1.1.2 Understanding the Administrative Differences with Oracle Exadata

Most administration tasks are similar on Oracle Exadata servers as on traditional database servers and storage servers, but there are some differences.

The following list shows the differences and exceptions for Oracle Exadata servers:

• Configuration settings for Oracle Exadata database servers, RDMA Network Fabric switches, and other components have settings based on testing and performance criteria. Changing the configuration settings, such as database server firmware or kernel parameters, based on company policy or other reasons should be reviewed for the potential impact to Oracle Exadata.

• Restarting a server incorrectly can disrupt the database. The storage servers have special procedures and guidelines that must be followed to minimize disruption, such as off-lining grid disks before restarting the server, and not restarting more than one server at a time.

• Storage servers cannot be modified the same way as the database servers. Network changes, such as those for the NTP servers or DNS servers, are done using the ipconf utility. Network changes cannot be done manually by editing the configuration files. In addition, no software or additional packages can be installed on the storage servers. This restriction includes monitoring software. Storage server system updates are provided by Oracle Exadata System Software upgrades.

• Storage servers do not require backups. A self-maintained internal USB drive or M.2 device that can be used for cell recovery. Backup clients cannot be installed on the storage servers.

• Oracle wait events in Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) databases using storage servers may include events with %cell% in the name. These events are related to the storage servers.

• The Oracle Database V$CELL views include rows for any database using Oracle Exadata Storage Server.

• Oracle Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM) disk path names are of the format o/cell_ip_address/cell_griddisk_name, such as the following:

  o/192.168.10.1/data_CD_01_dm01cel01
  

• SQL plans may include storage to indicate that some operations may be off-loaded to the storage servers.

• Operations such as backup and recovery use Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN), and all data for backup and recovery continues to pass through the database instances. The backup clients for RMAN should be installed on the database servers in Oracle Exadata to facilitate integration with enterprise backup solutions in the same way as in traditional environments.

• The practice of deploying one or more non-production environments for development, testing and quality assurance still apply for Oracle Exadata environments.