Frequently Asked Questions for Exadata Cloud at Customer

Who is the service right for?

Exadata Cloud at Customer is an ideal fit for:

Running business-critical production OLTP or analytic databases at almost any scale without incurring the capital expenditure and complexity of maintaining the underlying IT infrastructure. Oracle Database In-Memory enables ultra-high-performance analytics to be run on dedicated analytic databases or directly on OLTP databases.
Consolidating a variety of workloads using multiple Oracle databases or Oracle Multitenant.
Maintaining synchronized Oracle standby or replica databases for disaster recovery and/or query offloading using Oracle Active Data Guard or Oracle GoldenGate.
Quickly provisioning high-performance Oracle databases for ad-hoc business reasons such as feature development, functionality testing, application certification, proof-of-concept, and try-before-buy.
Executing time-sensitive large-scale business applications such as launching a web-based marketing campaign, running loyalty programs, and rolling out new business initiatives.

Does the Exadata Cloud at Customer support external Oracle Net Services (SQL*Net) connections?

Yes. Exadata Cloud at Customer supports direct external connections using Oracle Net Services. See Connecting Remotely to the Database by Using Oracle Net Services.

How is storage allocated?

The amount of storage space allocated to Exadata Cloud at Customer is fixed and is based on the system configuration options that you selected when you commenced your service subscription. See Exadata System Configuration and Exadata Storage Configuration.

How are users defined?

Users are defined at various different levels:

Each Exadata Cloud at Customer deployment comes under the ownership of an administrative user for the overall environment. Additional administrator user accounts can be defined by using the Oracle Database Cloud Service console.
Each compute node has pre-defined operating system (OS) user accounts, including the oracle and opc user accounts. Additional OS user accounts may be defined by using the native OS utilities available on each compute node.
Each Oracle database contains pre-defined database user accounts, including SYS, SYSTEM and others. Additional database user accounts may be defined by using the SQL CREATE USER command or by using the facilities provided by database administration tools such as Enterprise Manager or SQL Developer.

How can I secure my data?

You use standard Oracle Database security features to manage user accounts, authentication, privileges and roles, application security, encryption, network traffic, and auditing. Furthermore, depending on your service configuration and security requirements, you may be able to leverage the advanced security features provided by Oracle Advanced Security, Oracle Label Security, Oracle Real Application Security and Oracle Database Vault.

Can I load additional third-party software?

Customers may load additional software on the database servers. However, to ensure the best performance, Oracle discourages adding software except for agents, such as backup agents and security monitoring agents, on the database servers. See Oracle Exadata Rack Restrictions in Oracle Exadata Database Machine System Overview.

Can I create databases that use non-Exadata storage?

Creation of databases on compute nodes that store database data files on non-Exadata storage is not supported. This applies Exadata Cloud at Customer on Oracle Cloud and Exadata Cloud at Customer. For example, it is not supported to create a database on Exadata Cloud at Customer that uses a ZFS file server for data file storage.

Is there any additional charge for support?

No, support is included in the subscription price for this service.

What database options are included or available?

Exadata Cloud at Customer is equipped with Oracle Database Enterprise Edition - Extreme Performance. This provides all the features of Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, plus all the database enterprise management packs and all the Enterprise Edition options, such as Oracle Database In-Memory and Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC).

Note:

Some options are dependent on the Oracle Database version in use. For example, Oracle Database In-Memory can only be used with Oracle Database software version 12.1.0.2, or later.

Is this service enabled to use Application Express?

No, by default Oracle Application Express is not enabled on Exadata Cloud at Customer deployments. However, you may manually customize your databases to configure and enable Oracle Application Express.

Can I create a non-container database (non-CDB)?

By default, Exadata Cloud at Customer uses the multitenant architecture for all databases that are created with Oracle Database 12c, or later. However, if you require a non-container database (non-CDB) you can use the procedure at Creating non-CDB databases using Oracle Database 12c on Exadata Cloud at Customer.