We recently had a support call from a client that started having performance issues with their P6 database during the pre-work phase of their turnaround. We looked at the Oracle 11.2.0.4 enterprise database and found a massive amount of archive logs being chewed up. In fact, it was on a scale of 1-2 GB of logs within 2-5 minutes on average. With that kind of volume it would not take long for a server to receive the dreaded Oracle error message ORA-00257: archiver error. When this happens the database usually needs more space on the device where the archive log files are stored, which results in the database not allowing any more transactions until the issue is corrected.

I woke up with little stress or angst the other day despite the fact that I knew we were replacing a memory module on Emerald’s Primavera-in-a-Box solution that was running production workloads for a client in the energy industry.

The Oracle Database Appliance (ODA) is part of Oracle’s flagship Engineered Systems that are designed to optimize the entire hardware and software technology stack to deliver extreme performance, reliability and high availability. Now while there are many advantages, we want to highlight how much this system reduces deployment and database provisioning time down to a few hours compared to the multiple weeks it would take using traditional legacy systems.

In our last update we discussed the installation of the Oracle Database Appliance (ODA). Today I am writing to share an update on our latest project milestone, the connection of the ODA to the ZFS storage appliance.

We are just at the beginning of a project to migrate our client's Primavera databases and applications onto multiple Oracle Database Appliance X4-2s (ODAs) and Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance ZS3-2s (ZSAs) in multiple datacenters, implementing the Oracle Maximum Availability Architecture to ensure the highest standard of availability is maintained. They have had issues in the past with their system becoming unavailable during a turnaround and they have acquired these appliances and contracted Emerald Associates to ensure that experience is not repeated.