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This post will review all the Oracle services and hosting that Azure offers and a guide to creating your first Oracle Database on Azure.
Architecture
When you configure ODSA, the service will deploy an Oracle Enterprise Application in your Azure tenancy. The application allows you to manage connectivity and provision Oracle databases in your Azure environment. This service creates custom groups and roles within the Azure Active Directory of your tenant. To enable Azure users to access ODSA, you'll need to assign them roles or groups. Once this is done, the service creates a mapping from one or more Azure subscriptions to your OCI tenant.
Shows that ODSA creates a private tunnel between Azure and OCI. This service configures DNS for both ends of the pipeline to allow bi-directional communication from applications within your Azure tenant with database resources located in OCI.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Integration
The service is currently available for creating and managing the Oracle Cloud Database Service, offering Autonomous Database. Exadata Database and Base Database. In due time, we plan to support other Oracle Cloud Database Service products, such as MySQL Heatwave.
ODSA provides common administrative and application access features for each database:
- Create, read, update, delete, list (CRUDL).
- Clone database.
- Backup of databases (manual and automatic).
- Database restoration (restore existing database).
- Generate Azure connection string.
- Displaying database metrics.
ODSA only allows authorized users to access and manage the database resources that ODSA creates. The database resources you create with ODSA are stored in OCI and any other resources. ODSA federates Azure Active Directory identities. Users log in to ODSA with their Azure credentials. Identity federation occurs at the custom group level. That ensures that only those identities which you want are transferred to OCI. ODSA recognizes that Azure administrators might want to restrict what users can do within each environment (ODSA Portal, OCI Console) and creates a set of robust custom roles in Azure Active Directory. Access control can be configured down to the database type (Autonomous Databases, Exadata Databases, etc.). Customers can have maximum control over their environment. ODSA has also developed a role that allows organizations to access the Oracle environment as if they were auditing it.
Azure Tools Integration
The service will deliver OCI database events and logs for each database created using ODSA to Azure Event Grid and Azure Log Analytics. Azure users can view the OCI database and other Azure data for unified monitoring and telemetry. ODSA creates a dashboard for Azure developers that includes all the information they require about Oracle databases, such as connection strings and resource details.
Oracle Applications and Solutions for Azure
You have several options when running Oracle databases and applications in Azure. It includes the way you host databases, as well as solutions that manage and support deployments.
Database and Application Hosting
Azure offers several hosting options, both for databases and apps.
Oracle Database on Azure Infrastructure: Azure, the easiest way to host your database is using an Oracle Linux image available in the Marketplace. You can also use an image that is not Oracle Linux or create a customized image. Custom images can be created in Azure or uploaded from an existing environment on-premises. Oracle Automatic Storage Management is available on any image. ASM allows you to manage and attach multiple storage tiers disks in your database.
Oracle Applications on Azure Infrastructure: Oracle Operating System images are available on the Marketplace, similar to database images. Most commonly, images include:
- Oracle WebLogic Server 12.1.2.
- Oracle Linux 7.6 - 8.8 with Unbreakable Enterprise kernel (UEK).
Support Solutions
After you've deployed your databases and applications, you can start adding support solutions. Support solutions most commonly used include high availability, data recovery, and backups.
Oracle High Availability Solutions: Microsoft assure support provides Azure high-availability support by default in the form of Azure availability zones. You can deploy workloads across zones to ensure redundancy. You can use availability sets in regions that don't have availability zones.
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Oracle also offers tools that can help you increase your availability:
- Data Sharding: Is a data-tier architecture that allows you to partition your data between databases. That provides fault tolerance and isolation.
- GoldenGate: software that allows real-time integration and replication of data in cloud environments and hybrid ones.
Oracle Disaster Recovery Solutions: The Oracle database's Data Guard feature is your best choice for disaster recovery. You can create standby databases that you can switch to when needed. Data Guard comes with an option to perform a quick-start failover for improved recovery times.
You can use this tool with Far Sync to improve protection and guarantee zero data loss. Far Sync is a remote instance that receives redo from the primary database and passes it to copies. Set up the Far Sync in a different availability zone. Consider using Maximum Availability for real-time synchronization with the Far Sync.
Oracle Backup Solutions: You can use Oracle utilities or Azure native options to back up your database in Azure. Azure Backup is the native Azure option. It can be integrated with many Azure services. You can also automate backups and manage them with this service.
Recovery Manager is the Oracle equivalent. Oracle's built-in Recovery Manager (RMAN) allows you to back up, restore and recover your databases. This utility can be used with Azure Blob Fuse to increase resilience. Blob Fuse allows you to mount an account in Blob Storage to your database. Then, you can write RMAN backups into this account.
Oracle Applications for Azure Architecture Considerations
Oracle applications consist of many services. You can therefore host these services either on one virtual machine or multiple. The VMs may be in Azure, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or on-premises. Express-Route Circuits are required for both on-premises environments and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to provide connectivity between clouds. You can configure VMs as private or public endpoints when setting up application instances. You should ensure that IP addresses do not overlap when using Azure applications and OCI.It is recommended that you set up the following configuration:
- Bastion Host VM: Is set up on a subnet separate from public IP addresses. It is for managing applications.
- Application Instance: Setup with a private IP address. They are for connecting and running applications.
Consider creating subnet security groups to ensure network security. You can use these groups to restrict traffic only to certain IP addresses and ports. You can, for example, limit the traffic from your machines in your virtual network to only traffic coming to them.
Creating Your First Azure Oracle Database
It is relatively easy to create an Azure Oracle Database. Oracle is commonly deployed on Azure by creating a virtual computer with a pre-installed database. Oracle offers a variety of virtual machines that come with different databases. This guide will walk you through all the basics. This guide assumes you have an Azure Account with billing set up.
You can also create an Azure account to use the trial and see how the database is set up:
- Select Comput in the menu on the left.
- Select Virtual Machines from the menu to the left. Click the + and then select Browse.Public and private images. Search for Oracle in the Databases section.
- Select a machine that is already configured from the selection available.
Read More: An Essential Tool for Integrating Microsoft Azure into Your Development Environment
After creating a machine image, you can modify the configuration or create one with custom settings:
- Configure the machine to your needs. Configuration includes:
- Machine Name
- Size of the instance
- Username
- Password
- In the following screens, click Next and select Disk Management, Networking, and VM Management (read the documentation to learn about the options available when creating a virtual machine).
- Click the "Complete" button to finish the wizard.
- The creation of the machine takes only a few moments.
You can now connect to your VM. You can then review the configuration, make necessary changes, or start using your database.
Cloud Volumes ONTAP: Data Management and Protection
The industry-leading enterprise storage management solution, delivers proven, secure storage management on AWS Azure Google Cloud. Cloud Volumes supports up to 368TB of capacity and is suitable for various use cases, including file services, databases, and DevOps. It also has powerful features, such as high availability, data security, storage efficiency, Kubernetes Integration, etc.
Cloud Volumes ONTAP is a solution that helps you to address database workloads in the cloud and bridge the gap between the database resources of your public cloud and those in your cloud.
Azure Multi Cloud and OCI: Offering choices to customers
Microsoft managed services and Oracle are trusted by thousands of enterprise customers, many of whom use both cloud and software products. We have been delivering the OCI/Azure Interconnect with Microsoft since 2019. That offers secure and private interconnections, as well as sub-2 millisecond delay, to 11 regions worldwide.
Microsoft and Oracle have announced Oracle Database Service on Azure to simplify multi cloud experiences. Many of our customers, such as AT&T, GE, and FedEx, want services with the highest performance, scalability, and availability to speed up their transformation. Oracle Database Service for Azure is built on the OCI-Azure Interconnect core functionality. It allows any customer to integrate Oracle Database Services on OCI with workloads running on Microsoft Azure. The service offers customers the benefit of no charges for data ingress or egress when they move data from OCI to Azure.
Azure Users will be Familiar with OCI Managed Service
Azure teams will be able to treat OCI databases as Azure resources with the new Oracle Database Service for Azure. Users can connect their Azure subscriptions with their OCI tenant in just a few clicks. It configures all the necessary settings to connect the cloud environments and federates Azure Active Directory identities. That makes the use of the service seamless for Azure users. The service also offers an Azure-like user interface, API, and experience when provisioning and maintaining Oracle database services in OCI.
The service will deliver OCI database events, logs, and the rest of the Azure data for unified monitoring and telemetry. The service simplifies customer support with its collaborative model, which offers a smooth issue resolution that can be started with Microsoft or Oracle. Please read our blog on the technical overview to learn more about Azure Database Service.
Oracle Database enterprise-grade reliability and automation with Microsoft Azure Oracle Real Application Clusters, or RAC, provide high performance, scalability, and availability for applications running in Azure. Oracle manages the OCI Oracle database infrastructure and provides automated database management. When you choose the Autonomous Database fully-automated environment, you will not have to worry about database tuning, patches, or upgrades. Instead, you can concentrate on growing your business and improving applications.
Exadata Database Services and Autonomous Databases, used by Azure Applications that run on Exadata Databases, use the unique underlying Exadata optimizations. That allows them to perform more queries per second and process transactions faster than non-Exadata environments. Azure Power BI and other analytical queries can achieve high throughput with internal scans that are 100s of gigabytes up to terabytes each second.
OCI Distributed Cloud
These innovations form part of OCI's vision for a distributed cloud, delivering services to customers wherever needed. OCI Dedicated Regions and Cloud@Customer deliver cloud services in over 60 countries. That is in addition to the partnership with Microsoft Azure. Our management services are available for all OCI Regions. They support hybrid cloud architectures and multi-clouds. A distributed cloud is the best way to meet our customers' varying requirements worldwide. OCI continues to develop new capabilities for its distributed cloud. Keep an eye out!
The Following are Some Examples Of
Let's now look at the features which will encourage customers to use the ODSA in their organization's workload:
- Guided Deployment: Users can easily create automation streamlines that link cloud accounts, join virtual networks, and federate identities across OCI, and Azure.
- Database Management: A familiar platform like Azure makes it easy to manage Oracle Databases from the Azure platform.
- Azure Metrics and Events: A dashboard can monitor all databases. Log Analytics receives the log events and metrics from Azure Application Insights.
- Service at Zero Cost Management: The service offered is free, as the Interconnect port or data transmission/reception over the Interconnect service is not charged. Billing will be based on the Oracle Database service consumption, like Autonomous Database.
- Low-latency, Direct Connectivity: Oracle interconnect for Microsoft Azure offers a latency of less than two milliseconds without intermediaries.
ODSA Use Cases
We will now discuss the two most common scenarios in which we could ODSA.
1.) Split-stack Azure & OCI Deployment-
Customers can switch from Oracle Database self-managed products to Microsoft Azure development services. These include built-in backups and meet availability requirements.
2.) Multi Cloud to On-premises Architecture-
ODSA delivers low-latency database access and high database-to-application throughput for on-premises workloads migrated to multi-cloud environments built on Azure and OCI, wherein such an architecture Azure applications can take advantage of high availability features and performance optimizations otherwise only available on OCI.
Oracle Interconnect for Azure
- Oracle Interconnect provides Microsoft Azure users with a migration path that is easy to follow. It consists of Oracle Database services like Oracle Exadata Database Service (ODBS), Autonomous Database, and MySQL Heatwave.
- The low-latency private connection between two leading cloud providers allows for flexible innovation and maximizes return on investment.
- The pricing of this cloud provider is based on ports and bandwidth consumption. That allows customers to experiment and innovate using both providers seamlessly.
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The Conclusion
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is committed to helping our customers achieve their hybrid and multi cloud goals. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure solutions has always been committed to providing the easiest way to move mission-critical workloads to the cloud, including many running on Oracle databases for years. Customers can now easily migrate or build mission-critical workloads using the new Oracle Database Service on Microsoft Azure.
