Since over one and a half year, this week I was back in an onsite training, live people, live teaching. With a motivated junior DBA class, we started with all about Oracle architecture based on our Trivadis training O-AI – Oracle Architecture and Internals. The training is a mix between slides, demos and labs. Therefore during the course we run the training environments in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, build by Terraform (Credits to Stefan Oehrli from oradba.ch which has ramped up the whole stuff). After the course at the end of the month, the environments will be cleaned up. And what’s next?
Training Environments
There are a lot of possibilities to get a deeper knowledge of all this Oracle stuff like processes, data encryption, multitenancy, datapump and so on:
- Virtual Box Machines – for example the pre-defined HOL VM from Mike Dietrich
- Local virtual machines
- Test environments in the company
- Oracle LiveSQL
- Docker Images from Oracle
- … and so on…
But my actual favorite is Oracle LiveLabs!
Oracle LiveLabs
This platform is not only for DBAs, it has a lot of workshops for Application Developers, Data Scientists and DevOps Engineers too. There are different workshop types available:
- get your free Oracle Cloud Infrastructure training environment for free during a time period like Oracle Database 19c New Features – run on LiveLabs
- workshops which are running in a free tenancy
- workshops what you can do in your own paid tenancy
At the moment there are 21 workshops where you get a live environment with all components you need virtual machines or database in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure like Oracle Multitenant Fundamentals, Database 19c – Automatic Indexing, 21c New Features on Autonomous Database and many more. All workshops are very well described, from the access to the initial setup and finally for the workshop himself too.
In this case I have decided to start the Oracle Multitenant lab to gather more information how PDB Snapshot Copy works.
1st – Search your training in the available workshops and press Launch
2nd – Define where the Workshop should run
In this case, I want to reserve an environment. This is not possible for all workshops, you can see that in the workshop details if it’s possible to the an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure setup.
3rd – Define the Start Date and propose your SSH Public Key
With the key, you can get access to the training servers by SSH. In this case I want to start the workshop immediately. Otherwise define a start and end date. If you don’t want to start now, you will get a confirmation that the workshop is reserved and an email at the day where the workshop starts with the credential information.
4rd – View my Reservation
After some minutes, the status for the workshop is updated. As you can see here, in about three minutes from now, the environment should be ready. You will receive a confirmation mail.
5th – Launch Workshop
When the workshop is ready, the workshop can be launched.
6th – Workshop Details
All information you need is in the details like:
- User name
- Initial password for OCI
- Compartment
- Instance public IP
Here you have also the chance to extend your workshop reservation time. Follow the Get Started instructions to the bottom and push the button to move on the introduction. Step by step you are guide through the login and setup process. All labs contain a manual how to connect and to do the initial setup like starting listeners or get scripts from the OCI Object Storage.
There are the connection options how you can interact with the LiveLab:
- Connect using Cloud Shell
- Connect using MAC or a Windows CYGWIN Emulator
- Connect using Putty
Example code for the multitenancy lab preparation:
Summary
Oracle LiveLabs is another great opportunity to learn and train new stuff. All you have to take care now is to follow the workshop instructions and take care about the limited time. Enjoy it, learn new stuff and have fun! Oracle LiveLabs are easy to join, easy to set up and well described. This is why I love it 🙂