The Exadata Cloud resources on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) are created and managed through a variety of interfaces provided to fit your different management use cases.

The OCI control plane accepts input from the OCI APIs, the OCI Console, and custom interfaces built with kits, tool and plugins provided to facilitate development and simplify the management of of OCI resources.

The OCI APIs are typical REST APIs that use HTTPS requests and responses. The OCI Console, an intuitive, graphical interface for creating and managing your Exadata Cloud and other OCI resources, is one of the interfaces to the OCI APIs. When looking to develop automation utilizing the OCI APIs, a number of additional interfaces including: kits, tools and plug-ins, are provided to facilitate development and simplify the management of of OCI resources. A subset of these APIs applies to Exadata Cloud resources and the containing infrastructure. Each of these various interfaces provide the same functionality, all calling the OCI APIs, and are provided to enable flexibility and choice depending on preference and use case.

• Command Line Interface (CLI): The OCI CLI is a small footprint tool that you can use on its own or with the Console to perform Exadata Cloud resource tasks and other OCI tasks. The CLI provides the same core functionality as the Console, plus additional commands. Some of these, such as the ability to run scripts, extend the Console's functionality.
• Software Development Kits (SDK): OCI provides SDKs to enable you to develop custom solutions for your Exadata Cloud and other OCI based services and applications.
• DevOps Tools and Plug-ins: These tools can simplify provisioning and managing infrastructure, enable automated processes and facilitate development. Tools include the OCI Terraform Provider used with Resource Manager and OCI Ansible Collection.
• Cloud Shell: Cloud Shell is a free-to-use, browser-based terminal, accessible from the OCI Console, that provides access to a Linux shell with pre-authenticated OCI CLI and other useful developer tools. You can use the shell to interact with Exadata Cloud and other OCI resources, follow labs and tutorials, and quickly run OCI CLI commands.
• Documentation: Appendix and Reference: This general reference shows how to configure the SDKs and other developer tools to integrate with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services.
• Documentation: REST APIs: This complete reference provides details on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure REST APIs, including descriptions, syntax, endpoints, errors, and signatures. Exadata Cloud Infrastructure specific OCI REST APIs can be found throughout the documentation in the Using the API sections specific to each service:
  • Using the API to Create Infrastructure Components
  • Using the API to Manage Exadata Cloud Service Instance
  • Using the API to manage database software images
  • Using the API to Create Oracle Database Home on Exadata Cloud Service
  • Using the API to Manage Oracle Database Home
  • Using the API to manage Databases
  • Using the API to Update the Grid Infrastructure on a VM Cluster Resources
  • Using the API to manage the I/O resources of an Exadata cloud VM cluster
  • Using the API to Patch an Exadata Cloud Service Instance
  • Using the API to upgrade Databases
  • Using the API to Manage Data Guard Associations
  • Using the API to manage backups

In addition to the OCI REST-based APIs, CLI utilities located on the VM guests, provisioned as part of the VM clusters on the Exadata Cloud Infrastructure, are available to perform various lifecycle and administration operations.

The best practice is to use these utilities only when a corresponding Console command or OCI API is not available.

These utilities are provided in addition to, and separate from, the OCI API-based interfaces listed above. To use the local VM command-line utilities, you must be connected to a virtual machine in an Exadata Cloud VM cluster and use the VM operating system user security, not the OCI user security, for execution. Most operations executed by these utilities sync their changes back to the OCI control plane using a process called DB Sync. However, there can be operations not synced with the control plane.

The cloud tooling software on the virtual machines, containing these CLI utilities, is automatically updated by Oracle on a regular basis. If needed, the tooling can be updated manually by following the instructions in Updating Cloud Tooling Using dbaascli.