Oracle EBS Cloud Manager Support for ExaCS snapshots
4th May 2023
This utility provides automation benefits for Customers who want to deploy EBS on OCI. We have been aware of and working with it for some time. However the biggest EBS deployments in OCI used to have an issue with Cloud Manager. It did not support sparse cloning on Exadata Cloud Services. Sparse cloning is a snapshot based copy on write technology that clones a database using block pointers and hence the original and the sparse clone start out sharing all data blocks.
You can see how this would be an issue as Customers who run EBS on ExaCS generally have critical high volume EBS installations and they are in most need of Cloning Automation and ways to replicate issues quickly. We actually went so far as to develop our own cloning tools and technology to mitigate this lacunae in the Oracle provided utility.
EBS cloud manager 20.2.1.1. and later has support for ExaCS, But cloning could not take advantage of Exadata snapshot backups which is a critical option to allow fast provisioning of Databases on Exadata.
In EBS cloud manager 23.1.1 which was released in April of 2023 we now have the ability to use Exadata snapshot backups for cloning purposes.
"Clone an Oracle E-Business Suite Instance with the Database on Exadata Database Service Dedicated
This feature provides a method to clone an Oracle E-Business Suite environment that includes an Oracle database running on Oracle Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure. The database cloning operation utilizes Exadata snapshots.
This procedure is supported on Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2 instances with Oracle Database 19c only"
This is an exciting new ability because as mentioned EBS databases on Exadata tend to be of the multi-terabyte size and the ability to quickly create a troubleshooting instance for production support is a key capability requirement.
Now it is important to note that only EBS 12.2 and Oracle DB 19c are supported, but remember these are currently the only Oracle product versions still in general support. EBS 12.1 and DB versions less than 19c all require special support contracts such as Market driven support (MDS)
Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 Market Driven Support (MDS) (Doc ID 2870402.1)
https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/docs/market-driven-support-for-e-business-suite.pdf
So what strategy should be adopted with Snapshot sparse clones.
Due to restrictions in how sparse clones work the best way to use them is for quickly refreshed production support instances. The reason for this is that the further the sparse clone diverges from production the larger the size on disk becomes as the technology used is copy on write.
Since the snapshot cannot be deleted until all clones from it are deleted thus it makes sense not to use sparse clone databases for instances that are to be infrequently refreshed.
However a backup of a sparse clone database can be restored to a different Exadata and that will not be a sparse clone but a full clone of the database and can be used normally.
So in conclusion EBS cloud manager ExaCS snapshot clone facility is ideal for quickly refreshed production support instances for Large EBS on ExaCS customers.