Preface

This guide describes Oracle Big Data Appliance, which is used for acquiring, organizing, and analyzing very large data sets. It includes information about hardware operations, site planning and configuration, and physical, electrical, and environmental specifications.

This preface contains the following topics:

Audience

This guide is intended for Oracle Big Data Appliance customers and those responsible for data center site planning, installation, configuration, and maintenance of Oracle Big Data Appliance.

Documentation Accessibility

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Access to Oracle Support

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Conventions

The following text conventions are used in this document:

Convention	Meaning
boldface	Boldface type indicates graphical user interface elements associated with an action, or terms defined in text or the glossary.
italic	Italic type indicates book titles, emphasis, or placeholder variables for which you supply particular values.
`monospace`	Monospace type indicates commands within a paragraph, URLs, code in examples, text that appears on the screen, or text that you enter.
`#` prompt	The pound (`#`) prompt indicates a command that is run as the Linux `root` user.

Backus-Naur Form Syntax

The syntax in this reference is presented in a simple variation of Backus-Naur Form (BNF) that uses the following symbols and conventions:

Symbol or Convention	Description
[ ]	Brackets enclose optional items.
{ }	Braces enclose a choice of items, only one of which is required.
\|	A vertical bar separates alternatives within brackets or braces.
...	Ellipses indicate that the preceding syntactic element can be repeated.
delimiters	Delimiters other than brackets, braces, and vertical bars must be entered as shown.
boldface	Words appearing in boldface are keywords. They must be typed as shown. (Keywords are case-sensitive in some, but not all, operating systems.) Words that are not in boldface are placeholders for which you must substitute a name or value.

Changes in Oracle Big Data Appliance Release 5.1

Release 5.1 includes the following new features, software revisions, and other changes.

Cloudera 6.2.1 Support

Oracle Big Data Appliance 5.1 is based on Cloudera Enterprise 6.2.1. See the Cloudera web site for details about release 6.2.1.

Supported Upgrades

You can upgrade to Oracle Big Data Appliance Release 5.1 directly from Releases 4.12, 14.13, and 4.14.

There are important prerequisites to fulfill before you can do the upgrade. See Upgrading the Software on Oracle Big Data Appliance in this guide for the prerequisites, the upgrade procedure, and some known issues.

Upgrade is supported for existing Oracle Linux 6 clusters to Big Data Appliance 5.1, but there is no option to create new Oracle Linux 6 clusters.

Support for Migration from Oracle Linux 6 to Oracle Linux 7

Oracle Big Data Appliance 5.1 includes support for migrating cluster nodes from Oracle Linux 6 to Oracle Linux 7.

See:

Migrating from Oracle Linux 6 to Oracle Linux 7 in this guide.

X8-2L Servers

Big Data Appliance 5.1 supports X8-2L servers as well as earlier server models supported by previous releases. Important differences between X8-2L and X7-2L in Oracle Big Data Appliance are in processing power and storage:

X8-2L – 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon 8260 CPUs, 14 TB HDDs, and 240 GB Intel M.2 SSDs
X7-2L - 2.1 GHz Xeon 8160 CPUs, 10 TB HDDs, 150 GB Intel M.2 SSDs

The same 32 GB DDR4 - 2666 MHz Memory is used in both Big Data Appliance X8-2L and X7-2L.

The extra 4 TB storage in X8-2L HDDs is not used by Big Data Appliance 5.1 and is available for customer use in this release.

You can integrate X8-2L servers into existing clusters consisting of X7-2L, X6-2L, and X5-2L servers. To do so, first ensure that the existing nodes of the cluster are running Big Data Appliance release 4.10 or higher.

New X8 racks are shipped with X8-2L servers with the base image pre-installed. The OS level is Oracle Linux 7.

It is possible to reimage X8-2L servers to Oracle Linux 6 in order to use them to extend an Oracle Linux 6 cluster. However, if you intend to migrate the cluster to Oracle Linux 7 in the near term, bear in mind that at this time there is no support for migrating X8-2L servers from Oracle Linux 6 to Oracle Linux 7.

X8 racks can be integrated into multirack configurations with existing X7, X6, or X5 racks.

There are no cabling changes for X8 racks.

New Mammoth Options for Upgrade and Cluster Extension

Mammoth is the utility that you run in order to perform full installations of the Big Data Appliance software on a new rack as well as upgrades, cluster extensions, and patch installation. The -s (single step) and -r (range of steps) Mammoth options that were previously available only for full installation are now available for both upgrades and cluster extensions.

This example uses -s to run only Step 1 of the upgrade. Step 1 is a set of pre-checks and pre-configuration operations.
```
# ./mammoth -s 1 -p
```
This example uses -r to run a range of the cluster extension steps. It runs all steps up to Step 4 (PrepareBaseImage) on each of the new nodes, but does not proceed further.
```
# ./mammoth -r 1-4 -e  node13 node14 node15
```

Uniform Service Layout for Multirack Clusters

In earlier releases, there are difference in the distribution of services among the nodes of a multirack cluster, depending upon whether the cluster was originally configured as multirack or was a single-rack cluster extended to additional racks. In both cases, prior to Release 5.1, the services layout in the first rack is different from that of a single rack cluster.

In Oracle Big Data Appliace 5.1 the distribution of services in a single-rack cluster and in the first rack of a multirack cluster are the same. The services on the second and subsequent racks are now consistent regardless of whether the cluster started out as a single-rack or multirack cluster.

CPU Core Capping

Core capping lets you disable or enable physical cores within the two CPUs on the appliance. One of the potential uses for this capability is to bring servers into licensing compliance. Cores can be enabled or disabled via the bdacli utility.

See Capping CPU Cores on Servers.

Automated Configuration of Replacements for Failed Operating System Disks and Data Disks

The bdaconfiguredisk utility now enables you to configure replacement disks or reconfigure disks with no manual intervention after executing the script. The script supports both OS and data disks.

Spark Tuning

Several changes to default Spark configuration parameters have been made. These changes speed up the execution of most Spark jobs.

Enhanced Security

Improvements have been made to further enhance the security of Big Data Appliance clusters. These changes should reduce the impact of future vulnerabilities.

About Big Data SQL 4.0

Oracle Big Data SQL supports queries against non-relational data stored in multiple big data sources, including Apache Hive, HDFS, Oracle NoSQL Database, Apache Kafka, Apache HBase, and other NoSQL databases, as well as the Amazon S3 and Oracle Object Store.

In addition to ORACLE_HIVE and ORACLE_HDFS, Release 4.0 also includes the new ORACLE_BIGDATA driver. This is the driver that enables you to create external tables over data within object stores in the cloud.

Another feature introduced in Big Data SQL 4.0 is Query Server, a lightweight, zero-maintenance Oracle Database that runs locally on an edge node within Big Data Appliance clusters. It gives you an easy way to query data in Hadoop without the need for a full Oracle Database installation. Query Server provides no persistent storage except for certain categories of metadata that are useful to retain across sessions.

Big Data SQL 4.0 is primarily intended for use with Oracle Database 18c or later. Oracle Database 12.1 and 12.2 are also fully supported (although you cannot leverage the new Big Data SQL 4.0 capabilities with these database versions).

Big Data SQL components must be installed on both Hadoop and Oracle Database. The Oracle Big Data SQL Installation Guide provides instructions for both parts of the installation, including generic instructions for installing the product on several supported Hadoop frameworks. However, on Oracle Big Data Appliance, most of the Hadoop-side installation is integrated with Mammoth, the Big Data Appliance installer. Installing Oracle Big Data SQL in this guide explains what is different about the Hadoop-side installation of Big Data SQL on Big Data Appliance.

Audience

Documentation Accessibility

Related Documentation

Conventions

Backus-Naur Form Syntax

Changes in Oracle Big Data Appliance Release 5.1