1. Deploy Autonomous Database on Oracle Database@Azure
  2. Deploy Oracle Autonomous Database on Oracle Database@Azure

Deploy Oracle Autonomous Database on Oracle Database@Azure

Provision Oracle Autonomous Database as a highly resilient data store for a micro-services application deployed within a multi-availability zone Microsoft Azure region.

Oracle databases provide enterprise-level business continuity by layering core building blocks like Exadata, Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC), Data Guard, and Oracle Application Continuity together. To date, these core building blocks could be configured manually in on-premises environments, semi-manually on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) using the Oracle Exadata Database Service, or be fully automated using the Oracle Autonomous Database service. The fully managed Oracle Autonomous Database service is now available in an increasing number of Microsoft Azure regions across the globe.

Many Azure cloud regions provide multiple available zones (AZs) to help maximize business continuity. These availability zones are unique physical locations that help protect applications and data from data center failures.

Architecture

This reference architecture describes some best practices for deploying Oracle Autonomous Database in a Microsoft Azure multi-availability zone (AZ) region.

Business continuity practices and high availability topologies should always be considered when designing mission-critical database applications. The architecture below shows a containerized application using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). The container images are stored in the Azure container registry. Users access the application externally through a public load balancer. Since Oracle Autonomous Database is a PaaS service, there is no administrative control over into which AZ the Autonomous Database will be provisioned. However, in the unlikely event of an Azure AZ failure, Oracle ensures that a local Autonomous Data Guard standby is always deployed in a different AZ (data center) from its primary.

Note:

If application-to-database-availability-zone affinity is required, Autonomous Database provides a user queryable database view to determine its AZ placement. Once the AZ of the Autonomous Database is determined, networking can be aligned as appropriate.

In the diagram below, the application virtual network (VNet) connects to the database VNet in availability zone 1 (AZ1) using VNet peering. The AKS-hosted application accesses the database via a private endpoint that connects to the Oracle Database@Azure delegated subnet. If multi-AZ business continuity is required, Autonomous Data Guard can optionally be enabled, in which case, it is availability zone 2 (AZ2). Autonomous Data Guard keeps the primary database and local standby in sync and automatically fails over in the case of a primary AZ outage. Oracle-managed automatic backups are always enabled by default.

The following diagram illustrates this reference architecture.


Description of autonomous-database-db-azure-diagram.png follows
Description of the illustration autonomous-database-db-azure-diagram.png

autonomous-database-db-azure-diagram-oracle.zip

The architecture has the following components:

  • Region

    An Oracle Cloud Infrastructure region is a localized geographic area that contains one or more data centers, called availability domains. Regions are independent of other regions, and vast distances can separate them (across countries or even continents).

  • Virtual cloud network (VCN) and subnets

    A VCN is a customizable, software-defined network that you set up in an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure region. Like traditional data center networks, VCNs give you control over your network environment. A VCN can have multiple non-overlapping CIDR blocks that you can change after you create the VCN. You can segment a VCN into subnets, which can be scoped to a region or to an availability domain. Each subnet consists of a contiguous range of addresses that don't overlap with the other subnets in the VCN. You can change the size of a subnet after creation. A subnet can be public or private.

  • Autonomous Database

    Oracle Autonomous Database is a fully managed, preconfigured database environments that you can use for transaction processing and data warehousing workloads. You do not need to configure or manage any hardware, or install any software. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure handles creating the database, as well as backing up, patching, upgrading, and tuning the database.

  • Object storage

    Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage provides quick access to large amounts of structured and unstructured data of any content type, including database backups, analytic data, and rich content such as images and videos. You can safely and securely store and then retrieve data directly from the internet or from within the cloud platform. You can scale storage without experiencing any degradation in performance or service reliability. Use standard storage for "hot" storage that you need to access quickly, immediately, and frequently. Use archive storage for "cold" storage that you retain for long periods of time and seldom or rarely access.

  • Azure Container Registry

    Azure Container Registry (ACR) is a managed service for storing and managing container images and related artifacts.

  • Azure availability zone

    An availability zone is a physically separate data center within a region designed to be available and fault-tolerant. Availability zones are close enough to have low-latency connections to other availability zones.

  • Azure Kubernetes Service

    Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is a managed Kubernetes service offered by Microsoft Azure.

  • Azure Load Balancer

    Azure Load Balancer provides automated traffic distribution from a single entry point to multiple servers in the back end.

  • Microsoft Azure Virtual Network

    Microsoft Azure Virtual Network (VNet) is the fundamental building block for your private network in Azure. VNet enables many Azure resources, such as Azure virtual machines (VMs), to securely communicate with each other, the internet, and on-premises networks.

  • Oracle Database@Azure

    Oracle Database@Azure is an Oracle Cloud Database service that runs Oracle Database workloads in your Azure environment. All hardware for Oracle Database@Azure is colocated in Azure's data centers and uses Azure networking. The service benefits from the simplicity, security, and low latency of a single operating environment within Azure. Federated identity and access management for Oracle Database@Azure is provided by Microsoft Entra ID. Oracle Database metrics and audit logs are natively available in Azure. The service requires that users have an Azure tenancy and an OCI tenancy.

Recommendations

Use the following recommendations as a starting point. Your requirements might differ from the architecture described here.
  • Primary and standby database subnets should be in distinct VNets configured with non-overlapping IP classless inter-domain routing (CIDR) ranges.
  • The application tier (AKS, Docker, VMs, etc.) should span at least two AZs, with the application VNet peered to both the primary and standby VNet of the Autonomous Database.
  • Optionally, client applications can be configured to use Oracle transparent application continuity (TAP) to maximize availability during planned and unplanned outages.

Explore More

For more details about the components and considerations shared in this document, please refer to the following links.

Review these additional resources:

Acknowledgments

  • Authors: Domenick Ficarella, Can Tuzla, Martin Gubar
  • Contributors: Wei Han, John Sulyok