Database Clones Without Storage Snapshot/Clone Technology? Yes, Of Course! You Knew That, Didn’t you?
Oracle Database 11g Release 2 has a bit of a “stealth feature” that few are aware of. The feature is called clonedb which is functionality built into Oracle Database 11g Direct NFS (DNFS). The best way to explain this feature is to pose a short list of questions:
- Do you have NFS mounts?
- Do you have DNFS enabled?
- Do you have an RMAN backup?
- Do you want to quickly and simply provision fully read/write database clones for development/test purposes?
- Do you generally provision development/test instances using your vendor NFS snapshot/clone technology?
- Do you find it too cumbersome to set up development/test clones using your vendor snapshot/clone technology?
If you say yes to most of these then you’ll appreciate the clonedb feature.
Database Clones Without Storage Snapshot/Clone Technology?
This is Part I in the series so at this stage I’ll clearly point out that with Oracle Database 11g Direct NFS clonedb functionality you can create a fully read/write clone database without storage snapshots or clones. Moreover, the clonedb feature is a thin-provisioning approach.
I could type a lot more words about this new feature, but this is a Part I blog entry and since I have a video presentation and a video demonstration of creating and using a direct NFS clone I think I’ll just offer the following links. At only 9 and 3 minutes for the presentation and demonstration videos respectively I hope you’ll find the time for a viewing.
Summary
I’m excited about this feature. In terms of administrative effort, it is by far the easiest way to provision clones for development/test instances that I am aware of. In my assessment it is simple, stable and it performs. I don’t get to say that as often as I’d like to about technology.
Next In This Series
In Part II I’ll cover how adding storage snapshot functionality adds value to Oracle Database 11g Direct NFS clonedb. I’ll also blog about large-scale provisioning using this feature based on a recent test I performed of 64 clones running OLTP in a 8-socket Nehalem EX system running Linux. Future installments on this blog thread will include upcoming patches that improve performance and reference to a MOS note so you don’t fear this is some sort of unsupported feature.
AWESOME! Thanks for this, Kevin: it’s gonna have direct relevance to us in the next 6 months!
(or whenever I can get the SAN guys to give me enough space for a 11gr2 upgrade…)
Noons,
Glad to hear it! And, as always, thanks for stopping by.
So that’s what clonedb is
Hi Tanel,
….yep, that would be it… I though for sure you’d have cracked it by now
This is great! Glad to see someone who knows his stuff is talking about this topic.
As always very useful stuff. A thin-provisioned clone of the backup is brilliant. I know a fair number of customers that struggle managing Dev/QA environments and this will definitely be part of solution.
Extremely useful post – thanks, Kevin!!!
Great.
Thank You
Kevin
Excellent post, presentation and demo.
Thank you very much indeed.
Niall
Niall,
Thanks for stopping by and the kind words!
Awesome feature…:)
Very good blog. I noticed your RMAN backups are image copies so I assume your doing incremental Merge backups of the prod DB. What happens to the clone when the prod backup updates those image copies?
Would it be possible to get the files in another format other than MP4? Perhaps uploading to YouTube or something?
cool feature.. Waiting for 2nd part.. Need to know more how it works.
Wow..Thats fantastic…!!!
This is very cool feature
we are using 11.2.0.2 with direct NFS …!
Thanks for such a nice discription.
Thanks
Raghu
Hi,
it seems the presentations can’t be downloaded any more. Are they available elsewhere?
Cheers,
Duncan.
The download limit expired. Please try again. I apologize.
Hi Kevin,
Again the download limit is on for the first video presentation. Could you release it?
Thanks,
Abe
Abe,
Yes, I’ll fix that annoying thing asap… I’ve been getting pummeled in email too
Abe,
It should be working now. If not, post the URL in a reply.
Thanks, Kevin… great vid and explanation… Chris
there is a startup company that offer this feature in a commercial way: http://www.delphix.com
I know Delphix well:
1) They are partly funded by the same venture capital that funded PolyServe (were I was the Chief Software Architect for Database Solutions)
2) One of the early technology innovators at Delphix was Boris Klots who I worked with closely on Oracle’s performance regression engineering efforts while I was in Sequent Advanced Oracle Engineering. At the time, Oracle did all Oracle Parallel Server performance regression testing on clustered Sequent hardware (no surprise since it was the dev platform for the first Unix release of OPS).
3) Delphix was making recruitment moves on me when I was working out my move from Oracle Server Technologies Exadata Development to EMC Greenplum. So,
4) I nudged by fellow Oaktable Network friend Kyle Hailey to give Delphix a call. Kyle is doing performance engineering now at Delphix.
…that about covers it
It is a ******really***** small world.