Tagging Oracle Database Instances

Instance tagging is a great way to manage and monitor instances.  It is also the way to do departmental billing and now with EC2 IAM resource level permissions a method to control the actions users and groups can perform on EC2 instances (more here: http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2013/07/08/announcing-resource-permissions-for-amazon-ec2-and-amazon-rds/)

Placing tags on EC2 instances is this easy:
aws ec2 create-tags --resources i-f0ef69c6 --tags "Key=Cost Center,Value=AWS"
aws ec2 create-tags --resources i-f0ef69c6 --tags "Key=tier,Value=database"
aws ec2 create-tags --resources i-f0ef69c6 --tags "Key=environment,Value=test"
aws ec2 create-tags --resources i-f0ef69c6 --tags "Key=email,Value=thomas.laszewski@gmail.com"

To view all instances (and the value) with the cost center tag issue the following command:

aws ec2 describe-tags --filters "Name=key,Values=Cost Center"

Most monitoring and billing tools (CloudHealth, Cloudcheckr etc) use tagging to manage, monitor, and report costs and usage.

EMaaS : Oracle OEM 12c as a Service webinar

Learn how Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control enables you to monitor and manage the complete enterprise application stack, web tier to storage, for both dedicated and cloud-based infrastructure environments.

Join Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Apps Associates, an AWS Partner Network (APN) Advanced Consulting Partner to hear how you can leverage the AWS platform to run a centralized OEM 12c environment to free up your administrative resources.

Register here:

https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp&eventid=641039&sessionid=1&key=C3BFA66F187A7E2A5DD0C6865B83A3E6&partnerref=AWSemail_v1&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRow5%2FmYJoDpwmWGd5mht7VzDtPj1OY6hBkuIryWflL6iuNDGZQ7fbSfDAMKHJ52xQ5LH%2FKDdYNF6Q%3D%3D&sourcepage=register

Replay can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSBND55sghc

AWS security with iptables

AWS Security Groups are one of the key ways to secure your AWS environment. IPtables add another layer of security on top of Security Groups.   For example, security groups are not state-sensitive, you cannot have them respond automatically to an attack for instance. IPTables are well suited to more dynamic rules - either adapting to certain scenarios, or providing finer grained conditional control.

Oracle Enterprise Manager with AWS Database Instance

Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Database Control support was just announced this May. It seems like it may be a long time in coming but Oracle Database support on the AWS cloud was first released just a few years ago in September 2008. Here is a great blog entry on using OEM with Oracle on AWS:

AWS OEM for Oracle DB

Remember that without https in front of the URL OEM will not respond.https://ec2-99-55-139-99.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com:1158/em