Re: Oracle ODA suggestions.

Jeff,

Wow! I'm envious. You get flawless patching in an hour or less? From whom? That's great.

When I said "most of the time", I think I was averaging in all 7 years' worth of ODA patching together. If I consider only the 18.x and 19.x ones in the last year, I'd have to say "nearly all the time". Sadly, many of the glitches we've encountered are due to us not reading all the Known Issues of every intervening patch from where we're coming from to where we're patching to. We usually like to stay behind the "latest and greatest" to avoid Bleeding Edge issues. Then we'll skip a couple releases to get a little less behind. Us re-imaging an X5 to 19.8 shortly after it was released was uncharacteristically bold of us. However, we knew that ODA would only host Dev and Test DBs and we could have it down longer than if it was for Prod DBs.

Yes, I've gotten some bozo Oracle Support techs who really didn't know ODAs well enough, but mostly I've gotten knowledgeable and effective ones. YMMV. Getting bozos for Support has been my experience with just about everything, not just Oracle.

The longest downtime for a patch was the one - I forget exactly which - that took the OS from OEL 6.x to 7.x. It was several hours. However, a Sys Admin in our org. said he had an equally long struggle with a Dell server going from RH 6 to 7. So, the big Linux upgrade was problematic no matter the platform.

There's also the "stay with the devil you know" comfort factor. We're familiar with the ODAs, warts and all. With the new X8s we find many fewer warts and a Lot more to love. We even like our X5, now that it's at 19.8. Still don't like the other X5 that's stuck at ODA 12.2.0.4 (I think), but that's another story.

Happy server hunting!

--
Jack C. Applewhite - Database Administrator
Austin I.S.D. - MIS Department
512.414.9250 (wk)

I cannot help but notice that there is no problem between us that cannot be solved by your departure.  -- Mark Twain
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From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org <oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org> on behalf of Jeff Chirco <backseatdba_at_gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2021 09:45
To: Jack Applewhite <jack.applewhite_at_austinisd.org>
Cc: oracle-l_at_freelists.org <oracle-l_at_freelists.org>; gogala.mladen_at_gmail.com <gogala.mladen_at_gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Oracle ODA suggestions.

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I've been contemplating getting an ODA for a while, we've never had one but are in discussion of needing to upgrade our Dell hardware so it has been on the table. Here are my thoughts on a couple of your points.

  -- We have "a single throat to choke" in Oracle being responsible for everything. No finger-pointing between Dell support and Oracle support.

I found this to be a negative. Oracle support has always been a pain to deal with. Occasionally you get a good one but more often responses take too long and they are usually asking dumb questions which halfthe time I already answered if they read the original problem description. If Oracle support was better then this might be a good point. I've also heard that there are not many ODA experts at Oracle support. I could be wrong.

  -- Applying ODA patches upgrades all components to a compatible level - most of the time flawlessly.

The "most of the time" scares me. It should be every time. We are much more comfortable patching things individually. Storage and server guys know their stuff and I know database stuff. We don't over step each other. I have heard horror stories of an ODA being down for hours or a full day because a patch went wrong.  I don't know what people are running on these things but we can't be down like that for more than an hour.  I also have root on the server and take care of some things myself.


On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 7:23 AM Jack Applewhite <jack.applewhite_at_austinisd.org<mailto:jack.applewhite_at_austinisd.org>> wrote:
Mladen,

From a strictly hardware standpoint, you're probably right. However, the bottom to top integration of HW, Infrastructure, OS, and RDBMS is Very handy.
  -- We have "a single throat to choke" in Oracle being responsible for everything. No finger-pointing between Dell support and Oracle support.
  -- Applying ODA patches upgrades all components to a compatible level - most of the time flawlessly.
  -- We can usually use MOS notes and docs to troubleshoot errors and problems at all levels.
  -- As Andrew mentioned, the ASR feature is Very useful. We've gotten notice that Oracle has already shipped a new drive, fan, power supply, etc. to us before we were even aware of the failing component.

These new Bare Metal X8-2Ms, without the RAC, virtualization, and ACFS crap, are the best packages we've ever had. Plus, we get to be root and mostly manage them ourselves, which may not be an option in a lot of shops.

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it. Happily.
--
Jack C. Applewhite - Database Administrator
Austin I.S.D. - MIS Department
512.414.9250 (wk)

I cannot help but notice that there is no problem between us that cannot be solved by your departure.  -- Mark Twain
________________________________
From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org<mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org> <oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org<mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org>> on behalf of Mladen Gogala <gogala.mladen_at_gmail.com<mailto:gogala.mladen_at_gmail.com>>
Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2021 21:18
To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org<mailto:oracle-l_at_freelists.org> <oracle-l_at_freelists.org<mailto:oracle-l_at_freelists.org>>
Subject: Re: Oracle ODA suggestions.

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Hi Jack!

What is the difference between a big Dell box with many cores and NVME
drives and ODA? What you are describing sounds like a very big and fast
PC with Linux and Oracle per-installed.

On 3/30/21 4:59 PM, Jack Applewhite wrote:


> Our X8s are Bare Metal, single server machines with 100% SSD storage


> and a joy. After I re-imaged them to 18.8, patching to 19.6 presented

> a few problems. mainly going from OEL 6 to 7, but, with Oracle

> Support, we worked them out. We are very happy with 19.6 ODA version

> and RDBMS version.


--
Mladen Gogala
Database Consultant
Tel: (347) 321-1217
https://dbwhisperer.wordpress.com

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