Creating an Exadata Cloud Service Instance

When you create an Oracle Database Exadata Cloud Service instance, you provision the Exadata Database Machine that hosts your Exadata Cloud Service database deployments. To create an Exadata Cloud Service instance, use the Create New Oracle Database Exadata Cloud Service Instance wizard as described in the following procedure.

Before You Begin

Before you create an Exadata Cloud Service instance, ensure that you have an active Exadata Cloud Service subscription in place.

If you do not have a valid subscription in place, then the Create New Oracle Database Exadata Cloud Service Instance wizard does not show the options required to create and provision an Exadata Cloud Service instance.

Procedure

To create an Exadata Cloud Service instance:

Open the My Services dashboard.

For detailed instructions, see Accessing the My Services Dashboard and the Oracle Database Cloud Service Console.
Click Create Instance, and then click the Create button associated with Exadata Cloud Service in the All Services list.

The Create New Oracle Database Exadata Cloud Service Instance wizard starts and the Instance Details page is displayed.
On the Instance Details page, specify configuration details for your Exadata Cloud Service instance. Then, click Next.
1. In the Instance Details section, specify the following attributes associated with your Exadata Cloud Service instance.
  - Name — enter a name for your service instance.
  - Region — select the region (data center) that hosts your Exadata Cloud Service instance.
  - Plan — select the available plan from the list. A plan is associated with a set of attributes that apply to a service. For Exadata Cloud Service, only one plan is available.
  - Rack Size — select the rack configuration for your service instance. See Exadata System Configuration for a description of the available rack configurations. Your subscription may impose limits on the available rack sizes that are displayed.
  - BYOL enabled — check this option to indicate that the Exadata Cloud Service instance uses Oracle Database licenses that are provided by you rather than licenses that are provided are part of the service subscription.
    
    This option does not display if it is incompatible with your subscription. It only affects the billing that is associated with the service instance, and has no effect on the technical configuration of the Exadata Cloud Service instance.
  - Additional Number of OCPU (Cores) — enter the number of additional CPU cores that you want to enable. (Optional)
    
    Use this field to specify the number of additional CPU cores to enable for the service instance. This number is in addition to the minimum number of enabled CPU cores for each rack size. The additional CPU cores specified in this setting are allocated evenly among the compute nodes associated with the Exadata Cloud Service instance.
    
    See Exadata System Configuration for details about the maximum number of CPU cores that are available for each Exadata rack size. Your subscription may impose more limits on the number of CPU cores that you can enable.
    
    This option does not display if it is incompatible with your subscription.
  - Availability Domain — specifies the infrastructure zone to place the Exadata Cloud Service instance. (Optional)
    
    Use this setting to configure Exadata Cloud Service instances in different infrastructure zones to facilitate high availability in an Oracle Data Guard configuration.
    
    This option does not display if availability domains are not supported in the Region that you selected to host the instance.
2. In the Administrator Details section, provide information about the administrator of your Exadata Database Machine environment.
  - Email — enter an email address for the Exadata system administrator.
  - User Name — enter a user name for the Exadata system administrator. Alternatively, check the Use email as user name option to copy the Email entry into the User Name field.
  - First Name — enter the first name of the Exadata system administrator.
  - Last Name — enter the last name of the Exadata system administrator.
On the Create Service Instance page, specify additional configuration details for your Exadata Cloud Service instance. Then, click Create Service Instance.
- Exadata System Name — enter a name for your Exadata Database Machine environment. This name is also used in the cluster name for the Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation.
- Database backups on Exadata Storage — check this option to configure the Exadata storage to enable local database backups.
  
  Note:
  Take care when setting this option because your choice has a profound effect on the storage allocation and your backup options, which cannot be easily changed. See Exadata Storage Configuration for more information about the effects of each configuration alternative.
- Create sparse disk group? — check this option to create a disk group that is based on sparse grid disks. You must select this option to enable Exadata Cloud Service snapshots. Exadata snapshots enable space-efficient clones of Oracle databases that can be created and destroyed very quickly and easily.
  
  Note:
  Take care when setting this option because your choice has a profound effect on the storage allocation and your ability to use snapshots, which cannot be easily changed. See Exadata Storage Configuration for more information about the effects of each configuration alternative. See also Creating and Managing Snapshots of a Database Deployment.
- Client Network — specify the client network configuration settings by selecting an available IP network definition from the list. If there are no entries in the list, you must first create the required IP network definition.
- Backup Network — specify the backup network configuration settings by selecting an available network definition from the list. If there are no entries in the list, you must first create the required IP network definition.
  Note:
  - The Client Network and Backup Network settings are only available on Exadata systems that are enabled for IP network configuration. See IP Networks.
  - You must specify separate IP network definitions for Client Network and Backup Network. You cannot specify the same IP network definition for both networks.
  - To create an IP network, you must use the network management Web console that is associated with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Compute Classic. You can navigate directly to the required network management Web console by clicking Create New IP Network. If you navigate to the network management Web console, you must restart the Create New Oracle Database Exadata Cloud Service Instance wizard and re-enter the instance details.
Click Create in the confirmation dialog to proceed, or click Cancel in the confirmation dialog to step back into the wizard.

Clicking Create in the confirmation dialog starts the process to create the service instance. This process is fully automated and takes approximately one to two hours to complete. During this time, you cannot access the service instance. After the process is completed, the service instance becomes active and you can create database deployments.

If you need to change a setting, click Cancel in the confirmation dialog to step back into the wizard. You can also click Cancel at any time to exit the wizard without creating a new service instance.