Happy Friday! And for those of us in the US, happy Independence Day!
Our spotlight this week is on a new paper written by Oracle's Robert Chase (if you read the Oracle Linux articles over on Oracle Technical Network, you'll be familiar with his work). This paper focuses on the use of Oracle Ksplice -- well known as a kernel patching tool -- as a diagnostic tool to help you when working with Oracle Support. It's really a great use of the technology, have a read below:
The June 2014 edition of the Oracle Linux newsletter is now available. It contains information on Oracle Linux, Oracle VM, and OpenStack, an excellent white paper on the value of Oracle Linux, the latest release of the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel, and much more.
The newsletters are a great way to keep track of everything new and exciting about Oracle Linux. Did you know there is an archive with all of the past editions? It's the perfect place to find that story you remembered seeing, but just can't seem to find:
It's an exciting day for the Oracle Linux team because the Oracle Linux 7 release candidate is now available for download from Oracle Technology Network! Head on over to the OTN Oracle Linux downloads page and have a look at the Oracle Linux Beta Programs section to get it right now.
What can make the difference between a good system administrator and a great system administrator is the ability to troubleshoot problems. When you take the Oracle Linux System Administrator training course, you get to work on a lab environment riddled with typical problems and you will analyze, diagnose and fix those problems, drawing on the knowledge you gain throughout the class.
You can take this 5-day instructor-led course through:
Training-on-Demand: Start training within 24 hours of registration. Train at your own pace, following lecture materials through streaming video at your own pace and book time on the lab environment to suit your schedule.
Live-Virtual Event: Attend a live event from your own desk, no travel required. Choose from a list of events already on the schedule to suit different time-zones.
In-Class Event: Travel to an education center to take this course. Below are some of the in-class events already on the schedule.
Our spotlight this week is on the large library of in-depth information about Oracle Linux on the Oracle documentation site. There is, of course, an administrator's guide, as you would expect. But there are also extremely comprehensive guides on Ksplice, DTrace, Spacewalk, security, and more. Check out the whole set for some Friday afternoon reading.
Please join Oracle Executives Mark Hurd, Wim Coekaerts, and Scott Genereux as they announce the latest Virtual Compute Appliance. Discover how the Virtual Compute Appliance delivers virtualized application infrastructure and how it differentiates from other converged infrastructure solutions.
Our spotlight this week is on the on-demand version of our recent Oracle VM Design Considerations for Enterprise Scale Deployments webcast. If you missed it (or thought it didn't have anything to with Linux), have a look, I think you'l be very interested in the content. It describes the massive deployment for Oracle Managed Cloud Services, and while there is a lot of Oracle VM specific info, there are deep ties to Oracle Linux as well.
If you're managing a large deployment or want to see how Oracle approaches problems of this scale, it's well worth watching.
In this blog write-up we would like to focus our attention to one of our IHV partners, Avago (formerly LSI) . Avago and Oracle have been collaborating at many levels for many years. At the lowest level, Avago and Oracle engineer solutions to inbox advanced features in our I/O device drivers. We collaborate to test, verify and optimize these drivers in Oracle Linux with Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel. Both LSI Nytro and Sun F-Series PCIe flash devices are supported inbox in Oracle Linux with Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel. By collaborating early in the engineering design cycle we can find and resolve issues sooner and deliver to the end-customer a fully optimized platform for I/O efficiency and data protection.
Avago had also been working on technical whitepaper and video whiteboard to explain some of the optimizations you can achieve by using smart flash cache with Oracle Linux.
Our Spotlight this week is on a fantastic new article by Oracle's Robert Chase and posted on Oracle Technology Network. The article steps through, with command line examples, several strategies for tracking down network connectivity issues. From the article:
"When applications that use network connectivity for communication are not working, the cause is often a mystery. Despite advances in modern operating systems, many users believe there is no way to directly "see" what's going over the wire, and that often leads to confusion and difficulties when something goes wrong.
The reality is that you can actually see what's going over the wire, and there are a number of tools built into Oracle Linux for troubleshooting network issues. This article will help solve some of the mystery and make network connectivity a bit more user friendly."
I highly recommend checking this article out, it's a good one!
"This paper describes the savings and efficiencies that an IT department can realize by choosing Oracle Linux as their enterprise standard. It highlights sample deployments and explains how deploying Oracle Linux can reduce operational costs and result in less downtime, improved productivity, and greater opportunities for revenue generation. "
The paper explains exactly how Oracle Linux can reduce costs, and goes into some of the features of Oracle Linux that can make it more valuable for your organization. Read the paper now.
Nimble Storage SmartStack™ for Oracle provides pre-validated reference architecture that speed deployments and minimize risk. IT and Oracle administrators and architects realize the importance of underlying Operating System, Virtualization software, and Storage in maintaining services levels and staying in budget. In this webinar, you will learn how Nimble Storage SmartStack for Oracle provides a converged infrastructure for Oracle database online transaction processing (OLTP) and online analytical processing (OLAP) environments with Oracle Linux and Oracle VM.
SmartStack delivers the performance and reliability needed for deploying Oracle on a single symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) server or if you are running Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) on multiple nodes.
Nimble Storage SmartStack for Oracle with Cisco can help you provide:
Improved Oracle performance
Stress-free data protection and DR of your Oracle database
Higher availability and uptime
Accelerate Oracle development and improve testing
All for dramatically less than what you’re paying now
Presenters:
Doan Nguyen, Senior Principal Product Marketing Director, Oracle
Vanessa Scott , Business Development Manager, Cisco
Ibrahim “Ibby” Rahmani, Product and Solutions Marketing, Nimble Storage
Join this event to learn from our Nimble Storage and Oracle experts on how to optimize your customers' Oracle environments.
The Oracle Managed Cloud Services team serves up thousands of Oracle applications to thousands of end customers on a daily basis. With nearly 20,000 of Oracle VM instances powering this operation, maintaining a highly available environment continuously. Curious how this is done? Join the Oracle Managed Cloud Services expert in this live webcast to gain valuable insights into architectural design and management best practices to build and run this highly successful hosted cloud operation. Learn how Oracle Linux is an integral part of this platform to ensure security and high availability for thousands of customers.
Oracle VM: Design Considerations for Enterprise-Scale Deployment
We are pleased to announce the availability of Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 3 Quarterly Update 2 (UEK R3U2) for Oracle Linux 6. This is the second quarterly update release for UEK R3 (Version 3.8.13-35) and includes driver updates as well as a consolidation of fixes for bugs and security issues.
Some notable highlights include:
Support for the Intel XL710 family of Ethernet Controllers
Updates to paravirtualization drivers to support Oracle Linux guests running on Microsoft Hyper-V
Updates to the DTrace profile provider to include profile-n probes, which can fire at fixed intervals at high-interrupt level on all active CPUs. This is similar to the tick-n probe, which fires at fixed intervals at high interrupt level on one CPU per interval
Device driver updates (e.g. storage devices, network cards) from key partners, such as:
