Oracle Database 11g: Get There With Less Effort, Less Risk, Less Infrastructure, and More Reliability Alan Levine Oracle Enterprise Architect, Oracle

Oracle Database 11g: Get There With Less Effort, Less Risk, Less Infrastructure, and More Reliability

Alan LevineOracle Enterprise Architect, Oracle Consulting

The following is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions.The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for Oracle’s products remains at the sole discretion of Oracle.

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Session Agenda

• Introduction• Dissecting the Upgrade Lifecycle• Pre Upgrade Phase• Upgrade Phase• Post Upgrade Phase• Summary

How Do Customers Get to Oracle Database 11g?

• New Oracle Database deployment• Existing Oracle Database version upgrade such as

10.2.0.4 to 11.1.0.7 (same platform)• Platform Migration– UNIX to Linux

– Hardware refresh (same operating system)

• Combined version upgrade and platform migration• Migration to Oracle Database 11g from a non-Oracle

database

Common Goals for Database Upgrades, Migrations, and New Deployments

Reduced Effort

Lower Risk

Less Infrastructure

Greater Reliability


Session Agenda

• Introduction• Dissecting the Upgrade Lifecycle• Pre Upgrade Phase• Upgrade Phase• Post Upgrade Phase• Infrastructure Optimization• Summary

Database Upgrade Lifecycle

Pre Upgrade Upgrade Post Upgrade

Upgrade Planning

Upgrade Testing Dry Run Production

Migration Break - Fix Normal Operations 11g Testing


•Business Requirements

•Technical Requirements

•Prepare Alternatives

•Prepare Test Plans

•Business Requirements

•Technical Requirements

•Prepare Alternatives

•Prepare Test Plans


Upgrade Planning




•Develop Upgrade Approach

•Validate Upgrade Approach

•Perfect Upgrade Approach

•Rollback Testing

•Develop Upgrade Approach

•Validate Upgrade Approach

•Perfect Upgrade Approach

•Rollback Testing


Upgrade Planning




•Functional Testing

•Performance Testing

•Integration Testing

•Acceptance Testing

•Functional Testing

•Performance Testing

•Integration Testing

•Acceptance Testing


Upgrade Planning




•Refresh Environments

•Re-Run Upgrade

•Refresh Environments

•Re-Run Upgrade


Upgrade Planning




•Upgrade

•(Rollback)

•Upgrade

•(Rollback)


Upgrade Planning




•Monitor

•Troubleshoot

•(Rollback)

•Monitor

•Troubleshoot

•(Rollback)


Upgrade Planning




•Monitor

•Troubleshoot

•Monitor

•Troubleshoot


Upgrade Planning




Session Agenda


Pre Upgrade Phase Upgrade Planning Strategies

• Business Requirements– Understand SLA’s

– Determine available migration windows

– Identify high risk business functions

• Technical Requirements– Availability of swing servers and storage

– Certification of components for target platform

– Availability of test environments, tools, and scripts

Pre Upgrade Phase Upgrade Planning Strategies (cont.)

• Prepare Alternatives– Develop strategies that meet business needs

balanced by availability of supporting infrastructure

– Include rollback planning

– Validate key technical assumptions

– Select go-forward approach

• Prepare 11g Test Plans– Develop in advance to avoid oversights

Lower Risk

•Understand requirements

Reduced Effort

•Avoid complexity

Greater Reliability

•Testing as part of the process, not an afterthought

•Robust rollback strategy

Lower Risk

•Understand requirements

Reduced Effort

•Avoid complexity

Greater Reliability

•Testing as part of the process, not an afterthought

•Robust rollback strategy

Selecting a Rollback Strategy

• Restore from backups

• Clone production, upgrade clone, use original production database for rollback

• Clone production, upgrade production, use clone for rollback

• Export/import to populate a new Oracle 11g database– Original source database can be used for rollback

– Replication can be used to extend the rollback window beyond the production 11g cutover

• Data Guard– Upgrade primary, leave standby untouched until go-live; or,

– Deploy 2nd standby for rollback purposes, upgrade both primary and standby to avoid compromise of RTO / RPO during upgrade

Pre Upgrade PhaseUpgrade Testing Strategies

• Develop Upgrade Approach (Upgrade Trial 1)– Perform full upgrade with documentation of all

steps including timing

• Validate Upgrade Approach (Upgrade Trial 2)– Execute upgrade per the documented plan and

update timing of all steps

– Any deviations from the documented plan require an additional iteration

– Significant time deviations between Trial 1 and Trial 2 require further investigation

Pre Upgrade PhaseUpgrade Testing Strategies (cont.)

• Perfect Upgrade Approach (Upgrade Trials 3..n)– Execute upgrade per the documented plan

– Validate timing of all steps

– No deviations from the plan

• Rollback Testing– Test the rollback strategy at multiple points in

time during the upgrade process

Lower Risk

•Test your rollback strategy

Greater Reliability

•Perform multiple iterations until the process is repeatable

Lower Risk

•Test your rollback strategy

Greater Reliability

•Perform multiple iterations until the process is repeatable

Pre Upgrade PhaseOracle Database 11g Testing Strategies

• Functional Testing– Leverage automated tools for a repeatable

process– Insure complete coverage of all critical

business functions and adequate coverage of lower priority modules

• Performance Testing– Test production sized workloads– Try and find the breaking points– Test real-world combinations of competing

workloads– Deploy Oracle Real Application Testing (RAT)

• Test with true production workloads using Database Capture and Database Replay

• Leverage SQL Performance Analyzer (SPA) performance regression testing

Oracle Real Application Testing

Database Replay

• Replay actual production database workload in test environment

• Identify, analyze and fix potential instabilities before making changes to production

• Capture Workload in Production– Capture full production workload with real

load, timing & concurrency characteristics– Move the captured workload to test system

• Replay Workload in Test– Make the desired changes in test system– Replay workload with full production

characteristics– Honor commit ordering

• Analyze & Report– Errors– Data divergence – Performance divergence

SQL Performance Analyzer

• Enables identification of SQL performance regressions before end-users can be impacted

• SPA can help with any change that impacts SQL execution plan– DB upgrades– Optimizer statistics refresh– New indexes, Materialized Views, Partitions,

etc.

• Automates SQL performance tracking of hundreds of thousands of SQL statements – impossible to do manually

• Captures SQL workload with low overhead• Integrated with SQL Tuning Advisor and

SQL Plan Baselines for regression remediation

Pre Upgrade PhaseOracle Database 11g Testing Strategies (cont.)

• Integration Testing– Validate all upstream and downstream feeds– Batch jobs and utility scripts– Backup and recovery procedures– Data Guard Switchover and Failover

• User Acceptance Testing– Deploy the Grid Control Service Level

Management Pack to run synthetic transactions and provide an objective view of user workloads

– Deploy Oracle Real User Experience Insight (RUEI) for non-intrusive views into actual user performance

Lower Risk

•Let testing results drive the go-live date, not vice-versa

Reduced Effort

•Leverage DB Replay and SPA to automate testing efforts

Less Infrastructure

•RAT can reduce database testing infrastructure needs without compromising testing coverage

Greater Reliability

•Robust “real world” testing scenarios for a more reliable post-upgrade experience

Lower Risk

•Let testing results drive the go-live date, not vice-versa

Reduced Effort

•Leverage DB Replay and SPA to automate testing efforts

Less Infrastructure

•RAT can reduce database testing infrastructure needs without compromising testing coverage

Greater Reliability

•Robust “real world” testing scenarios for a more reliable post-upgrade experience

Pre Upgrade Mistakes to Avoid

• “We will achieve our go-live date no matter what!”

• “We upgraded four similar databases so we only needed to performance test one of them.”

• “We ran out of time for performance testing but we should have enough hardware capacity to mitigate the risk in production.”

• “We don’t have time for code remediation. We’ll add BIND VARIABLES later, after we are on 11g.”

• “We did all our development and testing on 10g but it should be OK to go-live on 11g.”


Session Agenda


Upgrade PhaseDry Run Strategies

• Refresh Test Environments from Production– Provides a clean environment for validation of

timing

– Helps identify undocumented application changes

• Re-Run Upgrade– Should be able to replay the upgrade script

exactly as documented

– Timing of upgrade steps should match documented times

– Don’t skip this step, it’s the last opportunity to catch an issue

Lower Risk

•Perform a final dry-run immediately prior to go-live

Greater Reliability

•You are more likely to have a successful production upgrade if you can complete the dry-run without incident

Lower Risk

•Perform a final dry-run immediately prior to go-live

Greater Reliability

•You are more likely to have a successful production upgrade if you can complete the dry-run without incident

Upgrade PhaseProduction Upgrade Strategies

• Upgrade– Don’t deviate from your documented

procedures

– Perform an appropriate application “smoke test”

– Allow time for user validation

• (Rollback)– Don’t be afraid to rollback if needed

When in doubt, you should back it out!

Lower Risk

•Stick to the plan

Reduced Effort

•It takes less effort to fix a problem prior to go-live vs. post go-live

Greater Reliability

•Wishful thinking will not resolve a problem once you are in production, get the kinks out before then

Lower Risk

•Stick to the plan

Reduced Effort

•It takes less effort to fix a problem prior to go-live vs. post go-live

Greater Reliability

•Wishful thinking will not resolve a problem once you are in production, get the kinks out before then

Upgrade Phase Mistakes to Avoid

• “We don’t need a dry-run. If we have an issue during the production upgrade we will rollback.”

• “We had a data integrity issue during the migration but decided we would just fix it after go-live.”


Session Agenda

• Introduction• Dissecting the Upgrade Lifecycle• Pre Upgrade Phase• Upgrade Phase• Post Upgrade Phase• Infrastructure Optimization • Summary

Post Upgrade Phase Break Fix

• Monitor– More focused monitoring needs to be in

place for a full [week/month/quarter]– Measure both the user experience as well

as resource utilization with tools such as Oracle Grid Control and Oracle RUEI

– Establish new monitoring baselines for key performance metrics and resource utilization

• Troubleshoot– Use a major upgrade as an opportunity to

modernize use of tools

• (Rollback)– Post go-live rollback strategies are usually

complex and expensive to achieve

Lower Risk

•Better testing up front reduces the need to consider a post upgrade rollback strategy

Reduced Effort

•Leverage tools proactively and take advantage of automated monitoring and notification

Greater Reliability

•Keep critical resources available for rapid resolution of issues

Lower Risk

•Better testing up front reduces the need to consider a post upgrade rollback strategy

Reduced Effort

•Leverage tools proactively and take advantage of automated monitoring and notification

Greater Reliability

•Keep critical resources available for rapid resolution of issues

Post Go-Live Rollback Options

• Maintain two environments in parallel for as long as mandated– Feed data to two environments simultaneously– Increases both hardware and software footprint– Data divergence due to application changes reduces effectiveness over

time

• Replicate changes from 11g production back to the pre-11g database environment– Requires additional pre-upgrade testing to validate the data replication

process– Increases both hardware and software footprint

• Downgrade the database to the pre 11g version– Requires additional testing cycles– Executing a rollback can be time consuming and exceed SLA’s for

database availability

Post Upgrade Phase Normal Operations

• Monitor– Continue to leverage tools such as Oracle

Grid Control, the Service Level Management Pack, and Oracle RUEI

– Fine tune notification thresholds for deviations from key performance baselines

• Troubleshoot– Add Oracle Grid Control tools to standard

operating procedures for troubleshooting

• (Rollback)– No longer an option

Less Risk

•Objective monitoring tools take the guesswork out of troubleshooting efforts

Less Effort

•Automation can help proactively identify issues before users declare a problem exists

Greater Reliability

•Maintain your testing environment for future upgrade and patch testing

Less Risk

•Objective monitoring tools take the guesswork out of troubleshooting efforts

Less Effort

•Automation can help proactively identify issues before users declare a problem exists

Greater Reliability

•Maintain your testing environment for future upgrade and patch testing

Mitigating Subjective Performance FeedbackUse Objective Means to Measure the User Experience

• Proactively monitoring the user experience helps to eliminate subjective performance measurements and avoids unnecessary troubleshooting efforts

• Oracle Grid Control Service Level Management Pack– Define, deploy, monitor, and report on transaction performance from multiple locations

within your organization

• Oracle Real User Experience Insight (RUEI)– Monitor and analyze real user activity without needing to create synthetic transactions

Typical day with impact

of remote site bandwidth limitation

Monitoring shows a ‘network event’

Impacting the remote site

Remote

Local

Post Upgrade Phase Mistakes to Avoid

• “We are too busy to sit around all day and watch the Oracle Grid Control GUI console.”

• “The upgrade went so smoothly that we decided to double our production workload the next week.”


Session Agenda

• Introduction• Dissecting the Upgrade Lifecycle• Pre Upgrade Phase• Upgrade Phase• Post Upgrade Phase• Infrastructure Optimization • Summary

Server Optimization Strategies

• Goals– Increase server utilization

– Reduce server footprint

• Strategies– Use virtualization with OracleVM to increase server utilization

– Share DR with non-production instances

– Leverage Grid Architecture to consolidate databases on fewer servers

Storage Optimization Strategies

• Goals– Reduce amount of un-utilized storage

– Reduce overall storage footprint

– Reduce storage costs

• Strategies– Consolidate database storage with Oracle 11g Automatic

Storage Management (ASM)

– Deploy Oracle Advanced Compression Option to reduce database storage footprint

– Leverage an Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) strategy to reduce costs

Disaster Recovery Optimization Strategies

• Goals– Obtain better return on investment from DR hardware investments

• Strategies– Co-locate Data Guard standby databases with development and

test instances• Consider OracleVM if isolation of production environments is

important– Leverage Snapshot Standby database• Avoids frequent production to test clones• Reduces storage footprint

– Use Active Data Guard• Put DR server capacity to use offloading Read Only query

activity from production

Infrastructure Optimization and Enterprise Architecture

• Incorporate Infrastructure Optimization as part of your Enterprise Architecture (EA) program to better align business needs with IT challenges

• Oracle Enterprise Architecture Framework (OEAF) and Oracle Architecture Development Process (OADP) support a practical and iterative approach to EA that delivers “just enough architecture” based on customer’s needs

Summary

• Develop upgrade strategies that meet your business requirements

• Perform planning and testing proportional to the business impact of an outage

• Leverage tools appropriately both pre and post upgrade to reduce effort, risk, and cost

• Prepare and test your rollback strategy• Incorporate regular patching and upgrades into your standard

operating procedures to reduce risks of running on unsupported releases

• Use the potential benefits of Oracle 11g R2 and Infrastructure Optimization strategies to make the business case to upgrade

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Oracle Database 11g: Get There With Less Effort, Less Risk, Less Infrastructure, and More Reliability Alan Levine Oracle Enterprise Architect, Oracle