Connecting to the Oracle Database Appliance OCI Lab Environment

Overview

The exercises in this guide use a container-based Oracle Database Appliance simulator to perform these labs.  Performing deployment and patching on an actual ODA would require you to have your own system, and would take a rather long time.  The simulator provides a similar experience, but is faster, and you get your own simulator to complete the labs.  The simulator simulates an Oracle Database Appliance X8-2 single node or a high-availability (2-node) database appliance.

If you are using the simulator in the OCI Marketplace with an <bold>Always Free OCI Account</bold>, the memory is limited to 1GB.  In this case, set up the simulator with the single-node option due to memory limitation. For more information, refer to the Readme.

Keep in mind this is a simulation.  Not all features are supported by the simulator, and no database is actually created and running.  Unlike on an actual appliance, the simulator may not display an error if you enter invalid data, and some of the detailed output and screen shots displayed in the command output may not be apply to an actual appliance. 

Some command line operations require specifying long UUIDs or file names. Use copy/paste to enter long entries.  If you accidentally exit the simulator, simply reconnect to it.  It will remember your state.

After the Oracle Database Appliance simulator is set up in the OCI VM, you must log into the Oracle Database Appliance simulator VM with your credentials or key. You can perform the labs in this book with both Command Line Interface (CLI) and a web Browser User Interface (BUI) similar to how you work on an actual Oracle Database Appliance. 

Requirements

You need a web browser on your local system to perform the BUI tasks in the labs.  Make sure you have the public Oracle Database Appliance simulator VM IP address and the simulator container port number (for example, 7095).  Make sure to log in as odaadmin with Enable Multi-User Access checked.

You need a console on your local system to connect to the ODA simulator container and  switch to odaadmin (su odaadmin) user to run the CLI commands in the labs.  Make sure you have the container name (e.g odasim-1).  By default, a container called odasim-1 is created.

Firefox and Chrome are the recommended web browsers for this lab.

If you run into BUI agent credential issue, refer to the Troubleshooting section in the Readme document for details.