Get Started with Autonomous Database on Dedicated Exadata Infrastructure on Oracle Database@AWS

Introduction

Autonomous Database is a fully managed Oracle Database experience with service automation that makes it simple and cost-effective to build database applications, whether those applications are non-critical or super critical in nature.

Autonomous Database makes it simple to handle transactions and analytics in a single solution, while transparently addressing traditionally challenging architectural and operational requirements, such as Availability, Scalability, Extreme Performance, and Security.

Autonomous Database on Oracle Database@AWS brings the power of Autonomous Database inside AWS regions, allowing for low-latency access from AWS-deployed applications and services. Autonomous Database leverages the Oracle Exadata Database Software Architecture and runs inside an Autonomous Virtual Machine Cluster (AVMC) deployed on Oracle’s premier Exadata Infrastructure. Using Oracle Database @AWS, you can use software APIs to deploy physical Exadata Infrastructures inside AWS availability zones and on a single infrastructure deployment, you can run both fully managed Oracle Autonomous Databases co-resident with other VM Clusters running customer co-managed Oracle Databases.

This tutorial will walk you through provisioning and connecting to your first Autonomous Database.

Objectives

Overview

Before you can get started provisioning Autonomous Databases on Oracle Database @ AWS, you must first go to the AWS Marketplace and onboard with a Private Offer that links your AWS account with an Oracle tenancy that will run the service APIs.

There are five key resources involved in the Autonomous Database on Dedicated Exadata Infrastructure on Oracle Database @ AWS. The ODB Network is a VPC that peers with your application VPCs and serves as a bridge network with the Oracle Database @ AWS service console and control plane. The ODB Network specifies the CIDR block (IPs) of the VM Cluster nodes where your databases will run.

The four key Autonomous Database service resources are shown in the following image.

This image depicts Autonomous Database on Dedicated Exadata Infrastructure's resource model with examples.

Description of the illustration ADB-Dedicated-Exadata-Infrastructure-resource-model.png

The Fleet Admin resources (Exadata Infrastructure, Autonomous Exadata VM Cluster, and Autonomous Container Database) are more infrastructure and architecture-oriented, requiring longer provisioning times. However, they are not often created, except during initial environment setup or for capacity expansion as you add more workloads.

The Developer/Application DBA resource (Autonomous Database a.k.a. ADB) can be created quickly and easily in a self-service manner. Service design enables the creation of Fleet Admin resources with no billable costs, allowing you to set up a CI/CD governance model that spans development through the stage to production. This can be made visible to application owners via quota allocations, allowing them to self-service Autonomous Databases within budgeted constraints.

This tutorial will guide you through the provisioning flows for the five key resources.

Step 1: ODB Network

This image depicts Autonomous Database on Dedicated Exadata Infrastructure's high level architecture with a single availability zone.

Description of the illustration high-level-arch-single-availability-zone.png

The ODB Network is created like any VPC within AWS, but the provisioning workflow is started from Oracle Database @AWS service resource links. The ODB Network will specify a subnet hosting database service VM nodes (client subnet) and, optionally, a subnet for backup traffic, as well as an application VPC to be peered with the ODB Network. You should plan the size of your ODB Network appropriately based on the number of VM nodes you expect to host in your Exadata Infrastructures, as each of these resources will require an IP reservation. In general, in an ODB Network, the database client subnet will reserve 4 IPs for each VM in your clusters, plus an additional 8 IPs and the backup subnet (not required if only using the Autonomous Database service) will reserve 3 IPs for each VM in your clusters, plus an additional 3 IPs. Details can be found in the ODB Network documentation.

Refer to Lab 1: Provisioning ODB Network in Introduction to Oracle Database@AWS for step-by-step guidance.

Step 2: Exadata Infrastructure

The Exadata Infrastructure (EI) is an allocation of Database (compute) and Storage servers that define a physical system. A system requires a minimum of 2 Database and 3 Storage servers, but can be scaled up to a maximum of 32 Database and 64 Storage servers. Each Database server (today’s latest generation of Exadata X11M) provides 192 physical CPU cores, and each Storage server provides up to 80TB of usable data storage. You can start with a minimum system or a larger one and later scale online by adding more Database and Storage servers to existing systems, up to the maximum size.

The system is automatically configured with an internal high-speed Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) capable cluster network for Real Application Cluster (RAC) and overall database request network and IO communications. Oracle automation fully manages the infrastructure, while the customer retains scheduling control for monthly OS security updates and quarterly Exadata software maintenance. The Exadata infrastructure comes with a nominal subscription cost that secures the dedicated hardware reservation and provides access to all the storage and memory on the respective servers. The services you run on the dedicated infrastructure are then billed in a pay-per-use model specific to the service type deployed.

Refer to Lab 2: Provisioning Exadata Infrastructure in Introduction to Oracle Database@AWS for step-by-step guidance.

Step 3: Autonomous Exadata VM Cluster

The Autonomous Exadata VM Cluster (AVMC) is a virtualization layer that, just like on any AWS compute deployment, isolates one runtime environment from another. AVMCs allow the partitioning of compute and memory resources from the underlying physical infrastructure and provide a separate networking interface with traffic security rule configurations. The AVMC must run on a minimum of 2 Database servers, and along with database storage allocations, you have control over the symmetric allocation of cores and memory to each VM in the cluster. Since ADB is a fully managed database service and nothing can run inside the VMs except resources controlled by the ADB service APIs, there is no billing for any allocation of physical resources to the AVMC. Physical resources can be scaled up and down both vertically (within existing servers) and horizontally (adding more servers). While Oracle is responsible for the health of the AVMC, you can control the schedule of quarterly maintenance operations by setting up policies that Oracle automation will honor.

Refer to Lab 3: Provisioning Autonomous VM Cluster in Introduction to Oracle Database@AWS for step-by-step guidance.

Step 4: Autonomous Container Database

The Autonomous Container Database (ACD) is a further layer of database isolation within AVMCs. The ACD defines a unique database software version (e.g. 19c or 23ai) and its update pattern and scheduling. The ACD can fully delegate all maintenance decisions to Oracle automation and declare patterns, such as skipping every other quarter and always applying a version that has been previously validated in a stage environment. Like the AVMC, the ACD incurs no billing costs and dynamically scales as Autonomous Databases are added to or scaled within the container. The ACD is where you configure backup retention policies, encryption key strategy, HA and DR architecture and apply advanced database clustering controls.

Refer to Lab 4: Provisioning Autonomous Container Database in Introduction to Oracle Database@AWS for step-by-step guidance.

Step 5: Autonomous Database

The Autonomous Database (ADB) is a fully managed Oracle Database with health and operational automation. This is where applications connect; the schema is defined, and user data is stored. The Autonomous Database features sophisticated pay-per-use automation, including auto-scaling, which allows for up to 3x instant scaling of CPU resources as the workload increases or decreases, with billing at the second level. The ADB is where the core API and built-in managed tooling (Performance Hub, Data Studio (pipelines, catalogs, sharing, transformations), Oracle REST, MongoDB interfaces, APEX Low Code etc) reside.

Autonomous Database supports Production and Development lifecycles with APIs to Create, Start, Stop, Scale, Clone, Flash Back to a Point-in-Time, Restore, Perform Key Rotation, and Long-Term Backup, among other functions. Autonomous Database encompasses all native Oracle Database performance automation and analytic features including auto-indexing, auto-SQL plan management, auto-partitioning, machine learning, vector types and indexing, and graph processing.

Autonomous Database also provides rich operational metrics, events and logging that are integrated with native AWS services Such as CloudWatch, making it easy for you to add service observability. Once provisioned, you can access the service console for ADB and click the Database connection button to download the connection wallet and copy the connection strings for use in your application.

Refer to Lab 5: Provisioning Autonomous Database in Introduction to Oracle Database@AWS for step-by-step guidance.

Summary

The above 5 Live Labs have walked through the process of getting an Autonomous Database up and running in an AWS region and availability zone of your choice. Now you have all the power of the Oracle Database in an easy-to-use and cost-effective self-service model. To learn more about all of the built-in features and tools, you can review the Autonomous Database service Documentation. Enjoy and welcome to the Autonomous Database.

Next Steps

You are now ready to migrate your data to your new Oracle Database. Take a look at Oracle Zero Downtime Migration (ZDM) to help you with your migration needs.

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Acknowledgments

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