Oracle on Azure

Microsoft Azure is an authorized cloud environment for running Oracle Database. When migrating Oracle software and workloads from on-premises to Microsoft Azure, Oracle provides license mobility.

Microsoft and Oracle’s cloud interoperability partnership means you can rely on tested, validated, and supported deployments of Oracle enterprise and custom applications on Azure with Oracle databases—Real Application Clusters (RAC), Exadata, and Autonomous Database—deployed in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

[Update - July 2022] - Microsoft has teamed up with Oracle to launch a new service called “Oracle Database Service for Azure.” The latest offering provides Microsoft Azure customers access to databases running in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). Oracle Database Service for Azure builds on a three-year-old partnership between Microsoft and Oracle. Both companies launched an interconnect service in 11 regions back in 2019, which makes it easier for enterprises to run workloads across Oracle Cloud and Microsoft Azure. Oracle claims that users can achieve a latency of fewer than two milliseconds for workloads in multi-cloud environments. Enterprise customers can now provision and manage Oracle-hosted database services directly within the Azure cloud dashboard and do not need to pay additional charges for data migration between OCI and Azure. 

  • Oracle databases on Azure infrastructure:
    • Oracle Database 12.2, and 18.3 Enterprise Edition
    • Oracle Database 12.2, and 18.3 Standard Edition
    • Oracle Database 19.3
  • WebLogic Server with Azure Service Integrations
  • High availability and disaster recovery options:
    • Oracle Data Guard, Active Data Guard with FSFO, Sharding or Golden Gate on Azure infrastructure in conjunction with Availability Zones
    • Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) in Azure using Azure VMware Solution or FlashGrid SkyCluster
    • Azure Site Recovery
  • Backup Oracle Workloads
    • Azure Backup
    • Oracle RMAN and optionally use Azure Blob Fuse to mount a highly redundant Azure Blob Storage account and write your RMAN backups to it for added resiliency.
  • Oracle Database Cloud Services (Autonomous Database, RAC, Exadata, DBaaS, Single Node) in conjunction with Oracle software running in Azure.
Oracle RAC is designed to mitigate the failure of a single node in an on-premises multi-node cluster configuration. It relies on two on-premises technologies which are not native to hyper-scale public cloud environments: network multi-cast and shared disk. If your database solution requires Oracle RAC in Azure, you need 3rd party software to enable these technologies.

The three options for Oracle Real Applications Clusters (RAC) on Azure available are:
None of the above RAC solutions for Azure are supported by Oracle. RAC is not supported by Oracle in any third party cloud.

High availability and disaster recovery for Oracle Database Enterprise Edition (without relying on Oracle RAC) can be achieved on Azure using Data Guard, Active Data Guard, or Oracle Golden Gate, with two databases on two separate virtual machines.

With Oracle Data Guard, high availability can be achieved with a primary database in one virtual machine, a secondary (standby) database in another virtual machine, and one-way replication set up between them. The result is read access to the copy of the database. 

If you need read-write access to the copy of the database, you can use Oracle Active Data Guard

With Oracle GoldenGate, you can configure bi-directional replication between the two databases. 

Despite having an HA and DR solution architected in Azure, you want to ensure you have a backup strategy in place to restore your database.

While you can use a single disk if that meets your performance needs - you can improve the effective IOPS performance if you use multiple attached disks, spread database data across them, and then use Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM).

To get a list of currently available "Bring Your Own License" Virtual Machine images published by Oracle in the Azure Marketplace, run the following command:
az vm image list --publisher oracle -o table --all

Oracle has certified these applications to run in Azure when connecting to an Oracle database via the Azure / Oracle Cloud interconnect solution:
  • E-Business Suite - suite of applications including Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
  • JD Edwards EnterpriseOne - integrated applications suite of comprehensive enterprise resource planning software
  • PeopleSoft - suite includes human resource management systems (HRMS), customer relationship management (CRM), financials and supply chain management (FSCM), and enterprise performance management (EPM)
  • Oracle Retail applications
  • Oracle Hyperion Financial Management
You can use Oracle Database Cloud Services (Autonomous Database, RAC, Exadata, DBaaS, Single Node) in conjunction with Oracle software running in Azure.

High availability in Azure can be achieved by setting up two Oracle databases in two availability zones with Oracle Data Guard, or by using Oracle Database Exadata Cloud Service in OCI with database is deployed in two subnets or in VMs in OCI in two availability domains with Oracle Data Guard.

In comparison to Azure, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) claims to provide the lowest TCO for Oracle Databases and applications besides other benefits.

Related - Notes from 2018

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