How to build a cost-effective serverless blogging platform on GCP – Part 2
Welcome back to the 2nd part! Last time, we set up the tools that allowed managing the blog as a set of configuration and Markdown-formatted files stored in a source code repository. Now it’s time to...
View ArticleHow to build a cost-effective serverless blogging platform on GCP – Part 1
I remember when I started blogging in 2008. It was a nice learning experience, and it was rewarding, too – both the challenge of formulating my thoughts clearly and the feedback I received, and still...
View ArticleAchieving rock-solid maintenance with template-based action plans
Pythian has always been serious about reducing human mistakes. Our consultants have always been required to log all terminal outputs for the work we execute so that the information is available to our...
View ArticleUsing Docker to provide self-service database patching
I’ve been looking into how Vagrant and/or Docker can be used to improve the life of DBAs and maybe others, too. I did this mostly to practice using these tools – especially Docker – that are becoming...
View ArticleRedo volume optimization in 12c R2
I was using SLOB to compare the throughput between 12.1 and 12.2 databases, and was surprised to see that the average redo size per transaction was ~18.5KB on 12cR2, and ~339KB on 12cR1. Understanding...
View ArticleAutomating password rotation for Oracle databases
Password rotation is not the most exciting task in the world, and that’s exactly why it’s a perfect candidate for automation. Automating routine tasks like this are good for everyone – DBAs can work on...
View ArticleInvestigating IO performance on Amazon EC2
I published a blog post called “Investigating IO Performance on Amazon RDS for Oracle” recently, and soon after posting it I received several questions asking if IO worked the same way on EC2...
View ArticleInvestigating IO performance on Amazon RDS for Oracle
I’ve recently been involved in quite a few database migrations to Oracle RDS. One thing that I had noticed when dealing with post-migration performance issues was related to queries that used TABLE...
View ArticleThe getMOSPatch V2 is here!
A while ago I created a Bash script called getMOSPatch.sh. It’s purpose was to allow downloading Oracle patches directly from My Oracle Support to your server without having to visit the support site...
View ArticleInternals of querying the concurrent requests’ queue – revisited for R12.2
Once upon a time I wrote about the Internal Workflow of an E-Business Suite Concurrent Manager Process. Many things have changed since that blog post, the most obvious change being the release of...
View ArticleAutomating Password Rotation for Oracle Databases
Password rotation is not the most exciting task in the world, and that’s exactly why it’s a perfect candidate for automation. Automating routine tasks like this are good for everyone – DBAs can work on...
View ArticleInvestigating IO performance on Amazon EC2
I published a blog post called “Investigating IO Performance on Amazon RDS for Oracle” recently, and soon after posting it I received several questions asking if IO worked the same way on EC2...
View ArticleInvestigating IO Performance on Amazon RDS for Oracle
I’ve recently been involved in quite a few database migrations to Oracle RDS. One thing that I had noticed when dealing with post-migration performance issues was related to queries that used TABLE...
View ArticleThe getMOSPatch V2 Is Here!
A while ago I created a Bash script called getMOSPatch.sh. It’s purpose was to allow downloading Oracle patches directly from My Oracle Support to your server without having to visit the support site...
View ArticleInternals of Querying the Concurrent Requests’ Queue – Revisited for R12.2
Once upon a time I wrote about the Internal Workflow of an E-Business Suite Concurrent Manager Process. Many things have changed since that blog post, the most obvious change being the release of...
View ArticleIs Oracle Smart Flash Cache a “SPOF”?
Oracle Smart Flash Cache (OSFC) is a nice feature that was introduced in Oracle 11g Release 2. As only recently I had a real use case for it, I looked into it with the main goal of determining if...
View ArticleHandling the Leap Second – Linux
Last week I published a blog post titled “Are You Ready For the Leap Second?“, and by looking at the blog statistics I could tell that many of you read it, and that’s good, because you became aware of...
View ArticleAre you Ready for the Leap Second?
If you’re not aware of what the leap second is look into it. The fact is, this year the last minute of June 30th will be one second longer and “June 30, 2015 23:59:60” will be a valid and correct time....
View ArticleUsing the ILOM for Troubleshooting on ODA
I worked on root cause analysis for a strange node reboot on client’s Oracle Database Appliance yesterday. The case was quite interesting from the perspective that none of the logs contained any...
View ArticleDo AWR Reports Show the Whole Picture?
AWR report is a great source of aggregated information on top activities happening in our databases. I use data collected in AWR quite often, and obviously the easiest way of getting the data out from...
View Article