012-12-21T09:42:00.004-06:00

This is an attempt to gather some of the things I have struggled with initially so I decided to blog some tips and tricks so I can come back to them and others can benefit too:

Easy Log from your component:

There are various ways to implement logging, but the simplest way is to log using "System.out.println" and "System.err.println". These are not good long term and production ready way to achieve this, but this blog is for getting your feet wet in this area, and this should suffice, allowing one to concentrate on the main task at hand. Please come back and re-factor to fix this later.

So to ensure that your logs are recognized by weblogic and saved in the appropriate files, you will have to turn on this feature. Go to Console (url:port/console, login, (left panel)/Environment/(right panel)Servers > AdminServer > Logging -> General (open advanced)

Home >Summary of Environment >Summary of Servers >AdminServer > Logging … advanced

And check “Redirect stdout logging enabled” & “Redirect stderr logging enabled”.

Bow you can simply write commands like

System.out.println(“Message”);

AND

System.err.println(“error”)

I would suggest that you create a new class called

customMessageHandler, and expose two static functions

logMessage(String msg) and logErr(String err) and call these in these functions. This way when you come back to re-factor, you can make your changes in one location.

ref:Advanced Configuration Options

Sachin
BuzzClan LLC