Migration Challenges and Process from IBM AIX

to Oracle Solaris on SPARC SuperCluster

Juris Trošins juris.trosins@dbacc.lv

www.dbacc.lv

Who Am I

• More than third of my life with Oracle tech

• OCE, OCP, OCM

• Co-founder of DBA Competence Center Ltd.

• Delivering Oracle University training courses

• Frequent speaker at LVOUG, UKOUG, Harmony and other technology seminars

What We Do

• DBA Outsourcing

• Remote consulting

• Oracle Software

• Oracle Hardware

• Oracle Education

Agenda

• What is Oracle SPARC SuperCluster

• SuperCluster architecture

• Migration challenges

• Migration process

Oracle Engeneered Systems

Oracle SPARC SuperCluster

SuperCluster SuperCluster T5-8

Half Rack Full Rack

Processors 8 16

Memory 2TB 4TB

Exadata Storage Servers 4 8

• Runs SPARC Solaris 10/11

• Oracle VM for SPARC (ldoms and zones)

SuperCluster Half-Rack

• 2 x SPARC T5-8 (128 cores, 2TB memory)

• Each T5-8 configured with: – 4 x SPARC T5 processors, 64 cores

– 1 TB memory

– 4 x InfiniBand HCAs (dual port)

– 4 x 10GbE NICs (dual port)

– 8 x 900GB SAS disks

– Optional Fiber channel cards

– 1-4 Domains

SuperCluster Half-Rack

• Storage – 4 Exadata Storage Servers (192TB HC or 57.6 TB HP disks)

– ZS3-ES (80 TB disk and 292 GB write-optimized SSD)

• Switches – 3 x InfiniBand 36 port switches

– GbE Management switch

Half-Rack Configurations

Full-Rack Configurations

Customer Challenges

• Existing infrastructure – First migratable database – 2TB, 24x7, OLTP type – Platform is IBM P7, virtualized with LPARs – Application servers run on «some» virtualization

• Goals – Switch to unified platform – Consolidate databases and application servers – Keep critical database workload isolated to ensure

availability – Boost performance – Ease management overhead

Migration Project

Migration Project

Migration Challenges

• Switch from IBM AIX to Oracle Solaris

• Upgrade existing databases

• Minimize downtime

• Consolidate application servers to Weblogic

• Extend competency to new technology

Migration Options

• Full expdp/impdp

• DataGuard

• Cross-platform duplicate

• Transportable database

• Various replicataion cases (streams,GG)

• Incrementally updatable transportable tablespaces

Full Expdp/Impdp

• Export to dump and import from dump takes too long time

• One LOB takes ~30% of database size

• Possible to split data into several network import streams, import LONG separately

• Possible to split LOB by rowid ranges

• Still takes too long

• Solution is complicated and not error prone

DataGuard

• Data Guard Support for Heterogeneous Primary and Physical Standbys in Same Data Guard Configuration (Doc ID 413484.1)

• AIX <-> Solaris not supported due to BUG 12702521 (controlfile incompatibility)

Cross-Platform Duplicate

• RMAN DUPLICATE/RESTORE/RECOVER Mixed Platform Support (Doc ID 1079563.1)

• Works only for certain combinations

– Solaris x86-64 <-> Linux x86-64

– HP-UX PARISC <-> HP-UX Itanium

– Win Itanium <-> Win x86-64

Transportable Database

• Source DB must be opened read-only

• Downtime takes too long

Replication

• Old datatypes

• Complicated process

TTS

• Main preparation done with source DB accessible

• All restrictions of TTS approach apply

• Estimated downtime promises to be ~45minutes

TTS

• Initial full backup:

backup for transport allow

inconsistent incremental level 0

tablespace <list of tablespaces>

format ‘<place of backup’;

Backup

• Subsequent incremental backups: backup for transport allow

inconsistent incremental level 1

tablespace <list of tbs> format

‘<backup dest>’;

• Or with SCN backup for transport allow

inconsistent incremental from scn

<scn before last bckp> tablespace

<list of tbs> format ‘<backup dest>’;

Restore

• Restore full backup restore from platform 'AIX-Based Systems (64-bit)' foreign datafile <file list> format ‘<dest>' from backupset ‘<bset name>’;

• Roll forward restored files recover from platform 'AIX-Based Systems (64-bit)' foreign datafilecopy

‘<list of files>’

from backupset

‘<bset name>';

Final backup

• Place tablespaces in read-only mode

• Take final backup and TTS expdp dump backup for transport incremental

level 1 tablespace <tablespaces>

format ‘<backup dest>' datapump

format '<backup dest>';

• Downtime starts NOW!

Final restore

• Apply final incremental level 1 backup to datafiles

• Restore TTS dump restore from platform 'AIX-Based Systems

(64-bit)' dump file ‘<dump name>'

datapump destination ‘<where to restore>'

from backupset '<backupset name>’;

• Import TTS dump

• Place tablespaces read-write

• Downtime ends NOW!

Q/A

@juristrosins

juris.trosins@dbacc.lv

(+371) 29 427247

www.dbacc.lv