Windows 10 and E-Business Suite

Tomorrow (July 29, 2015) we will see the release of Windows 10 into the wild.  PC's all over the world that aren't under "enterprise control" have been signing up to download the update through Microsoft's "Windows Update" delivery mechanism and it is "going to drop" on July 29^th, 2015.

For us (E-Business Suite DBAs) there should be at least some level of concern.

Because they are using this mechanism, this will likely be the largest mass deployment of software that anyone has witnessed.  Also, due to the delivery method, I would expect that Windows 10 uptake will significantly surpass any other Windows roll-out in history.

Remember, with previous Windows upgrades, you either had to go out and purchase the software or you got it when you acquired a new laptop.  This meant that, with few exceptions, those of us who have to deal with these changes at least had some breathing room before we really felt it.

Beginning tomorrow, however, anyone with a licensed copy of Windows 7 (SP1), Windows 8, or Windows 8.1, could potentially upgrade to Windows 10.  While this really isn't a concern for most corporate PC's (where software updates/upgrades are managed by the centralized IT department), if you're on a project where users and/or consultants have "unmanaged" PCs, you could encounter some questions.

The first thing you need to know is that, of course, nothing about Windows 10 has been officially "certified" by anyone at Oracle yet.  So, you could always stand behind that statement.  And, certainly, if your IT department is even considering rolling out Windows 10 to anyone, they should wait until that certification information is released.

Now, for those of you who are just wondering, does it even work?  The answer is, yes, it appears to... but there are a few things you should know.

First, Windows 10 ships with a new minimalistic browser called "Microsoft Edge" (also known as "Project Spartan").  The browser works pretty well and the interface is clean, which is nice.  But, Microsoft Edge doesn't support plug-ins (specifically, it no longer supports Active-X).   This means that you will be unable to launch Java from the Edge browser which, in turn, means that you won't be able to launch Oracle Forms from within E-Business Suite.

But, never fear.  Windows 10 also ships with Internet Explorer 11, which is certified in many E-Business Suite configurations.  I performed some rather limited testing (log into R12.1.3, launch forms, basic navigation) using a recent pre-release version of Windows 10 (x86-64, build 10301) and Java JRE 1.8.0_51 (32-bit) and everything appears to function without much issue.  Obviously, this was far from a complete test and I wouldn't go into production with it.  Fortunately, since Oracle has already certified Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 7 and 8.1 (notably, not Windows 8) with EBS, I doubt that certification for IE11+EBS+Windows 10 will find too many problems.

So, the long and short of it is, should you encounter that Windows 10 early adopter, they should have some luck using Internet Explorer 11 (assuming that you're patched up to support it per MOS 389422.1, of course).    Of course, should the user be technically inclined and still want to remain an early adopter, I strongly recommend running an older version of Windows (Windows XP or Windows 7) in a VirtualBox VM.   It's a great way to be current and still be able to use some of the really old tools.  (Workflow Builder, anyone?)

Oracle Database 12c Is Available for Download

File this under "it's about time" and "ICYMI (In Case You Missed It), but Oracle has released Database 12c (12.1.0.1.0). Downloads can be found on their TechNet and E-Delivery sites. At this point, the only available versions are for Linux (x86-64), Solaris (Sparc64), and Solaris (x86-64). Other platforms will surely follow.

Not officially released... yet

According to media reports (and my inability to find an actual press release from Oracle), the formal launch of Database 12c will occur "within a couple of weeks".

Differences between TechNet and E-Delivery

While, otsensibly, it may be the same software, there is always the possibility that you'll get slightly different versions. The software that you download from TechNet is usually in the form of either a zip file or a "tarball" of the staged installation. The downloads from E-Delivery are also zip files, but they represent the actual media packs (CD or DVD). For some reason, Oracle doesn't do ISOs, but, nevertheless, the E-Delivery downloads are typically viewed as more "supported". As a result, I recommend using the E-Delivery downloads rather than TechNet if you're planning on doing anything that is going to need to be handled under a support contract.

Naturally, for either method, you will have to agree to license terms and export conditions. If you have never used E-Delivery from your Oracle account, there might be a slight delay as your account is verified by Oracle.

As with all new software, be sure to test thoroughly and make sure any applications are certified with 12c before deploying to production.

Oracle Client 12c is also available

The Oracle 12c Client can also be downloaded for the following platforms: Linux (x86-32), Linux (x86-64), Microsoft Windows (x86-32), Microsoft Windows (x86-64), Solaris (Sparc 64), Solaris (Sparc 32), Solaris (x86-32), Solaris (x86-64).

NOT CERTIFIED WITH E-BUSINESS SUITE

Since this blog is focused on E-Business Suite (and E-Business Suite is what I do), I feel the need to state that Database 12c is NOT certified with ANY RELEASE of E-Business Suite at this point. I suspect that we'll see it certified against 12.1.3 and the upcoming 12.2 at some point in the future (maybe 12.2 on release). It is highly unlikely (in my opinion) to be certified against any release 11i. In the event that it is certified against 11i, you can bet that it will be a pretty low priority item.

You can find them available here:

Oracle E-Delivery: https://edelivery.oracle.com

Oracle TechNet: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/indexes/downloads/index.html

-- James

Deciphering support and licensing issues surrounding Oracle on VMWare

I frequently run into clients that are wanting to run Oracle products in their VMWare cluster. Since I generally deal with E-Business Suite customers, I tend to take the position of "anything that swallows machines whole should probably have a physical machine" approach to production systems. However, I can see some distinct advantages to virtualization, particularly when it comes to managing numbers of non-production environments.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of confusion out there as it relates to Oracle and virtualization... particularly surrounding one of the most popular virtualization solutions, VMWare. I'll try to provide my best understanding of the issues here.

Are Oracle products certified on VMWare?

The short answer is, NO. But, that really shouldn't be that much of a concern. Keep in mind that a VMWare Virtual Machine is, technically, hardware. Oracle doesn't tend to certify against hardware. And that's what that VMWare really is, it's "virtual hardware". As such, it's really no different than a particular model of Dell or HP ProLiant.

What Oracle does do is certify against a platform. A platform is the combination of a particular version of an operating system (Solaris 10 vs. Solaris 11, for example) and processor architecture (Sun SPARC vs. Intel x86-32 or Intel x86-64). In the case of a deployment to VMWare, your platform will be determined by the operating system that you intend to run inside of the virtual machine. (For example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4/5/6 for x86 or x86-64).

Are Oracle products supported on VMWare?

Oracle's official support position can be found in MOS Note 249212.1, copied below (emphasis mine):

Support Position for Oracle Products Running on VMWare Virtualized Environments [ID 249212.1]

Purpose

---------

Explain to customers how Oracle supports our products when running on VMware

Scope & Application

----------------------

For Customers running Oracle products on VMware virtualized environments. No limitation on use or distribution.

Support Status for VMware Virtualized Environments

--------------------------------------------------

Oracle has not certified any of its products on VMware virtualized environments. Oracle Support will assist customers running Oracle products on VMware in the following manner: Oracle will only provide support for issues that either are known to occur on the native OS, or can be demonstrated not to be as a result of running on VMware.

If a problem is a known Oracle issue, Oracle support will recommend the appropriate solution on the native OS. If that solution does not work in the VMware virtualized environment, the customer will be referred to VMwar for support. When the customer can demonstrate that the Oracle solution does not work when running on the native OS, Oracle will resume support, including logging a bug with Oracle Development for investigation if required.

If the problem is determined not to be a known Oracle issue, we will refer the customer to VMware for support. When the customer can demonstrate that the issue occurs when running on the native OS, Oracle will resume support, including logging a bug with Oracle Development for investigation if required.

NOTE: Oracle has not certified any of its products on VMware. For Oracle RAC, Oracle will only accept Service Requests as described in this note on Oracle RAC 11.2.0.2 and later releases.

In my understanding of the actual way that the policy is applied, it's really a matter of whether or not the support engineer suspects VMWare to be the culprit. What I'm saying here is that, generally speaking, the support engineer will work your issue the same way that he/she would if you were on physical hardware. However, once that engineer thinks that VMWare could be the cause of your problem, they reserve the right to "punt" and say "call us back once you've reproduced it on physical hardware".

Now, VMWare, to their credit, has a policy that they call "Total Ownership", where they will accept accountability for any Oracle-related issues. You can read their official policy at the link below.

http://www.vmware.com/support/policies/oracle-support.html

It is my understanding that, as part of the "Total Ownership" policy, VMware will reproduce the problem on physical hardware for the customer if Oracle decides that VMWare is the problem.

What about Licensing?

Part of the big problem I've always had with Oracle on VMWare is caused by Oracle's per-CPU licensing policy. My original understanding was that, if you have a total of 64 cores in your VMWare cluster, it didn't matter if you were only using 8 cores for Oracle. Oracle would tell you that you had to pay for 64 cores. The idea behind this is that you could, potentially, resize the virtual machine to suit certain needs. Maybe you need more horsepower during month end?

What I've since learned is that Oracle has a policy document (below) that talks about "soft" vs. "hard" partitioning.

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/partitioning-070609.pdf

What I've described above would fall under the concept of "soft partitioning". However, "hard partitioning" methodologies allow for a different approach. VMWare has (naturally) a nice document that explains their approach to implementing clusters that are in compliance with Oracle's licensing requirements.

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/vmw-understanding-oracle-certification-supportlicensing-environments.pdf

From that document, pay particular attention to section 2.2. In that section (specifically Scenario B), they discuss DRS Host Affinity rules and VMWare CPU pinning. (emphasis mine)

2.2 Clusters: Fully Licensed Versus Partially Licensed Clusters

Scenario B: Partially Licensed Clusters

When a customer does not have enough Oracle application instances to justify creating a dedicated cluster for those applications, only a subset of the hosts in the cluster are licensed for the Oracle application. In this situation, the customer must be careful to restrict the movement of Oracle application instances and virtual machines to only those hosts that are licensed to run the product.

In this case, DRS Host Affinity rules can be used to appropriately restrict the movement of virtual machines within the cluster. DRS Host Affinity is a vSphere feature that enables you to ensure that your Oracle applications are restricted to move only between a subset of the hosts—that is, not all hardware in the cluster is “available” to the Oracle software. DRS Host Affinity is a clustering technology and is not a mechanism for soft or hard partitioning of the servers. As explained in section 2.1, using VMware CPU pinning to partially license a host is not currently recognized by Oracle as a “hard partitioning” mechanism that receives subsystem pricing. However, once you have fully licensed the host, you have the right to design your environment such that the Oracle workloads are free to run on the licensed hosts inside the cluster. At present, Oracle does not have any stated policy regarding clustering mechanisms or DRS Host Affinity. Customers can easily maiatain records for compliance purposes as explained in section 2.3.

The advantages of this approach are similar to the advantages achieved with a fully licensed cluster. Because customers are typically able to increase the utilization of licensed processors, they reduce license requirements. However, consolidation ratios tend to be lower, because advanced vSphere features can be employed only on a smaller subset of the hosts.

VMWare CPU pinning is a feature that (in my understanding) would allow you to say that a given VM would only use certain cores in a physical host. So, if you have a single host with 16 cores, you can "pin" a given VM to four of them. According to Oracle's partitioning document (and VMWare's document), you would still be required to pay for all 16 cores in the box. The basic logic here is that Oracle's licensing policy is based on the number of cores in a physical server. You can't license part of a box. Period. No exceptions.

On the other hand, DRS Host Affinity, is a way to pin a virtual machine to a given host (or collection of hosts) within a cluster. So, let's say that you have ten (10) 8-core physical hosts (total of 80 cores) in your VMWare cluster. Using DRS Host Affinity, youcould restrict your Oracle VMs to a subset of those physical hosts. For example, if you restricted your Oracle VMs to only five (5) of those physical hosts, VMWare's contention is that you would only have to license 40 cores.

I sould probably include the standard "IANAL" (I am not a lawyer) disclaimer. I'm also not a VMWare administrator. What I am is a DBA and an IT Geek. That's pretty much the limit of it.

Hopefully this provides some clarity on the issue.

For further reading on the subject, here are a couple of blog links that I used in my research:

http://blogs.vmware.com/apps/2012/11/update-on-virtualizing-oracle.html

http://longwhiteclouds.com/2012/07/21/fight-the-fud-oracle-licensing-and-support-on-vmware-vsphere/

– James

Why I don't depend on TOAD (or OEM) and neither should you.

My apologies in advance, as this posting may sound like something of a rant.

The first thing I'd like to point out is that I have no real problem with TOAD, Oracle Enterprise Manager, or Windows-based editors. They are all excellent tools that can be extremely helpful in your environment. My objection to these tools is based solely on a lowest-common-denominator argument.

First, a little background. Back in the early 1990's, I was working as a Unix Systems Administrator for a company in Kansas City, MO. Since then, I've worked mainly as a consultant.

Shortly before I started that job in Kansas City, the company had hired a new CIO who let go about half of the legacy (mainframe, COBOL) IT department. The new direction for the company was implementation of Oracle E-Business Suite on Data General Unix (DG/UX).

The mainframe IT staff that survived were being re-trained in the new technology. At one point, several of them came to me insisting that I install ISPF (an editor they were used to on the mainframe) onto the DG/UX boxes because they were struggling to learn to use the vi editor. I informed them that, while they (as a group) may carry enough weight to convince the CIO to direct me to install it (assuming it was even available). However, when they go to their next job and claim that "they know Unix", they would be alone and wouldn't have that leverage.  My suggestion was that I would help them to learn the vi editor. (I did offer emacs as an alternative, since it is and was extremely common on Unix systems... Unfortunately, friendlier editors like pico, nano, and joe didn't exist yet.)

If your primary job is software development, a tool like TOAD is generally something you can depend on having. However, as a DBA, you can't necessarily depend on having TOAD (or even Oracle Enterprise Manager) at your disposal at all times. Maybe you're starting a new job and the previous DBA hadn't set up Enterprise Manager (or you haven't gotten around to it yet). Even in environments where those tools are available, they may or may not be working when you need them.

So, my advice? There are certain tools that are almost ALWAYS there. Get comfortable with ssh, SQL*Plus, and vi (or vim).  They are your friends.

– James

Speculation about EBS Release 12.2

Floyd Teeter raises some good points in his blog posting out today. You can read the full posting here (http://orclville.blogspot.com/2012/08/i-wonder-what-tomorrow-has-in-mind-for.html). Primarily, that we won't actually have EBS R12.2 released during OpenWorld (as many of us were hoping).

Don't get me wrong, there will certainly be some good EBS R12.2 information out there. Oracle put together a very informative presentation and discussion surrounding the patching changes at Collaborate in Las Vegas this past spring. You can almost certainly bet that there will be an updated version at OpenWorld.

But, considering that the closed Beta program is still underway and the Early Adopter program hasn't started, any path of deduction should tell you that you're not going to have a R12.2 "GA" announcement for a few months at best. Which most means that sometime around Collaborate 2013 (Denver) would be a decent guess.

– James

URGENT BULLETIN: Disable JRE Auto-Update for All E-Business Suite End-Users

This notice just came out on Steven Chan's blog. If you're not following it, you definitely should.

The issue at hand is not that Auto-Update in itself causes problems. The real issue is that Oracle is going to push (through Auto-Update) the JRE 1.7 update. The JRE 1.7 update is NOT certified with E-Business Suite (any versions) at this time.

So, in order to keep your user's desktops on JRE 1.6, you MUST turn this auto-update feature off!

The update for JRE 1.7 could be pushed as early as July 3, 2012. The update WILL definitely be pushed after September 7, 2012 (after the release of JRE 1.6.0_35).

Steven Chan's blog has more information (including instructions on what you can do to undo the JRE 1.7 update if you get hit by it). The full link to the posting on Steven Chan's blog can be found here:

https://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/entry/bulletin_disable_jre_auto_update

– James

OAUG Connection Point 2012 in Austin, TX (July 11-12, 2012)

OAUG Connection Point 2012 is coming to Austin, TX, July 11-12, 2012! The conference will be held at the Omni Austin Hotel in beautiful downtown Austin, TX.

The keynote will be given by Jeanne Lowell, Vice President, Oracle E-Business Suite Strategy, Oracle Corporation. (Hopefully we can extract some R12.2 news from her!)

Other featured speakers include:

Elke Phelps, Senior Principal Product Manager, Oracle E-Business Suite Applications Technology, Oracle Corporation. (Elke always gives interesting and informative presentations!)

David Bowin III, Oracle Fusion Applications Product Development, Oracle Corporation

Amrita Mehok, Senior Director, Product Strategy, Oracle Corporation

Some other names you may recgonize will be presenting as well:

Alyssa Johnson, ROLTA (Sessions # 10913 and 10933)

Anne Carlson, Oracle (Session # 10868)

Art Dowd, O2Works (Session # 10829)

Barbara Matthews (Session # 10925)

Bill Dunham, OATC, Inc. (Session # 10915)

John Stouffer (Session # 10880 and 10924)

Michael Barone, OATC, Inc (Session # 10905 and 10907)

Mike Swing, TruTek (Session # 10878)

Susan Behn, Infosemantics, Inc. (Session # 10821)

...and many more!

Oh, and I'll be there too! I'm giving my "Anatomy of an Upgrade to 12.1.3 (including Platform Migration)" presentation (Session # 10802). I'll also be participating in John Stouffer's "R12.1 Upgrade Panel" (Session # 10924) along with Bill Dunham, Mike Swing, and Alyssa Johnson. The panel discussions are always entertaining and provide an excellent way for the community to discuss their challenges and experiences.

"Early Bird" Registration is open through June 24^th. Particularly if you're in or near the Austin, TX area, this can be a very cost-effective way to network with the community and find solutions to your problems. More information on the conference is available through the OAUG website or this direct link:

http://connectionpoint.oaug.org/2012/austin

I hope to see you there!

– James

Vegas, Baby!

On Saturday night, I head to Las Vegas for Collaborate 2012 (http://collaborate.oaug.org). For the Oracle E-Business Suite community, this is one of the biggest events of the year.

For the uninitiated, Collaborate is the annual conference hosted by the Oracle Applications User's Group (http://www.oaug.org). Unlike Oracle OpenWorld, which is largely an Oracle Corporation marketing event, Collaborate is a community-oriented conference. While there are Oracle Corporation presentations focusing on the latest and greatest products and features, the vast majority of the papers and presentations at Collaborate are from actual users of the Oracle products.

Many of these are actual war stories. Walk-throughs of actual implementations and upgrades. Solutions that that others in the E-Business Suite community have put together for their sites to solve real-world problems that they've encountered. Very often, these are things that are not covered (or are covered poorly) in Oracle-provided documentation.

And it's not just E-Business Suite DBA topics, either! There are plenty of presentations on module-specific issues given by others who have already "been there, done that".

In addition to the standard white-paper presentations, there are also panel discussions and Special Interest Groups (SIGs). The panel discussions and SIGs are usually very lively Q&A sessions with recognized industry experts on a wide range of topics.

Planning an upgrade? There's the two-part OAUG Upgrade SIG (Sessions #10522 and #10722)

Having troubles with cloning E-Business Suite? There's an E-Business Suite Cloning Panel. (Session #9360)

Thinking of moving to Linux? There's a panel for that too! (Session #9361)

I will be giving my presentation, "#9554 - Anatomy of an Upgrade to 12.1.3 (Including Platform Migration)" on Wednesday, April 25^th from 11:00am to 12:00pm i(South Seas E) and I will also be on the Migrations to Linux Panel (#9361), also Wednesday, from 1:00pm to 2:00pm (South Seas F).

And, while you're at it, stop by the RedRiver Solutions booth (Booth #1226). I will be hanging out there and helping to pass out updated versions of John Stouffer's books Oracle E-Business Suite Patching 101 and Oracle E-Business Suite Apps DBA 101.

I hope to see you there!

– James

Quick Status Update

Just a quick status update. After the dissolution of TriOra Group, I became an independent contractor working with RedRiver Solutions on most projects. RedRiver Solutions is a Dallas, TX based IT Consultancy specializing in Oracle and Oracle E-Business Suite.

– James

First Entry

Thus begins my foray into blogging. I suppose I should start with a quick introduction. My name is James Morrow. I have been an Oracle E-Business Suite DBA since about 1993 and have worked as a consultant in that area since 1995. I've been affiliated with a number of "boutique firms" over that time, including Computer Systems Authority (CSA), Nascent Systems, Solution Beacon and, most recently, TriOra Group.

In this blog, I plan to cover various tips, tricks, techniques, pitfalls, practices, and even pratfalls as they relate to the life of an Oracle E-Business Suite DBA. So, stay tuned!