So, today has been a busy day for me. Several meetings with Oracle execs. IOUG is very fortunate to be supported by such great people within Oracle. The day started with a breakfast meeting with a Director in the BI area. He will be supporting us in our regional BI efforts. Mark is totally supportive of what we are doing and will be helping to promote the event within Oracle.
My next meeting was with a senior manager in Oracle North American User Groups. I have worked with Tina over the last six months on our regional user group programs. She is totally supportive of us and we had a great meeting talking about where we are going with the programs and how to better support the members in the regional areas. This support structure within Oracle has been great for IOUG as we grow our membership. They give us the support we need while letting us remain independent. Excellent partnership...
IOUG president Ian Abramson and I met with a database development director to talk about offerings in the DBA developer space. Oracle has been working on some specific training for DBA's to introduce them to some of the development tools. This training is also good for developers, but in general they are targeting the training to the database development tools. APEX, PL/SQL, JDBC, C, C++, etc are all on the radar screen. Oracle feels they are losing some database development because people are setting up smaller database environments to do the development and then going to production with those instead of moving to the enterprise RDBMS. This makes complete sense and the IOUG can work very will with this team to promote the training and hopefully even deliver some of it.
I did make it to one session today which was PeopleSoft BI Tools. This was pretty good and was timely for me since we are looking at some PeopleSoft BI options at my "real job". There are some great tools out there that can be implemented quickly without building a bunch of new stuff. I also went to my first "unconference" session ever. This was on Oracle Warehouse Builder and even though a lot of it was over my head it was great information.
Larry seems to be finally winding down... wait, maybe not. Anyway, tonight is the big party. I'm looking forward to some more networking opportunities. Last night I was at the Oracle Publisher's reception and met someone from Land's End in Dodgeville, WI. He is an Oracle Press author and wants to get involved with the Wisconsin regional Oracle users group. Amazing how small the world really is and part of why I like being here. Limitless opportunities to meet with peers.
I should be closing out tomorrow as I head home to the family. A couple days away are nice, but it is always better to go home to Mary, Grace, and Abigail. See you tomorrow Sheetz girls!
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
OpenWorld Monday...
Day two for me starts in the keynote with Safra Catz and Charles Phillips. We just had the intro from Judy Sims, the Chief Marketing Officer, and not it feels a little like a rock concert! Always interesting to see the new announcements and directions. Charles has been supporting the user groups a lot and has been at Collaborate for the last several years. It still amazes me the number of people they cram into this room. Great energy for a Monday morning.
Today is presentation day for me along with meetings with a couple regional user groups and special interest groups. These groups are the back bone to the user community and I encourage anyone that is interested in Oracle technology to find your local group and get involved. I'm looking forward to meeting these leaders and finding out how the IOUG can support and work together. My presentation this afternoon will be fun assuming the internet connection in the room works. I have screen shots for my demo, just in case, but that is far less interesting.
Safra Catz is talking about the amount of money they spend on R&D to help us get the right software that works. Interesting how they spend all this money to work on R&D and testing, and we still have lots to do when it comes to us. Charles just gave a shout out to user groups! They actually do listen and work with us so get involved and you can make a difference in the direction of Oracle. More later... demos coming.
Today is presentation day for me along with meetings with a couple regional user groups and special interest groups. These groups are the back bone to the user community and I encourage anyone that is interested in Oracle technology to find your local group and get involved. I'm looking forward to meeting these leaders and finding out how the IOUG can support and work together. My presentation this afternoon will be fun assuming the internet connection in the room works. I have screen shots for my demo, just in case, but that is far less interesting.
Safra Catz is talking about the amount of money they spend on R&D to help us get the right software that works. Interesting how they spend all this money to work on R&D and testing, and we still have lots to do when it comes to us. Charles just gave a shout out to user groups! They actually do listen and work with us so get involved and you can make a difference in the direction of Oracle. More later... demos coming.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
OpenWorld Day 1 - User Group Sunday
What a great start to OpenWorld. The User Group Forum has been a huge success. Great content and discussion around many Oracle technologies. My day started meeting new people and talking about the IOUG at the User Group Pavilion. If you need more information about any of the user groups, stop by the pavilion and check out the offerings. Linux and virtualization are two hot topics and the expert round table session proved that. We had two people from the Oracle Linux and VM teams that answered many questions about the environments. We also had several users on the panel that have experience implementing Linux in both virtualized and non-virutalized environments. There are several more sessions this week so check them out!
My other session this afternoon was a Town Hall meeting with the Oracle Software Security Assurance team. What a group of security minded people these guys were! Critical Patch Updates, My Oracle Support, and PSU's were all hot topics. Watch for announcements from IOUG for some future follow-up webcasts. We will probably be going more in depth into My Oracle Support and how to read the risk matrices for CPUs.
I'm off to listen to Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy. Should be in interesting presentation. More to come tomorrow. I have my PeopleSoft/Grid Control plug-in presentation tomorrow. I'm looking forward to a big crowd and some more good discussion. If you are around Moscone West tomorrow, stop by the User Group Pavilion and say Hi!
My other session this afternoon was a Town Hall meeting with the Oracle Software Security Assurance team. What a group of security minded people these guys were! Critical Patch Updates, My Oracle Support, and PSU's were all hot topics. Watch for announcements from IOUG for some future follow-up webcasts. We will probably be going more in depth into My Oracle Support and how to read the risk matrices for CPUs.
I'm off to listen to Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy. Should be in interesting presentation. More to come tomorrow. I have my PeopleSoft/Grid Control plug-in presentation tomorrow. I'm looking forward to a big crowd and some more good discussion. If you are around Moscone West tomorrow, stop by the User Group Pavilion and say Hi!
Monday, October 5, 2009
Oracle Critical Patch Update Questions? #ioug #oow09
Ever since Oracle started a quarterly patch cycle for security patches, it seems that people are more confused than ever. Should I be installing these things right away? What about testing? Are there functionality patches that are "snuck" into the security patches? My company has a four month testing cycle and it would be a full time job just to keep up with quarterly patches so can I just do them once a year?
These are all questions that can be asked and answered at the IOUG/Oracle Software Security Assurance Town Hall. We will have Senior Managers and Directors from all the security teams to answer these and any other security assurance questions. This does not mean that they will be trying to sell you new tools, but rather will be there to give you as much information as they can about security and how Oracle is trying to make all the software as secure as possible.
Have you wondered where the Configuration Manager information that is gathered goes? Have you not allowed the installer to gather information or include your e-mail because you don't want a more spam? Make sure to come to the session and ask how this information is really used.
I will be moderating this session on Sunday, October 11 at 10:30 in room 2003 in Moscone West. This will be an excellent opportunity to discuss any Oracle security questions with the people that know, or can find, the information. The database, applications, middleware, and My Oracle Support teams will all be represented. Check out the session information here. Make sure to reserve your seat through Content Builder today and get your questions answered!
These are all questions that can be asked and answered at the IOUG/Oracle Software Security Assurance Town Hall. We will have Senior Managers and Directors from all the security teams to answer these and any other security assurance questions. This does not mean that they will be trying to sell you new tools, but rather will be there to give you as much information as they can about security and how Oracle is trying to make all the software as secure as possible.
Have you wondered where the Configuration Manager information that is gathered goes? Have you not allowed the installer to gather information or include your e-mail because you don't want a more spam? Make sure to come to the session and ask how this information is really used.
I will be moderating this session on Sunday, October 11 at 10:30 in room 2003 in Moscone West. This will be an excellent opportunity to discuss any Oracle security questions with the people that know, or can find, the information. The database, applications, middleware, and My Oracle Support teams will all be represented. Check out the session information here. Make sure to reserve your seat through Content Builder today and get your questions answered!
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Clusterware Uninstall
Sometimes I really miss the old days. Of course, someone my age saying that really doesn't mean much compared to someone that lived through World War II. When I started in IT there was no www, texting, cell phones in your pocket, or USB coffee warmers. My current lament is remembering the Oracle installer when it was all command line, java was another word for coffee, and an uninstall on Unix meant "rm -rf".
Where is this going? As the title of this post suggests, I had to recently uninstall Oracle Clusterware. I am working on a project to bring a new application on board and we are using an active/passive failover model using Oracle Clusterware. This model is something I have worked on several times and did a presentation at Collaborate 08 on the topic. So, I was going along installing away, having installed OCFS2, created voting and OCR disks and then installing Clusterware. The initial install went great until I realized that I had installed into a non-standard location compared to our other clusters. After the initial "Oh Crap" moment, I just figured I would uninstall what I did and install into a new home. This is where the fun began.
Of course, I realized this was not going to be as easy as ./runInstaller and remove the Clusterware install. I did not figure that it would cost me an entire day! After running the installer and removing the Clusterware home, I received an error saying that the directory could not be removed from the other node. No problem, I'll go remove it. So, I thought I was clean. No more Clusterware directory, no more Clusterware home in the inventory because I ran the installer. Boy was I wrong.
To make this long story a little shorter, I'll get to the end of what turned out to be four install/uninstall cycles. And, by the way, looking at Metalink, the only document I could find was removing from Windows. I am on Linux and it is not supposed to be this difficult! Okay, enough whining...
1. Make sure the crs and css processes have been stopped. This should have been as easy as going to /etc/init.d and issuing the init.crsd stop and init.cssd stop, but this did not stop all processes. After all the deletions and cleanup, the only way I could really get rid of the processes was to kill them as root.
2. After issuing the stop commands, delete the init.crs, init.crsd, init.cssd, and init.evmd files from the /etc/init.d directory on both nodes.
3. Edit the /etc/inittab file and remove the lines at the bottom that start the init.evmd, init.cssd, and init.crsd
4. Remove the init.crs symbolic link from /etc/rc.d/rc0.d, rc1.d, rc2.d, rc3.d, rc4.d, rc5.d, and rc6.d. This link will start with K## where the ## is a number. Mine looks like K96init.crs and is a symbolic link back to /etc/init.d/init.crs
5. Remove the physical Oracle home directory that Clusterware was installed in.
6. Reboot! I know, it seems very Windowsish, but it was the only way to make sure all the pieces of crs and css were out of memory.
Having done all of that, I was finally able to reinstall into my new Oracle home. So, the moral of my story... make sure you are following your own standards before starting!
See you in 10 days at Oracle OpenWorld. Don't forget about User Group Forum Sunday.
Where is this going? As the title of this post suggests, I had to recently uninstall Oracle Clusterware. I am working on a project to bring a new application on board and we are using an active/passive failover model using Oracle Clusterware. This model is something I have worked on several times and did a presentation at Collaborate 08 on the topic. So, I was going along installing away, having installed OCFS2, created voting and OCR disks and then installing Clusterware. The initial install went great until I realized that I had installed into a non-standard location compared to our other clusters. After the initial "Oh Crap" moment, I just figured I would uninstall what I did and install into a new home. This is where the fun began.
Of course, I realized this was not going to be as easy as ./runInstaller and remove the Clusterware install. I did not figure that it would cost me an entire day! After running the installer and removing the Clusterware home, I received an error saying that the directory could not be removed from the other node. No problem, I'll go remove it. So, I thought I was clean. No more Clusterware directory, no more Clusterware home in the inventory because I ran the installer. Boy was I wrong.
To make this long story a little shorter, I'll get to the end of what turned out to be four install/uninstall cycles. And, by the way, looking at Metalink, the only document I could find was removing from Windows. I am on Linux and it is not supposed to be this difficult! Okay, enough whining...
1. Make sure the crs and css processes have been stopped. This should have been as easy as going to /etc/init.d and issuing the init.crsd stop and init.cssd stop, but this did not stop all processes. After all the deletions and cleanup, the only way I could really get rid of the processes was to kill them as root.
2. After issuing the stop commands, delete the init.crs, init.crsd, init.cssd, and init.evmd files from the /etc/init.d directory on both nodes.
3. Edit the /etc/inittab file and remove the lines at the bottom that start the init.evmd, init.cssd, and init.crsd
4. Remove the init.crs symbolic link from /etc/rc.d/rc0.d, rc1.d, rc2.d, rc3.d, rc4.d, rc5.d, and rc6.d. This link will start with K## where the ## is a number. Mine looks like K96init.crs and is a symbolic link back to /etc/init.d/init.crs
5. Remove the physical Oracle home directory that Clusterware was installed in.
6. Reboot! I know, it seems very Windowsish, but it was the only way to make sure all the pieces of crs and css were out of memory.
Having done all of that, I was finally able to reinstall into my new Oracle home. So, the moral of my story... make sure you are following your own standards before starting!
See you in 10 days at Oracle OpenWorld. Don't forget about User Group Forum Sunday.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Linux and Virtualization at OpenWorld #oow09
I had a very productive discussion with several people from the Oracle Linux and Virtualization team yesterday in preparation for the Linux Roundtable session on Sunday at OpenWorld. The session is going to start with an introduction to the Linux team and the Virtualization team by the directors of those technical organizations. We will then have questions and answers for them along with the remaining panel members who are all presenting topics on Linux. This should be a lively discussion and I'm looking forward to facilitating and getting some of my own questions answered.
Topics for the session will include validated configurations, why the Virtualization team chose Xen, patching cycles, how are bugs reported and fixed, and anything else the audience chooses to throw at the panel. This really should be a good combination of how Oracle thinks the technologies are being used and what they are doing to facilitate that use complimented with how real world users are doing. Don't miss the session for anything Oracle on Linux and Virtualization. The session is Sunday, October 11 at 10:30.
For the remaining Linux and Virtualization topics check out this post which lists all of Oracle's sessions. If you are coming to OpenWorld drop me a comment and let me know. I'd love to touch base with people. You will also be able to find me pretty much all day at the User Group forum on Sunday.
For now, I'm on the train on my way to Chicago for our inaugural IOUG/Chicago Oracle Users Group Regional BI Event. Should be very interesting and I'll let everyone know how it goes. Check out the upcoming events here. Upcoming sessions include Pittsburgh and Boston and plans are in the works for several others.
Topics for the session will include validated configurations, why the Virtualization team chose Xen, patching cycles, how are bugs reported and fixed, and anything else the audience chooses to throw at the panel. This really should be a good combination of how Oracle thinks the technologies are being used and what they are doing to facilitate that use complimented with how real world users are doing. Don't miss the session for anything Oracle on Linux and Virtualization. The session is Sunday, October 11 at 10:30.
For the remaining Linux and Virtualization topics check out this post which lists all of Oracle's sessions. If you are coming to OpenWorld drop me a comment and let me know. I'd love to touch base with people. You will also be able to find me pretty much all day at the User Group forum on Sunday.
For now, I'm on the train on my way to Chicago for our inaugural IOUG/Chicago Oracle Users Group Regional BI Event. Should be very interesting and I'll let everyone know how it goes. Check out the upcoming events here. Upcoming sessions include Pittsburgh and Boston and plans are in the works for several others.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
OpenWorld 09: T-minus one month!
Only a month remains for me to finish my presentation... yikes! Actually, the biggest problem I am having now is an open Service Request that is in development for a PeopleSoft Plug-in issue after we upgraded our PeopleTools version. Hopefully that will be resolved in the next month. It will be pretty hard to present, "look how cool this is" if it isn't working properly.
Sunday, I will be part of two sessions that I am pretty excited about. Sunday is User Group Forum day at OpenWorld and I promise there is something here for everyone. I am facilitating a Linux Roundtable discussion and a Software Security Assurance Team Town Hall meeting. Both should be fascinating. The Linux discussion will be anything to do with running Oracle technology on Linux. We will have someone from the development teams at Oracle for Linux and Virtualization, along with a some other customers that are Linux users. The Software Security Assurance Town Hall is your chance to ask all those questions you have not had a chance to ask about Security Assurance. We will have Oracle managers and directors that have responsibility for security development. Oracle Configuration Manager, My Oracle Support, Critical Patch Updates, and application security are all on the table for discussion.
Those are just my sessions (not that I'm biased of course) and all the users groups have sessions going on. Make sure to sign up for the OpenWorld Content Builder and reserve your seat for those Sunday sessions. Some of them are filling up already! There are sessions on upgrades, Exadata, BI, Spatial technologies, Content Management, RAC, APEX, Portal technologies and more. I'm starting to sound like a TV pitch man... "and that's not all!"
Of course technical content is only half the story. Who isn't looking forward to Aerosmith and being able to network and meet new people. I know I'm looking forward to catching up with some people I haven't seen since Collaborate! One way to do this for Oracle bloggers is at the Blogger Meetup that Alex Gorbachev has picked up the organizer responsibility for (thanks Alex!). Should be a good opportunity to put a face with a blog.
I better go see if I have any updates from Oracle Support... hint, hint! See you all in San Francisco.
Sunday, I will be part of two sessions that I am pretty excited about. Sunday is User Group Forum day at OpenWorld and I promise there is something here for everyone. I am facilitating a Linux Roundtable discussion and a Software Security Assurance Team Town Hall meeting. Both should be fascinating. The Linux discussion will be anything to do with running Oracle technology on Linux. We will have someone from the development teams at Oracle for Linux and Virtualization, along with a some other customers that are Linux users. The Software Security Assurance Town Hall is your chance to ask all those questions you have not had a chance to ask about Security Assurance. We will have Oracle managers and directors that have responsibility for security development. Oracle Configuration Manager, My Oracle Support, Critical Patch Updates, and application security are all on the table for discussion.
Those are just my sessions (not that I'm biased of course) and all the users groups have sessions going on. Make sure to sign up for the OpenWorld Content Builder and reserve your seat for those Sunday sessions. Some of them are filling up already! There are sessions on upgrades, Exadata, BI, Spatial technologies, Content Management, RAC, APEX, Portal technologies and more. I'm starting to sound like a TV pitch man... "and that's not all!"
Of course technical content is only half the story. Who isn't looking forward to Aerosmith and being able to network and meet new people. I know I'm looking forward to catching up with some people I haven't seen since Collaborate! One way to do this for Oracle bloggers is at the Blogger Meetup that Alex Gorbachev has picked up the organizer responsibility for (thanks Alex!). Should be a good opportunity to put a face with a blog.
I better go see if I have any updates from Oracle Support... hint, hint! See you all in San Francisco.
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