AWS SF Summit 2015 migration sessions

Here are the AWS SF 2015 Summit decks and video replays:
1. AWS Cloud Transformation Framework:
http://www.slideshare.net/AmazonWebServices/application-portfolio-migration
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FjCMWlskMU&index=11&list=PLhr1KZpdzukeD0iBeDI9WqZLYtuaFaaGc
The CAF white paper serves as the foundation for this session: http://d0.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/aws_cloud_adoption_framework.pdf 

2. AWS application modernization with a focus on security:
http://www.slideshare.net/AmazonWebServices/cloud-migration-application-modernization-and-security-for-partners
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpeV4OqB6Us&index=26&list=PLhr1KZpdzukeD0iBeDI9WqZLYtuaFaaGc

3. AWS Partner session:
http://www.slideshare.net/AmazonWebServices/implementing-service-oriented-architecture

All sessions can be found on Slideshare and Youtube here:
http://www.slideshare.net/AmazonWebServices/tag/2015sfsummit?adbsc=awssummit2015_20150411_43646046&adbid=586959582653648896&adbpl=tw&adbpr=66780587
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhr1KZpdzukeD0iBeDI9WqZLYtuaFaaGc&adbsc=awssummit2015_20150411_43648896&adbid=586713471154159616&adbpl=tw&adbpr=66780587

Amazon data warehouse migration to Amazon Redshift

Informative video on moving an Oracle RAC and Hadoop based web log data mining solution to Amazon Redshift:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4KPPvEb_QI

Oracle on AWS white papers

Some great new Oracle on AWS white papers:

      Best Practices for running Oracle Database on Amazon Web Services
http://d0.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/best-practices-for-running-oracle-database-on-aws.pdf
Advanced Architectures for Oracle Database on Amazon EC2
http://d3ulk6ur3a3ha.cloudfront.net/enterprise-marketing/Oracle/AWSAdvancedArchitecturesforOracleDBonEC2.pdf
Strategies for Migrating Oracle Database to AWS
http://d0.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/strategies-for-migrating-oracle-database-to-aws.pdf
Determining the IOPS Needs for Oracle Database on AWS
http://d0.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/determining-iops-needs-for-oracle-database-on-aws.pdf
Choosing the Operating System for Oracle Workloads on Amazon EC2
http://d0.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/choosing-os-for-oracle-workloads-on-ec2.pdf

Accenture AWS re:Invent Enterprise Migrations Session

Accenture migrations at scale presentation at AWS re:Invent 2014:
accenture-reinvent-breakout-session-deck-migration-to-cloud-v3-aws-template-final-cs

Oracle Database on Amazon Web Services Book

The first book that covers running Oracle on Amazon Web Services:
http://www.amazon.com/Oracle-Databases-Amazon-Web-Services/dp/012800956X

Written by these companies:
http://www.appsassociates.com/awslabs/
http://aws.amazon.com/rds/partners/dbvisit/
http://www.e-dba.com/oracle_labs_aws.html

MySQL supports AWS S3 for backup

MySQL Enterprise Backup(MEB) now supports backup to the cloud with support for direct backup to AWS S3.

https://www.linkedin.com/nhome/updates?activity=5889951769257070592&goback=&trk=hb_ntf_LIKED_UPDATE_YOU_CREATED

and the tweet: 

https://twitter.com/paintrichpaint/status/484332341892890624 

Amazon RDS using private IP to connect to database - not the right approach

You should always connect to your Amazon RDS instance using the RDS endpoint in the AWS console. However, some IT folks chose to use the private IP address of the RDS instance.  It is easy for you to determine the private IP address of your RDS instance by using the host or dig commands as follows (Keep in mind this is not recommended but it shows how easy it is for IT personnel that don't want to use the RDS endpoint can do so):

[ec2-user@ip-10-0-0-50 ~]$ host postgres.cyve56loidht.us-west-2.rds.amazonaws.com
postgres.cyve56loidht.us-west-2.rds.amazonaws.com is an alias for ec2-54-201-99-99.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com.
ec2-54-201-75-58.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com has address 10.0.5.204
[ec2-user@ip-10-0-0-50 ~]$ ping 10.0.5.204
PING 10.0.5.204 (10.0.5.204) 56(84) bytes of data.
^C
--- 10.0.5.204 ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 9792ms

[ec2-user@ip-10-0-0-50 ~]$ dig postgres.cyve56loidht.us-west-2.rds.amazonaws.com

; <<>> DiG 9.8.2rc1-RedHat-9.8.2-0.17.rc1.28.amzn1 <<>> postgres.cyve56loidht.us-west-2.rds.amazonaws.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 25864
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;postgres.cyve56loidht.us-west-2.rds.amazonaws.com. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
postgres.cyve56loidht.us-west-2.rds.amazonaws.com. 5 IN CNAME ec2-54-201-99-99.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com.
ec2-54-201-99-99.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com. 60 IN A 10.0.5.204

;; Query time: 19 msec
;; SERVER: 10.0.0.2#53(10.0.0.2)
;; WHEN: Fri Jun  6 12:28:44 2014
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 132

AWS EBS Performance

Here is a very good presentation on Amazon EBS performance from reInvent in 2013:
http://www.slideshare.net/AmazonWebServices/ebs-webinarfinal

AWS SLAs

The AWS services that have SLAs and the SLAs themselves can be found here:

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/sla/

http://aws.amazon.com/route53/sla/

http://aws.amazon.com/rds/sla/

http://aws.amazon.com/s3/sla/

Oracle Database Huge Pages

Oracle DBAs will use Oracle Hug pages to increase Oracle database performance : http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/server.112/e10839/appi_vlm.htm#UNXAR394

The only requirement for huge-pages (2MB pages) is that you run a HVM instance. However, all the Oracle AMIs are PVM.

For now to use huge pages with Oracle on EC2,  the best option would be to go with SUSE HVM AMI and then install the Oracle Database on the EC2 instance. 

MySQL horizontal scaling

ScaleBase is a distributed database built on MySQL and optimized for the cloud. It is a relational database cluster that dynamically optimizes workloads and availability by logically distributing data. ScaleBase automates the data lifecycle, including analysis, data migration and node rebalancing.  ScaleBase provides an easy to manage horizontally scalable database cluster built on MySQL that dynamically optimizes workloads across multiple instances.  is  based in Newton, MA. The AWS Marketplace offering can be found here:  https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B00K8B5BOG.  ScaleBase provides the scalability and availability benefits of NoSQL databases while using a relational database.

Oracle Virtualization on AWS

Oracle has a number of different virtualization offerings: Oracle VM, Oracle VM VirtualBox, and Oracle Solaris Zones being the most prominent. 

Oracle VM can be run on AWS, however, Oracle VM is a "bare-metal" / "type 1" hypervisor so it my does not run on top of an operating system or the Amazon Xen hypervisor.  There are a number of Oracle VM Templates that can be used to deploy an Oracle technical or application stack in minutes. These templates can only be used to deploy to Oracle VM.

The Oracle VM VirutalBox is a type 2 or "hosted" hypervisor which means that it runs on a host operating system.  Therefore, VBox templates can be run on Amazon Xen Linux or Windows instances. 

Oracle Solaris is not supported on AWS so Oracle Solaris Zones (builtin OS virtualization) does not apply.

AWS high memory instance type : Good for Oracle Databases on AWS

The r3.8xlarage has 244 GiB of memory, 32 vCPUs, and 2 - 320 GB SSD drives. The cost is $2.80 per hour for on-demand instances.  More details here:

http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2014/04/10/r3-announcing-the-next-generation-of-amazon-ec2-memory-optimized-instances/

Prior to this you had to use the i2.8xlarge instance type which also has 244 GiB of memory and 32 vCPUs. But also has 8 - 800 GB SSD drives which you will most likely not use for your Oracle Database.  The cost of i2.8xlage is $6.82 per hour for on-demand instances.  The other highest memory option is the cr1.8xlarge with 32 vCPUs and 244 GIB with 2 -120 GB SSD drives.  The cost of this option is $3.50 per hour for on-demand instances.

The R3 instances include the following features:

• Intel Xeon E5-2670 v2 "Ivy Bridge" Processors

• Hardware Virtualization (HVM) only

• SSD-backed instance storage, including TRIM support

• Enhanced Networking with lower latency, low jitter, and high packet-per-second performance

One caveat here that Oracle has not released any HVM-based instance types.  There are undocumented methods to create an HVM AMI from a PVM AMI but this new AMI may not be supported by Oracle.

Data Center Migration to AWS

Learn how RISO Inc. used Apps Associates services to move their data center to the AWS cloud. In so doing, RISO Inc. avoided capital intensive hardware purchases and redeployed IT staff to projects that directly supported their business goals. We'll also describe how you can integrate your existing environment with the cloud to create a hybrid architecture.

http://youtu.be/jE1-8vjMGrw 

http://www.slideshare.net/AmazonWebServices/aws-partner-webcast-33342744 

http://www.slideshare.net/tomlaszewski/data-center-migration-to-the-aws-cloud

Oracle RDS GoldenGate support

Oracle GoldenGate can be used with Amazon RDS for Oracle for active-active database replication, zero-downtime migration and upgrades, disaster recovery and data protection, and cross region replication. 

More information here: http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2014/04/03/you-can-now-use-oracle-goldengate-with-amazon-rds-for-oracle/

Oracle Spatial on Amazon EC2

This presentation has details on an Oracle Spatial implementation on AWS. http://download.oracle.com/otndocs/products/spatial/pdf/osuc2012_presentations/osuc12_gisasservice_walshbaynham.pdf

The summary is:

• Technical approach:

  ·   Oracle Database with Spatial

  ·   Deploy on Amazon EC2

  ·   J2EE Web Application Server

  ·   Multi-tenant Multi-user 100% Web software for Mapping and analyzing business data 
– eSpatial OnDemand GIS

  
  

  Amazon Overview

  ·      Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2)


  ·      Variety of Instance Types (CPU cores, memory...)

  ·      Pre-configured Amazon Machine Instances (AMI’s)

  ·      Availability Zones

  ·      Elastic Block Storage – EBS
 Simple Storage Service (S3)
 Elastic IP addresses


  ·      Load Balancing & Auto Scaling, More...

  Amazon Deployment:

  ·   Dedicated Database Server(s) with separate Web Application Servers

  ·   AMI - Oracle 11g DB & Redhat Fedora

  ·   Database on an EBS volume

  ·   ARCHIVELOG as normal – archive to a separate EBS volume

  ·   RMAN Backup to separate EBS volume

  ·   Copy backups to Amazon S3

  ·   EE & RAC or SE-1 with Standby DB

  ·   Backup from Standby DB

  
  

Oracle Collaborate 2014 AWS sessions

Here are the three AWS focused sessions at Oracle Collaborate http://collaborate14.com

564: Best Practices for Running Oracle Databases on Amazon Web Services (AWS)   -- Speakers: Abdul Sait
Date: 04/11/2014
Time: 8:30 AM
Location: Level 3, Lido 3101B

Deploying PeopleSoft to the Amazon Cloud  --  Speakers: Abdul Sait, David Brunet

9 Apr 08:30 AM-09:30 AM

Session ID: 106940
Room: Level 4, Lando 4301B

OEM 12c session with Oracle Product Management and App Associates:

Workshop: Simplify, Automate, and Enhance Management of E-Business Suite (EBS) Applications

Monday, April 7 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM

Level 1 Sands 101

15526

This is a paid workshop.  More information here:
https://blogs.oracle.com/oem/entry/focus_on_oracle_applications_management

HVM and PVM : Oracle AMIs

AWS AMIs are either Para Virtual Machine (PVM) or Hardware Virtual Machine (HVM) images. All of the AMIs from Oracle are currently only PVM-based. Therefore, they will not run on cluster compute or i2 instance types.

More information on HVM-based instances types:
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using_cluster_computing.html#concepts_cluster_compute_hvmAMI
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#Does_use_of_Cluster_Compute_Instances_differ_from_other_Amazon_EC2_instance_types

Currently, the new i2 instance types are HVM only:
http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2013/12/19/announcing-the-next-generation-of-amazon-ec2-high-i/o-instance/

More on HVM and PVM can be found here:
http://serverfault.com/questions/222010/difference-between-xen-pv-xen-kvm-and-hvm

If you are looking to run Oracle solutions on Oracle Enterprise Linux and require more then 68 GB of memory, you would have to run on hs1.8xlarge (117 GiB) as all other instance types with more then 68 GB are HVM. See more here: http://aws.amazon.com/amazon-linux-ami/instance-type-matrix/

Peoplesoft on AWS

Here are some case studies and materials for running Oracle Peoplesoft on AWS:

1. Select Staffing presented along with AWS and DLZP. http://www.slideshare.net/tomlaszewski/dat202-using-amazon-rds-to-power-enterprise-applications-1-0

2. Data migration from on premise Oracle to Oracle AWS RDS (same technique can be used for EC2, in fact, with EC2 may be easier to just do an RMAN dump, FTP, SCP or Tsunami to transfer to AWS,) and restore using RMAN on EC2). http://www.slideshare.net/tomlaszewski/advanced-data-migration-techniques-for-amazon-rds

3. Best practices for Peoplesoft on premise to AWS done at Oracle OpenWorld last year by DLZP: http://www.slideshare.net/tomlaszewski/oracle-peoplesoft-on-aws

4. Test drive:http://aws.amazon.com/testdrive/oracle/

AWS Elastic Beanstalk basics

When first getting started with AWS Elastic Beanstalk here are some basic things to know

1. Logging : In Java, logging is done using the Apache Commons Logging framework. Logs can be captured with Apache Log4j or any other component that supports Apache Commons Logging.

2. Custom AMIs can be used : The process is documented here: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/using-features.customenv.html

3. RDS support: Amazon RDS Oracle, MySQL and SQL Server databases can deployed as part of you Elastic Beanstalk application. 

4. Launch New Environment to get OS patches : Amazon periodically updates the AMIs that were used to build the server instances, but servers can’t be updated while their running. When you launch a new environment, you get the updates.
5. Load Balancing : The Elastic Beanstalk service creates the load balancer for you.
6. Auto Scaling : The service creates the auto scaling configuration and group for you.

7..Custom configuration : Example Uses for YAML Configuration 

• Define custom environment variables beyond PARAMx
• Identify files to be downloaded to hosts 
• Can automatically unpack downloaded archive files
• Specify software to install Specify which services should run on hosts 
• Create and run scripts 
• Create and configure AWS resources

More on Elastic Beanstalk here: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/Welcome.html