In this article I’ll not go into detail on technical stuff.
It will be focused in the news that Oracle presented in the Oracle Cloud Day that was held in Dublin in November 2016.
Oracle Enterprise Cloud Strategy
This is the model presented by Oracle for Enterprise Cloud Strategy.
Up to 2020 it is estimated that companies will adopt a good portion of cloud services because the level of cloud maturity will be very much consistent if compared to nowadays.A recently research has been done by RightScale in 2016 and 95% of the interviewed show that some kind of cloud service was used in their companies.
This research also identified some interesting spots:
- 17% of companies have more than 1000 VMs running under public cloud;
- The security was not identified anymore as a #1 factor of challenge. Other factors like infrastructure, resources and skills also might be considered a challenge;
- The DevOps adoption has increased 74% in some companies.
The chart below might be used as a guide for the cloud adoption model:
Oracle Engineered Systems Cloud Services
Oracle has mentioned that some cloud services for Engineered Systems are the same as on-premise like the Exadata Cloud Service, Big Data Cloud Service, Database Cloud Service and it could be an advantage for managing workloads between on-premise < > cloud.
Data Integration Cloud
This service allows the data moving from on-premise to the cloud focusing in DW and Analytics environment.
Virtual Assistant (ChatBots) Platform
Interesting platform that provides contextual chats using Chatbots to speed up standard requests and also specific searches for enterprises.
Big Data Discovery Cloud Service
Service that uses Apache Spartk for quickly gathering and data search. The information gathered could be transformed in business insights.
Oracle NoSQL Database Cloud Service
- Run using BDA (Oracle Big Data Appliance) hardware;
- Has 3 nodes per storage in dedicated servers;
- The servers, network and storage are administrated by Oracle (CAPEX reduction);
- Oracle maintain the environment and services (OPEX reduction);
Cloud database services
In general the OCS (Oracle Cloud Services) for databases has 7 services division:
- Oracle Database Cloud Service;
- Oracle Database Backup Cloud Service;
- Oracle Database Cloud Service – Bare Metal;
- Oracle Database Exadata Cloud Service;
- Oracle Database Exadata Cloud Machine;
- Oracle Database Exadata Express Cloud Service – Managed;
- Oracle Database Schema Cloud Service – Managed.
I’ll not detail all services however the focus will be in the first and second services, ODCS e ODBCS respectively.
Oracle Database Cloud Service
The ODCS (Oracle Database Cloud Service) is a cloud service that Oracle provides their RDBMS for version 11g, 12.1 and 12.2 (this last version is only available in cloud).
The structure of the editions also has changed if compared to the traditional on-premise editions.
The cloud editions are:
- SE: Standard Edition;
- EE: Enterprise Edition;
- EE/HP: Enterprise Edition High Performance;
- EE/EP: Enterprise Edition Extreme Performance.
Concerning the version 12.2.0.1, Mike Dietrich made an interesting comparison regarding the Oracle parameter changes for 11.2.0.4, 12.1.0.2 and 12.2.0.1 besides mentioning the new 12.2.0.1 parameters.
Link: https://blogs.oracle.com/UPGRADE/entry/default_changes_of_init_parameters
Another thing that Oracle has mentioned was regarding the in-memory improvements for the 12.2 that can perform 60X faster if compared to the in-memory for the version 12.1.
Regarding the services charges Oracle has divided in 4 charges types. Each model has its own peculiarity.
The basic difference is the method of charges that can be monthly or per hour for the metered services and by monthly only for the non-metered services.
Just keep in mind that these services might change according to the Oracle policy.
Below the charge methods:
- Metered Services
- Virtual Image
- Non-Metered Services
- Non-Metered Virtual Image
Oracle Database Backup Cloud Service
The ODBCS (Oracle Dabatase Backup Cloud Service) is a scalable and secure service to take Oracle database backups to the Oracle cloud. Besides the traditional RMAN it’s also possible to use Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control or 3rd party tools like CloudBerry Labs’s to take backups.
The Oracle Database Backup Cloud Service is only valid to storage and take Oracle database backups. Oracle provides another service (Oracle Storage Cloud Service) that allows store other types of data.
Before you start any kind of installation procedures I do recommend the reading of:
Oracle Database Backup Cloud Service FAQ (My Oracle Support Doc ID 1640149.1)
The link below is regarding the installation of the Oracle backup module
How to install Database Cloud Backup Module
Before you ask: How about the latency? If I run RMAN backup for my 1TB database from my Data Centre up to the Oracle cloud?
Well, before making this question there is another question: Is your infrastructure is ready to support this kind of service? But to minimize questions like this one, Oracle provides a service called (FC – FASTCONNECT).
This is an interesting service that is part of the Oracle Network Cloud Service. It is a high-speed fiber connection between Data Centers (The client Data Centre and Oracle Data Centre) and of course this service is only available in specific regions.
To sum up, Oracle provides 30-day free service for testing some Oracle cloud services. The Oracle Backup Cloud Service is one of them that could be interesting to assess. I think this could be a good start to know the Oracle Cloud Services better.
For further information please access cloud.oracle.com/database.
