8.1 Overview of the dcli Utility

The dcli utility runs operating system commands on multiple servers in parallel threads. The target servers can be Exadata Storage Servers or Exadata database servers. However, the dcli utility does not support an interactive session with a remote application.

You can run the dcli utility on an Exadata Storage Server or Exadata database server, or you can copy the utility to another host computer that acts as a central management server. You can issue a command to be run on multiple servers, or use files that can be copied to servers and then run. The servers are referenced by their host name or IP address.

Starting with Oracle Exadata System Software release 24.1.0, the dcli utility requires Python version 2.5 or later. Previous releases require Python version 2.3 or later. You can determine the version of Python by running the python -V command. In addition, the utility requires prior setup of SSH user-equivalence for connection to the target servers. You can use the dcli utility initially with the -k option to set up SSH user-equivalence. Also, you can manually set up SSH user-equivalence to servers.

Command output (stdout and stderr) is collected and displayed after the copy and command execution is finished on the specified servers. The dcli options allow command output to be abbreviated to minimize non-error output, such as messages showing normal status.