Parent topic: Managing an Exalogic Appliance
It is important to follow the proper sequence in order to startup and shutdown Exalogic and its components.
Refer to the startup sequence and shutdown procedure, ZFS Storage Appliance Power On and Off Procedure and procedures to Start up or Shutdown Exalogic, Control Stack, and Guest vServers.
This section contains the following topics:
To power off the ZFS appliance, perform the following sequence on the storage nodes.
Refer to the specific sections of startup and shutdown Exalogic machine, control and guest virtual servers for further information.
References to Startup and Shutdown Exalogic Machine
Refer to section Operational Procedures for Exalogic Machine in Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud Machine Owner’s Guide at .
Non-emergency power procedure
Emergency power-off considerations
Cautions and warnings
For more information, see My Oracle Support document ID 1533391.1 Steps To Shut Down or Power Off, and Start Up or Power On an Exalogic Machine.
References to Startup and Shutdown Exalogic Control
ExaBR provides convenient way to stop and start the control stack. You must first install the Exalogic Lifecycle toolkit. Refer to Section Lifecycle Management Tools for more information.
For manual procedure, see My Oracle Support document ID 1594223.1 How To Stop and Start the Entire Exalogic Control Stack In An Exalogic EECS v2.0.6.0.0 and later Virtual releases.
Note:
To open a master note, perform the following steps:Select My Oracle Support document ID, and press Ctrl + F9. The Attributes dialog opens.
In the Attribute Value field for the Url attribute, enter this URL:
https://support.oracle.com/CSP/main/article?cmd=show&type=NOT&id=note_id
Enter the Note ID or keyword in the search field at the top of the screen.
Click Set Value.
References to Startup and Shutdown Guest Virtual Servers
Note:
It is important to start and stop vServers under vDC Management rather than from the Assets accordion in the EMOC UI.Do not use the xm commands.
Do not use OS level shutdown command. Otherwise, vServers that are marked HA will be restarted by EMOC automatically.
Maintenance procedures provides information about Lifecycle Management Tools, ExaChk, ExaLogs and Patching.
Detailed information on each section is provided in the following topics.
Oracle Exalogic Lifecycle (ELLC) toolkit is a collection of tools that simplify, automate, and standardize lifecycle management on an Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud machine.
Exalogic Tools | New Features and Enhancements |
---|---|
EMAgent PreSetup | A new tool to prepare the Exalogic rack for Enterprise Manager 12c discovery and monitoring. |
ExaBR |
EECS 2.0.4 Support STIG-hardened Linux Compute Nodes All-ILOM Target |
ExaPatch | Improved platform patching |
ExaLogs |
Solaris Support Credentials (access) option Network Usage Order |
ExaPasswd | A new tool to automate password changes to Exalogic system components |
STIGfix | A new tool to make Exalogic guest vServers and Physical Linux Nodes STIG compliant |
ModifyLVMImg | A new tool to resize LVM-based vServers (root/swap volumes), and add or remove Linux RPMs |
ExaChk |
Enhanced Exalogic Health Check tool Support for No DNS Revised scoring Diff comparison |
Exachk is a health-check tool that is designed to audit important configuration settings in an Exalogic machine.
Runs every quarter according to the PSU cycle
Before and after a maintenance
Attach Exachk report to the Service Request and save time
On a scheduled basis for comparison
Note:
To open a master note, perform the following steps:Select My Oracle Support document ID, and press Ctrl + F9. The Attributes dialog opens.
In the Attribute Value field for the Url attribute, enter this URL:
https://support.oracle.com/CSP/main/article?cmd=show&type=NOT&id=note_id
Enter the Note ID or keyword in the search field at the top of the screen.
Click Set Value.
ExaLogs is a command-line tool for gathering logs, diagnostics, environment and configuration information and other data from key components in an Exalogic physical or virtual configuration.
For more information, see My Oracle Support document ID 1912063.1Exalogic Lifecycle Toolkit Release 14.2.
Run ExaLogs before and after patching (PSUs), upgrades, or when a problem arises.
ExaLogs are required to open up an SR.
Oracle Elastic Exalogic Cloud Software Recommended Patches are available within My Oracle Support.
Exalogic Patch Set Updates (PSU) are a collection of Oracle recommended patches. The PSUs are cumulative and released on quarterly schedule.
This section contains the following topic:
To ensure that the Exalogic system continues to perform optimally, Oracle periodically provides comprehensive and well-tested patches to the system as a whole.
PSU is a single download that contains patches for all Exalogic components (firmware, software and OS) as necessary.
PSU is a highly recommended update for all Exalogic customers.
In addition to patches or updates for the Exalogic Infrastructure components (on-node components such as Operating System, ILOM, InfiniBand and RAID controller cards, and off-node components such as InfiniBand switches and ZFS Storage Appliance), patches for Middleware components (WLS, Coherence, JDK) are also included.
PSU contains optional patches for the guest OS image. They can be applied, when the schedule allows.
Exalogic users should ensure that they align their systems with Oracle’s Exalogic releases and recommended patch levels, and should refrain from applying patches which are outside of recommendations for Exalogic. For instance, if a new version of the Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance software is released and is not part of an Exalogic recommended patch or PSU, you must not update the racks with the patch. Applying patches that are not recommended can adversely affect not only the functionality but also the performance of the Exalogic system.
Plan to periodically adopt more current patch releases
Not required or necessary to install every new patch release
A patch should be installed on a production system only after it is validated in a proper test environment
Systems that are in the early stages of testing before production or proof-of-concept should adopt new releases and patches when they are made available as indicated in the following MOS Note:
For more information, see My Oracle Support document ID 1368307.1 Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud Supported System Configurations.
Oracle Internal Sun EXALOGIC X2-2 , X3-2 , X4-2 Current Product Patches & Firmware provides version numbers of all software and firmware components.
The MOS note provides information on common Exalogic outages and restoration steps to recover from those outages for Exalogic Platinum users.
Each outage is categorized as either partial or complete outage. The MOS note also provides information about troubleshooting steps to debug the problem and post issue Root Cause Analysis (RCA) data collection needed for root cause analysis of outage.
For more information, see My Oracle Support document ID 1492461.1 Exalogic Platinum Customer Outage Classifications and Restoration Action Plans.
This provides guidelines for Exalogic system backup and recovery procedures.
Whilst hot standby systems are extremely useful for business continuity, they are expensive to maintain and need additional infrastructure. In some circumstances such as simple user errors, it may be quicker to fix the issue than to failover to the DR system especially when DNS needs updating.
Taking regular backups of a system is part of standard operating procedure for most production systems and is done irrespective of whether or not the site has a disaster recovery solution. It allows the flexibility to restore individual files should something happen to the original or the system as whole. Backups can also be stored off site in a secure location. Backups on Exalogic can be within the Exalogic system, disk-to-disk and disk-to-tape.
Exalogic Operating System
Software Binaries
Configuration Information
Transactional Data, such as transaction logs as JMS queues
Switch Configuration
Disk within the same storage appliance
Disk on a remote machine, which utilizes the same storage type (ZFS)
Disk on a remote machine, which utilizes a different storage type
Tape
Backup and Recovery Concepts
Volatility
Volatility Groups | Volatility Example Objects |
---|---|
Low | Oracle Binaries |
Operating System | |
Medium | Configuration Information - WLS Domain |
Oracle Instance | |
High | File based JMS Queues |
Persistent Stores |
Backup Frequency
Volume of data to be backed up
Available backup windows
Regulatory requirements
Table 8-1 Backup Schedule
Volatility Group | Backup Frequency |
---|---|
Low | Monthly |
Medium | Weekly |
High | Daily |
In addition to the scheduled backups, it makes sense to perform ad-hoc backups when major events occur. For example, it is appropriate to take an additional backup of the Oracle binaries after patching or upgrade.
Retention Periods
In determining a backup strategy, you need to factor how long you wish to keep the backups for. This is mainly dependent on your business and regulatory requirements. Using the examples above the following may be appropriate values.
Table 8-2 Retention Periods
Volatility Group | Retention Periods |
---|---|
Low | 3 years |
Medium | 6 months |
High | 7 days |
Backup Types
There are two different types of backups available, full backups and incremental backups. A full backup backs up the entire file system as it is at that moment in time. An incremental backup backs up only the data that has changed since the last backup. Incremental backups can be either cumulative or differential. A cumulative backup backs up all the changes since the last full backup, whilst a differential backup backs up the changes since the last differential – differential backups are not supported on ZFS storage appliances, they are however widely available when backing up to tape.
Incremental backups can be leveled. You can perform a level 0 (full backup) each month, a level 1 (incremental) each Sunday and a level 2 (incremental) each weekday. If this type of strategy is implemented then only the data that has changed since the last level -1 backup is backed up. For example on Tuesday, the data backed up is the data, which has changed since the last level 1 backup that was taken on the previous Sunday. Incremental backups are useful when the volume of data to be backed up is significant.
The advantage of a full backup is that the backup contains all of the information required to perform a restore. In an incremental backup strategy, a restore is likely to use several backups. In the 3 level backup strategy above you would need, the Last level 0 backup, plus the last level 1 backup taken, plus the last level 2 backup taken. If the volume of data to be backed up is small, then it may be easier to perform a full backup each time rather than an incremental one, but this will be determined by the volumes of data being backed up. Incremental backups are supported by Oracle Secure Backup and the operating system dump command.
For more information, see My Oracle Support document ID 1546047.1 Backup and Recovery Guide For Exalogic Elastic Cloud Software.
Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud Backup and Recovery Guide Release EL X2-2 and X3-2 (E40226).
ZFS Snapshot for Backup and Recovery of the Exalogic Control Repository and Stack
Taking manual snapshots (BUI)
Create a project level snapshot
Create a share/LUN level snapshot
Destroying a snapshot (BUI)
Rolling back to a snapshot (BUI)
Cloning a snapshot (BUI)
Scheduled snapshots (BUI)
Command Line Interface (CLI)
Listing snapshots (CLI)
Taking manual snapshots (CLI)
Renaming a snapshot (CLI)
Destroying a snapshot (CLI)
Rolling back to a snapshot (CLI)
Cloning a snapshot (CLI)
Scheduled snapshots (CLI)
Setting the scheduled snapshot label (CLI)