Crossed Wires

Vic’s Blog

Posts Tagged systemz

Oracle Database 11gR2 on Linux on System z

Aug 31

Posted by Vic in Linux, Operating Systems, Work | No Comments

Earlier this year (30 March, to be precise) Oracle announced that Oracle Database 11gR2 was available as a fully-supported product for Linux on IBM System z.  A while before that they had announced E-Business Suite as available for Linux on System z, but at the time the database behind it had to be 10g.  Shortly after 30 March, they followed up the 11gR2 announcement with a statement of support for the Oracle 11gR2 database on Linux on System z as a backend for E-Business Suite — the complete, up-to-date Oracle stack was now available on Linux on System z!

In April this year I attended the zSeries Special Interest Group miniconf[1], part of the greater Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) event COLLABORATE 11.  I was amazed to discover that there are actually Oracle employees whose job it is to work on IBM technologies — just like there are IBM employees dedicated to selling and supporting the Oracle stack.  Never have I seen (close-up) a better example of the term “coopetition”.

On my return from the zSeries SIG and IOUG, I’ve become the local Oracle expert.  However, I’ve had no more training than the two days of workshops run at the conference!  The workshops were excellent (held at the Epcot Center at Walt Disney World, no less!) but they could not an expert make.  So I’ve been trying to build some systems and teach myself more about running Oracle.  I thought I’d gotten off to a good start too — I’d installed a standalone system, then went on to build a two-node RAC.  I communicated my success to one of my sales colleagues:

“I’ve got a two-node RAC setup running on the z9 in Brisbane!”

“Great!  Good work,” he said.  ”So the two nodes are running in different LPARs, so we can demonstrate high-availability?”

” . . . ”

In my haste I’d built both virtual machines in the same LPAR.  Whoops.  (I’ve fixed that now, by the way.  The two RAC nodes are in different LPARs and seem to be performing better for it.)

Over the coming weeks, I’ll write up some of the things that have caught me out.  I still don’t really know how all this stuff works, but I’m getting better!

Links:

IBM System z: www.ibm.com/systems/z or www.ibm.com/systems/au/z

Linux on System z: www.ibm.com/systems/z/os/linux/index.html

Oracle zSeries SIG: www.zseriesoraclesig.org

Oracle Database: www.oracle.com/us/products/database/index.html

[1] Miniconf is a term I picked up from linux.conf.au — the zSeries SIG didn’t advertise its event as a miniconf, but as a convenient name for a “conference-in-a-conference” I’m using the term here.

 

 

 

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Rebooting my belief system

Mar 7

Posted by Vic in Linux, Operating Systems, Soapbox | No Comments

I’ve been away from SHARE for far too long.  It’s really great to hear positive things about Linux on zSeries again, rather than the crap I have to put up with at home.

In Australia, there is no evangelism of zSeries.  There’s an attitude bordering on arrogance that seems to say “we’re not going to explain zSeries to you; if you don’t know you want it already then you’re not worth it”.  At least that’s what it looks like to me.

I’m surrounded by people who think that all problems can be solved by installing an xSeries or pSeries machine.  Maybe some can be, but IMHO they’ll be replacing one set of problems with another (possibly greater) set.

Anyway, it’s nice to hear different stories — like a company whose IT costs went from 1.7% to 0.9% of sales by migrating their ENTIRE server farm (including about a dozen p690s) to a z990 running Linux.  Like a company that has placed 250 Linux server guests onto z/VM inside a year, freezing acquisition of new discrete servers.

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