The Grafana Plugins for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring are back!

In September 2019 I wrote a blog post how to monitor an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Autonomous database with Grafana plugin oci-datasource. But some weeks after publication, the plugin was not available on the Grafana page anymore. And only Oracle and Grafana had a clue why. Now everything will be fine now. Since the 6th of October, there are two new Grafana plugins available for download. They both don’t require a Grafana enterprise account. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Metrics Data Source Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Logging Data Source The first one is a successor of the former oci-datasource plugin, the second allows to get logs from OCI resources like Compute or Storage. As an infrastructure guy, let’s install the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Metrics…

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Let’s IPSec VPN – How to connect your Unifi Security Gateway to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

When I connect from home to the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure normally I used a Bastion Host, an Open VPN compute instance or Public IPs.  Some of the cool stuff like MV2OCI (which transfers data from on-premises to OCI) or integration of an ADB instance in my local running Oracle Enterprise Manager are referred to direct cloud connections. A SSH reverse tunnel works fine, but this cannot be a permanent solution for my lab environment. At home I have an Unifi Security Gateway (USG) up an running at home. This gateway has the capability, to create site-to-site VPN connections. Good: The Oracle Cloud Infrastruicture VPN service is for free, and I don’t expect over 10 TB outbound traffic. Time to create…

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Oracle Cloud Infrastructure – Security first: Cloud Guard and Security Zones – a first View

Two new Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Cloud Security Services Good news: Oracle has provided two new services for cloud security. Cloud Guard to get an overview of existing possible security breaches and Security Zones, which allows to create a full restricted compartment.  In this blog, I will give you a short overview about this brand new services. Cloud Guard The Cloud Guard service helps you to identify security issues in your tenancy. Before the first use, it has to be enabled and a base region and for a minimum one compartment has to be selected. It needs a new policy which Cloud Guard allows to gather information in your tenancy. Oracle Cloud Guard discovers available object in compartments like Compute Instances,…

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Windows 10 WSL 2, Docker and Oracle – a perfect Partnership

I admit it, I was not a friend of Oracle databases running in Docker containers for a long time. My database systems for testing and demo purposes were all running in VMware, Virtual Box or in the Oracle Cloud. But I have used the Windows Subsystem for Linux since beginning, to work with the Oracle Oracle Cloud Infrastructure CLI, Git Integration etc.. And what I really like is the WSL extension for Visual Studio Code which gives me to chance, to edit Ansible Vault files in Windows without any additional Linux based VM running. With the update of the existing Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) architecture to version 2, the Docker Desktop for Windows is now fully integrated and able…

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Oracle Enterprise Manager 13c Release 4 Update 5 (13.4.0.5) – Time to Patch the OMS

Availability and Information Release Update 13.4.0.5 Since some days, the Release Update 13.4.0.5 for the Oracle Enterprise Manager 13c Release 4 is available in My Oracle Support. Time to update my lab environment. Note: This blog post describes how to apply the RU on an Oracle Enterprise Manager 13 Release 4 Oracle Management Server which is running on an Oracle Linux 7.6 machine. Applying the RU for agents is not part of of this blog post. For agent patching please visit readme of Patch 31544641: Oracle Enterprise Manager 13c Release 4 Platform Update 5 (13.4.0.5) for Oracle Management Agent. The RU for the Oracle Management Server is generic and the compressed patch file has the size of 964.6 MB. Useful…

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