This presentation is based on a real-life experience migrating Oracle E-Business Suite R12.1 production to Amazon AWS, and additional proof-of-concept effort done getting various client systems upgraded to R12.2 and migrated to main cloud vendor platforms on the market. We are going to cover here various areas, like:
- Certification basics. Overview look into supported configurations.
- How to architect. Basic recommendations based on migration and 2+ year production runtime experience. We will mainly cover Amazon AWS use case.
- Advanced configurations outline.
- R12.2 and features / nuances coming with it.
- Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud review. Quick comparison outline of main alternative platforms.
- Cloud deployment automation and the most common scenario - auto-scaling.
This is a very client demanding topic and many are looking into cloud migration options and how they can optimize the cost comparing to the on-premise hardware hosting. And many are still misunderstanding the complexity of Oracle EBS stack being capable for cloud deployment.
1 of 61
More Related Content
Running Oracle EBS in the cloud (OAUG Collaborate 18 edition)
1. Session ID:
Prepared by:
Remember to complete your evaluation for this session within the app!
10078
Running Oracle EBS
in the cloud
April 24th, 2018
Andrejs Prokopjevs, John Piwowar
Applications Database Consultants
Pythian
@aprokopjevs, @jpiwowar
1
2. About Andrejs
2
Apps DBA from Riga, Latvia.
Speaking SQL since 2001. In Oracle world since 2004.
Boiling Oracle EBS since 2006.
Conference speaker:
UKOUG, nlOUG, DOAG, OAUG Collaborate
UKOUG 2017 Speaker Award winner
Andrejs Prokopjevs
Lead Applications Database Consultant
At Pythian since 2011
@aprokopjevs
prokopjevs@pythian.com
https://www.pythian.com/blog/author/prokopjevs/
5. Agenda
• Certification basics.
• How to architect. Recommendations. AWS.
• Advanced configurations.
• R12.2.
• Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud review.
• Cloud deployment automation and the most common scenario - auto-scaling.
5
What is Oracle EBS?
8. What is cloud?
• It’s not just a hosting.
• Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS)
• Software-as-a-service (SaaS)
• Platform-as-a-service (PaaS)
• Public cloud, Private cloud, Hybrid cloud
8
9. What is cloud?
• Pros
• Hardware support and maintenance. This is your cloud service provider responsibility.
• Hardware pool. Workload is shared and distributed.
• Transparency. You run only what you need to run.
• "Pay per use" model.
• No termination fees.
• Cons
• Security
▪ Design of your network, its access, and security of the data is the main key point for success.
▪ Encryption
▪ Single Point of Disaster (AWS console). IAM and Root account protection.
• Possible network latency with cloud service provider.
9
10. Oracle E-Business Suite – Apps Tier
• SaaS or PaaS
• Ready solution. You don’t manage the software.
• NOT applicable for Apps Tier.
• IaaS
• Same as running it on local physical hardware.
• You are still in the The Captain role.
10
11. Oracle E-Business Suite – DB Tier
• AWS EC2
• Amazon RDS for Oracle (DBaaS) - NOT supported.
• Sorry, only IaaS deployment.
• MS Azure
• Only IaaS for Oracle, in general.
• Oracle Cloud
• Something special is there.
▪ Database Cloud Service
▪ Exadata Cloud Service
11
12. Licensing
• Licensing primary source:
• http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/cloud-licensing-070579.pdf
• AWS EC2, MS Azure - Authorized Cloud Environments.
• Example for Standard Edition:
▪ Less than 4 vCPUs: counted as 1 socket = 1 processor licensed.
▪ More than 4 vCPUs: "closest vCPU multiple of 4" counted as number of sockets = number of processors
licensed.
▪ Azure - replace 4 vCPUs with 2 Azure CPU cores within your calculations.
• Example for Enterprise Edition:
▪ 2 vCPUs = 1 processor licensed.
▪ Azure - replace 2 vCPUs with 1 Azure CPU cores within your calculations.
• Licensing models
• Pay per use rates, included in cloud service provider pricing model (* not everything applies).
• BYOL (Bring Your Own License). Named User Plus licensing is possible.
12
13. Licensing – Oracle E-Business Suite
• DB tier requires Enterprise Edition.
• Pay per use model is available only on Oracle Cloud.
• For other IaaS based deployments – BYOL.
• Apps tier is separately licensed – BYOL.
• VMware – Sorry ! Nothing changed. You need to license the whole hardware pool.
• Cost efficiency: do your own calculations !
13
15. Overview
• Our talk will be primarily based on ”wrong cloud” – Oracle Amazon EC2.
• Oracle E-Business Suite R12.1.
• Standard 1 Apps Tier & 1 DB Tier configuration.
• High level overview.
15
16. #0: Important start note
• You are the Solution Architect.
• How you design it will be the way the system is going to run.
16
17. #1: Network
• Everything should start with a proper network design.
• Regions / Availability Zones
• Subnets
• Network interfaces
• Route tables
• Security
• Network ACLs
• Security Groups
• Internet Gateway
• Virtual Private Gateway
• IPSec VPN tunnel with your on-premise network
17
Amazon documentation reference:
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonVPC/latest/UserGuide/VPC_Introduction.html
19. #1: Network
• IP address
• Private IP addresses – dynamic. Can’t be reserved and may change during instance restart.
• Public IP addresses – dynamic, but a static IP address can be assigned via Elastic IP feature.
▪ Note: Public IP traffic is routed through the public internet.
• DNS
• By default provided by Amazon.
• Each region has it’s own sub-domain. Automatically updated via internal DHCP.
▪ But contains Private IP address in the name space:
• ec2-10-10-10-1.eu-central-1.compute.amazonaws.com
• Route 53
▪ Configure your own DNS.
▪ Assign host and domain names to instances.
19
20. #2: Instances
• Instance – actual virtual machine
• Instance types
▪ General purpose
▪ Compute optimized
▪ Memory optimized
▪ Storage optimized
▪ Accelerated Computing
• It’s all about your “hardware” power and requirement
▪ vCPU, T2 instances with CPU credits / burst
▪ Memory
▪ GPU
▪ Storage
20
Amazon documentation reference:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/instance-types.html
21. #2: Instances
• Instance types #2
▪ On-Demand (default).
▪ Spot Instances – short term workload.
▪ Reserved Instances or Dedicated Hosts – long term resource pre-allocation.
• Mainly affects pricing
• AMIs (Amazon Machine Images)
▪ Image of the instance
▪ Public and Private repositories
• What AMI to use?
▪ EC2 standard: RHEL, SLES, Windows Server, “pay per use” licensing model.
▪ Public AMI repos: Oracle Linux, for example. Use for free, but don’t forget about ULN
licensing terms.
21
22. #2: Instances – Oracle E-Business Suite
• Example that can be used for Oracle E-Business Suite
• Apps Tier: m3.xlarge, 4 vCPU, 15 GB Memory.
• DB Tier: r3.4xlarge, 16 vCPU, 122 GB Memory.
• 122 GB RAM for Oracle EBS database?
▪ Sometimes memory size is not the primary criteria for instance type selection.
▪ Each instance type has different IOPS and IO throughput limits.
22
23. #3: Storage
• Storage types
• Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store)
• Standard SAN-like disk volumes. Can be mounted to one EC2 instance at a time.
• SSD: gp2, io1. HDD: st1, sc1. Different throughput and IOPS limits.
• Amazon EC2 Instance Store (Ephemeral)
• Local disks.
• IMPORTANT: All data is lost once Instance is stopped or restarted. Ideal for temporary storage.
• Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)
• NAS analog from Amazon – NFS based. Still with a limited region availability.
• Amazon S3
• Object based storage module.
• By default used for storing AMIs and Amazon EBS disk snapshots.
23
Amazon documentation reference:
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/Storage.html
24. #3: Storage – Oracle E-Business Suite
• Example that can be used for Oracle E-Business Suite
• Apps Tier file system
▪ Elastic Block Store – standard option for single Apps Tier approach.
▪ Elastic File System is preferable if scale-out plans are there.
▪ Make your own “NAS server” instance, mount Amazon EBS disks, and export them via NFS.
▪ gp2 standard type is absolutely enough. Based on IO credits / burst.
▪ Cheap HDD based disks should be considered only for low IO workload targets (conc. log / out data, or
interfaces).
24
25. #3: Storage – Oracle E-Business Suite
• Example that can be used for Oracle E-Business Suite
• DB Tier
▪ Elastic Block Store. Local File-System or ASM.
▪ No universal recommendation on IOPS / throughput. You MUST test, benchmark, and evaluate your own
system performance per workload requirements.
▪ Hint: Database Smart Flash Cache feature can greatly improve your performance. Configure it on Instance
Store (Ephemeral) disks.
SQL> show parameter db_flash_cache
NAME TYPE VALUE
------------------------------------ ----------- ------------------------------
db_flash_cache_file string /dev/xvda1
db_flash_cache_size big integer 200G
SQL>
25
26. #4: IOPS
• Most difficult part to understand.
• IOPS / Throughput depends not only on Instance and
Storage type, but also on the size of the volume.
• Provisioned IO (io1) volumes are not always the most
efficient option for IO intensive workload.
▪ Larger “gp2” volumes can provide similar or better IO performance
than smaller “io1”. And for less cost.
▪ Can experiment putting multiple gp2 into LVM drives.
• Wrong type chosen can be a big problem.
▪ Example: cheap HDD “sc1”.
• IOPS size:
▪ SSD (gp2, io1) - 16KiB.
▪ HDD (st1, sc1) - 1 MiB.
• Oracle Database: multiblock reads
▪ DB IOPS <> EC2 IOPS !!! 26
27. #4: IOPS
• Classical reaction reading IOPS related
docs for different areas (EC2, EBS,
RDS).
• Experiment, Benchmark
• Find better setup that will suit your
requirement and budget.
27
28. #5: Backup / Recovery
• EC2 provides EBS storage snapshot feature only
▪ Apps tier: Make snapshots for Apps Base file system.
▪ DB tier:
• Setup RMAN on dedicated volumes. Make periodic snapshots.
• Elastic File System (NAS).
• S3 sync for backup sets, but requires complex scripting effort.
▪ Can be automated via CLI.
28
Amazon documentation reference:
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ebs-creating-snapshot.html
29. #6: Monitoring
• CloudWatch
• https://aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/
• Free:
• Very limited.
• Paid:
• Complete monitoring solution for the instances.
• Alarms. SWS / SNS integration.
• Not versed for Oracle.
• You can use your own custom monitoring. Setup EM agents.
29
30. #7: Amazon RDS
• You can still use RDS for Oracle service for other integrated components.
• Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c
• Not supported with Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g, but with some “tweaks” you can still get
your Metadata Repository loaded into the RDS instance.
▪ Main challenge: no SYSDBA access. Replaced with ORACLE_MASTER and RDS PL/SQL API.
▪ Doable, but not certified and not supported.
• Example:
• Identity and Access Management for Single Sign-On, or BI.
30
32. #1: Oracle RAC
• NOT supported.
• No shared storage.
• No multicast support for interconnect.
• But… non-official solutions.
• Deploying Scalable Oracle RAC on Amazon EC2
▪ https://aws.amazon.com/articles/7455908317389540
▪ Became an official guide by Amazon.
• Do your own interconnect via OpenVPN.
• Flashgrid VSAN solution.
• Try to adopt Amazon EFS (NFS).
• Complex and not recommended.
32
33. #2: Apps Multi-Tier / PCP
• No limits.
• Shared file-system can be implemented via EFS or your own NFS solution.
• Elastic Load Balancing (LBaaS)
• Has all requirements to front-end Oracle E-Business Suite.
▪ Sticky session
▪ SSL
33
Amazon documentation reference:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/userguide/what-is-load-balancing.html?icmpid=docs_elbv2_console
34. #3: External Tier
• Similar to standard Apps Multi-Tier deployment.
• DMZ network restrictions can be implemented via a dedicated VPC security group.
34
35. #4: SSL
• Native SSL – same as on-premise.
• SSL termination via ELB (LBaaS).
• AWS Certificate Manager is available to maintain and provision the certificates.
35
36. #5: Integrations
• EC2:
• No ready SaaS / PaaS solutions certified and ready out-of-the-box for Oracle EBS.
• Hybrid cloud deployment
• Evaluate your network latency with target availability zone.
• For heavy data exchange processes and systems integrated it might be a good idea to move
them along with your Oracle E-Business Suite on the same side.
• Examples:
• BI, ETL.
• Or adjust your expectations and SLA.
36
37. #6: Disaster Recovery
• IaaS – similar “on-premise” approach.
• No automation.
• Availability zones. Regions.
• For initial clone, EC2 EBS volume snapshots are transferable.
• RDS for Oracle (DBaaS) – built-in and automated feature.
• But between Availability Zones, not Regions.
37
38. #7: Encryption
• Applications level: implement TDE.
• Storage level: implement encryption at rest for EC2 EBS volumes.
38
40. What is different with R12.2?
• Everything that is related to R12.1.
• ADOP
• Private IP addresses
▪ Number of FND tables must contain valid IP addresses of all nodes.
▪ EC2 Instance restart might change the private IP – it must be updated.
• Validation of the /etc/hosts
▪ Same private IP addresses – hosts file has to enlist them, and with required format.
• You can setup a custom OS service
▪ Run during instance startup to update hosts file and FND table with $(hostname -I) value.
▪ Any other node dependencies via AWS CLI.
• IOPS / IO throughput planning is important
▪ ADOP fs_clone and file system synchronization management through online cycles.
▪ DB workload handling edition objects.
▪ Example: “fs_clone force=yes” run duration on 220 GB standard gp2 volume: 42 minutes.
40
42. Microsoft Azure
• IaaS only.
• In respect to Oracle E-Business Suite it has all main analogs available.
• Virtual Network, Load Balancing, Storage, Site Recovery.
• Linux Virtual Machine support.
• Important note: compute limits.
• Main disadvantage comparing EC2 and Azure was the compute option availability. EC2
provided more powerful capacity options. Almost 10 times.
• Things are getting changed.
▪ 20 vCPU max quota (30 West Europe region). But can be extended via support request.
▪ 100+ GB RAM.
▪ Enough storage options.
42
44. Oracle Public Cloud
• Completely based on Oracle’s own stack.
• IaaS
• With PaaS support for DB Tier:
• Database Cloud Service
• Exadata Cloud Service
• RAC support !!!
• “Lift and Shift” – “one-button” your on-premise
instance migration to cloud.
• Easy multi-node provisioning for Oracle EBS.
• Quick deployment for rapid development
needs.
44
45. Oracle Public Cloud – Management
• EBS Cloud Admin Tool central management.
• Provisioning.
• Vertical scaling.
• Cloning.
• OpenWorld 2017 roadmap announcement:
• Managed Oracle EBS environment via GUI console or CLI.
• Full scaled and managed Backup / Restore for Oracle EBS instance.
• Automated provisioning and cloning, with post provisioning custom framework support.
• Managed horizontal scaling.
• Automated DMZ and External application configuration.
• Automated DB tier PSU patching.
• Fully automated DR creation and failover.
• GUI management portal is coming !!!
45
46. Oracle Public Cloud – Integrations
• Oracle EBS is really bound to Oracle’s own
products for integrations.
• With other cloud service providers it’s IaaS
based setup – you do everything on your own.
• Integrations Cloud Service
• Examples:
▪ SOA cloud service is supported.
▪ Identity cloud service is NOT supported there yet.
46
47. Oracle Public Cloud – EBS or SaaS Applications
• There is an ongoing shift to SaaS based Applications.
• Limited modules are implemented. Still in active development.
• Oracle’s vision for Hybrid co-existence (options in R12.2).
• Oracle E-Business Suite is still on the radar.
• Roadmap, at least, till 2030. R12.3 (or maybe R18.1 ) is on the way (~2020).
• Recommendation: Do not rush!
• Implement, Test, Evaluate, Compare costs, Migrate.
47
Getting Started with Oracle E-Business Suite on Oracle Cloud (Doc ID 2066260.1)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/EBS.SysAdmin/
https://twitter.com/Oracle_EBS
49. What is Vertical scaling?
• Increase of the compute resources of a
particular instance
• Change instance type with more RAM,
more compute power.
• Might dramatically increase your cost.
• Still has limits.
• In respect to Oracle EBS
• JVM memory heap size increase.
• JVM process / server count increase.
• Downtime
49
50. What is Horizontal scaling?
• Increase of the compute resources by
adding more compute instances
• Add more nodes
• Flexibility
• In respect to Oracle EBS
• Add more apps tiers.
• No Downtime
50
51. What if we want to automate it?
• Business case:
• We would like to automatically add web nodes on-demand, if existing stack is overloaded.
• Auto-Scaling group is created
• Minimum, maximum, and desired node count parameters
• Scaling plans – when and how to scale. Specific time, or can be based on CloudWatch
monitoring. Rules for scaling in.
• Launch configurations / Instance configuration. Image to create new instance from.
• Automatically adds your new created node into the Elastic Load Balancer configuration.
51
Documentation
https://aws.amazon.com/documentation/autoscaling/
52. What if we want to automate it?
• New node startup from AMI
• We can put a custom first-boot shell script which will handle certain actions (cloud-init).
• Pricing for Auto-Scaling
• It is free.
• You pay only standard rates running your additional EC2 compute resources.
• Limits
52
53. Oracle E-Business Suite - Challenge
• Oracle E-Business Suite is very tight on it’s internal configuration repository
• FND tables, like FND_NODES
• Nightmare with R12.2 and ADOP.
• Scaling with a new node.
• Find the best combination of pairs file to minimize post manual correction of the context file
and instance configuration for “perl adclonectx.pl addnode”.
• Manually generate the required context file and feed it into adclonectx.pl.
• Node deletion
• R12.1: Downtime, setup_clean, re-run of all autoconfigs on each node in 2 rounds.
• R12.2: supports Abandoned node state, supports node deletion***
53
54. Adding a new Web Node
• OS setup
• Software, kernel, limit configuration can come from created private AMI image.
• Hostname: We need to set a unique hostname on the server, DNS, update /etc/hosts.
• Mount the Apps Base storage layer.
• Apps setup
• Generate new context file / perl adclonectx.pl addnode.
• Run AutoConfig on all existing nodes. Or, at least, “generatetns” step.
• Reload Apps TNS listeners on all existing nodes.
• Optional: any custom post configuration.
• Service restart on new created node.
• Elastic Load Balancer
• Will enable the node once the TCP socket ping succeeds.
54
55. Removing a Web Node
• Instance termination
• Elastic Load Balancer – automatic drop of the removed instance
• Apps setup - Master node to trigger the node deletion process.
• R12.1
▪ No process of node deletion without a complete downtime and setup_clean process.
▪ Concurrent Service Managers configured for new node can be just disabled from back-end.
▪ OAM dashboard – sorry, you can’t avoid the red status there.
▪ File system cleanup.
• R12.2
▪ Abandon the node.
▪ “perl $AD_TOP/patch/115/bin/adProvisionEBS.pl ebs-delete-node”
▪ “txkSetAppsConf.pl -configoption=removeMS”
▪ File system cleanup.
55
56. Re-use of a removed Web Node
• Node remove is very costly. Re-use of the existing configuration can be easy.
• R12.1
• Easy. But we should not delete the INST_TOP then.
• Re-enable the Concurrent Service Managers.
• Just launch the instance, configure the OS part, and restart the services.
• R12.2
• Abandoned node – only a complete delete / add process.
• Required even if we do not delete the node and do not delete the file system content.
• We can’t allow to delete an instance without Abandoned node state – affects ADOP.
56
57. Periodic housekeeping
• Once you have a downtime window, it’s worth to go through “setup_clean” process
to have everything re-registered clean and drop the garbage.
• R12.2: Cleanup of the FND OAM and ADOP session system tables.
57
58. R12.2 ADOP considerations
• Scaling automation and ADOP online patch cycle – how safe it is?
• Scale out: process creates a new node for RUN file system. PATCH – fs_clone requirement.
Conflict if a cycle is already opened.
• Scale in: abandoned node state is safe to complete the cycle.
• Cutover: likely a failure is expected.
• CloudWatch doesn’t know anything about what’s going on in Oracle EBS.
• During ADOP open cycle or maintenance window Auto Scale group, probably,
should be completely disabled.
58
59. Summary
• Oracle EBS implementation on cloud is more less straightforward.
• Mostly IaaS. Oracle Public Cloud offers PaaS for Oracle Database and other
integrations, like SOA.
• IO performance is the main bottleneck risk. Good design, evaluation of estimates
and testing are required to confirm the requirements.
• Security is an extra overhead and highly important.
• Cost efficiency is a subject of detailed evaluation and calculation.
• Auto-scaling – interesting, possible, but still is a manually controlled process.
59
60. Session ID:
Remember to complete your evaluation for this session within the app!
10078
Thank you
Q & A
60