PCA X9-2 – How To: IPMItool Access to Management and Compute Nodes

In a project actually we are looking for several methods how to monitor the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance hardware stack. There are some metrics who are gathered in the Grafana environment like memory and CPU usage, but we are not able to recognize when a compute or management node has a hardware failure. Some of the hardware events are visible in the Service Enclave User Interface, but there is still no mechanism at work to get an alert. And as there is still no EM13c plugin available for the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance X9-2 (no clue if this ever will released as it worked for X8), we need another solution to get informed. IPMItool The ipmitool is a powerful command-line…

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Oracle Cloud Infrastructure CLI – How to fix sign.py:10: CryptographyDeprecationWarning

WSL2 is a game-changer for developers like me. I prefer Oracle Linux 8 for coding in Ansible, Terraform, and OCI-CLI. Setting up Oracle Linux 8.8 on WSL2 from the Microsoft Store was easy. With OCI CLI configured within the Linux environment, managing Oracle Cloud Infrastructure resources became effortless. WSL2 eliminates the need for additional virtualization software, providing a seamless Linux environment on Windows. This integration has significantly improved my development workflow, making tasks like deploying infrastructure and managing cloud resources more accessible. In conclusion, WSL2’s integration with Windows and support for various Linux distributions, including Oracle Linux, has transformed the way I work. If you’re a developer, I highly recommend giving WSL2 a try – it might just revolutionize your…

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Windows Podman & Oracle Container Registry & VS Code – What a Match!

Introduction Podman utilizes a daemonless architecture to run Linux containers on Windows through the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2), providing full Linux kernel compatibility and high performance. Podman Desktop offers a graphical interface for managing containers and images, enhancing usability by integrating seamlessly with WSL2’s capabilities. This combination delivers a powerful container management solution for Windows users, leveraging the strength of Linux containers directly within a Windows environment. Together with the Oracle provided images on the container registry and the very popular Visual Studio Code, you get a powerful platform for Oracle SQL & PL/SQL Development.   Installation Install and Setup Podman Desktop for Windows & Podman For Windows, several install methods like Silent Windows installer, Chocolatey, Scoop and…

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PCA X9-2 – Update 3.0.2-M3.7.1 (302-b1010555) kills your Grafana SMTP Settings

Following the recent PCA upgrade from 3.0.2-M3.5 to 3.0.2-M3.7.1, we encountered an issue where Grafana was unable to send alerts as intended. Since Grafana plays a crucial role in monitoring aspects such as the health state of ZFSSA, restoring this functionality became important. Upon raising a service request (SR), it was identified as a bug that is planned for resolution in version 3.0.2-M3.9, according to support. Therefore, if version 3.0.2-M3.8 is released in the future, we’ll need to verifay the situation again. Previously, there was a MOS note detailing the configuration of SMTP for the earlier software release, identified by Doc ID 2964429.1. Unfortunately, this document is currently unavailable. I am hopeful that it will be updated in the near…

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PCA X9-2 – How To: Storage Expansion with High Performance Storage DE3-24P

Situation The Oracle Private Cloud Appliance X9-2 was delivered at the end 2022 with high capacity storage. For the Oracle PCA X9-2, there are two distinct storage types available, differentiated by their disk characteristics such as type, size, and whether they are HDDs or SSDs. The standard block size for a Block Volume in this system is set at 8k. However, if your specific workload requires a different block size, you can customize the Block Volume at the time of its creation using the tag ‘PCA_blocksize’ (this aspect will be explored in a separate test). The disk shelves within the system are interconnected using dual 100Gb interfaces. Two variants are available:   High Capacity – DE3-24C High Performance – DE3-24P…

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