Oracle Cloud Infrastructure – July 2021 New Releases (Database)
Oracle Cloud infrastructure is continuously evolving with more and more interesting, exciting and useful features. There are so many updates to follow and keep a track of, hence I decided to write a post to consolidate all the updates for the month of July 2021, grouped by services. This post is dedicated to the updates on database service. This is my first attempt, based on the responses I get, I will try to get such a post on a bi-weekly or, maybe weekly basis.
MySQL Database
The month of July started with Oracle announcing the availability of MySQL Database Service in Brazil Southeast (Vinhedo) region. A list of all the regions where this service is currently available is depicted in the below table. For more information please refer to Cloud Regions – Infra and Platform Services. Please note that the official document is yet to be updated (as of 7/26/2021).
More updates followed on MySQL database services including the below:
Tag-based access control
The July 13th update, enabled an administrator to write policies for tag-based access control. This in my personal opinion is a welcomed feature and provides more control over who can have access to the service. For more information, please refer to Tag-based access control.
HeatWave increased capacity and Auto Parallel Load
On July 23rd, Oracle announced the increase in HeatWave (a new, integrated, high-performance, in-memory query accelerator) capacity. MySQL HeatWave now supports the following:
- Up to 64 HeatWave nodes
- MySQL.HeatWave.BM.Standard.E3 shape
- Up to 32 TB of data
HeatWave Auto Parallel Load utility was also made available on the same day to automate the process of preparing and loading tables into HeatWave using an optimized number of parallel load threads. For more information, please refer to “Auto Parallel Load“.
Support for MySQL version 8.0.26
Another update on July 23rd was the support for version 8.0.26. Please note that 8.0.28 is the latest released version of MySQL. Both 8.0.27 and 8.0.28 are not yet released for general availability. For more information, please refer to “MySQL release notes“. No action is required to upgrade minor versions. New MySQL DB Systems are based on the latest MySQL Database version. The existing MySQL DB Systems will be automatically upgraded in the next scheduled maintenance window.
Database
Performance Hub Reports
The first update on database service started with the enhancements in performance hub reports with inclusion of the ability to create, view, and download an active report that contains external database performance data, and the ability to create, view, and download Active Session History (ASH) reports for an external database. You can now visualize both real-time and historical data using the time-range selector to analyze database performance. For more information, please refer to Using Performance Hub Reports.
DataGuard Protection Mode
Another big update in database service was introduction of the ability to choose protection mode between Maximum Performance, Maximum Availability or, Maximum Availability in DataGuard on Exadata, Bare Metal, and Virtual Machine Database Cloud services. For more information, please refer to DataGuard protection modes.
Upgrade Exadata Cloud@Customer
The remaining updates in the database services section released on July 21st were related to the various upgrades on Exadata Cloud@Customer including:
- Upgrade Oracle Grid Infrastructure (GI) on an Exadata Cloud@Customer VM cluster using the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Console or APIs. For more information, refer to upgrading GRID infrastructure.
- Update the operating system image on Exadata Cloud@Customer VM cluster nodes in an automated manner from the OCI console and APIs. For more information, refer to upgrading guest OS.
- Upgrade Oracle Database 19c (Long Term Release) using the Console and the APIs. For more information, refer to upgrading Oracle database.
Network Validation Report
Another update in database services section released on July 21st was the download of network validation report. Once can now validate and inspect the network validation failure report without active involvement from Oracle Cloud Ops in troubleshooting networking configuration issues. A small cavate is that you can only download the network validation report when the VM Cluster Network State life cycle state is “Validation Failed“. For more information, please refer to how to download network validation report using console.
Summary
In this blog, I have tried to consolidate all the new releases/ updates related to database services in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Please stay tuned for more information on the newest updates related to other services in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Do let me know in the comments section about any suggestions over what else you would like to see under this category.
IT-Noesis 