Certified Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Consultants
We can design, provision and support your OCI environment.
What are the advantages of OCI over on-premise for hosting Oracle Database?
Lower Costs
BYOL or pay-as-you-go
Easy to scale up hardware
Simple upgrades
What are the database offerings in OCI?
Autonomous Database (ADB)
A pluggable database within a shared highly-available Container Database. There are two ADB database-types available:
- ATP for transaction processing
- ADW for data warehouse
Pros of Autonomous Database:
- No extra charge for database options, packs and features
- VERY cost-effective if you need EE
- Automatic patching and upgrades
- Zero-downtime patching and upgrades (RAC and Data Guard under covers)
- Virtually all administration is automated
Cons of Autonomous Database:
- No OS access; No root nor sysdba access
- Lose complete control over timing of patching and upgrades (limited control is available).
DB System
With DB System you have customer-managed virtual servers preconfigured with Oracle HOME and Oracle Database. In addition to SE2, three preconfigured Enterprise Edition templates are available to choose from – EE, EE High Performance and EE Extreme Performance. DB System provides point and click patching and upgrades (or scripts). Data Guard and RAC are available with EE.
Pros of DB System:
- Lower software costs
- Privileged access (root and sysdba)
- Total control over timing of patches and upgrades
- Very cost-effective if you only need SE2
Cons of DB System:
- Since the servers are customer-managed, SysAdmin and DBA expertise are needed. SkillBuilders handles all SysAdmin and DBA tasks when you host with us.
- Limit one database per VM (multiple PDBs are supported).
Certified Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Consultants
Contact us to schedule a conversation with our technical team, or call 1-401-783-6172
Design
We can plan an APEX hosting cloud environment appropriate for your requirements in terms of scalability, fault tolerance, and security.
There are many possibilities at various price points, including options for migrating existing applications to OCI from on-premises or third party cloud environments.
Provisioning
There’s flexibility where the environment can be built inside of our OCI account or the client’s.
When running in Skillbuilder’s cloud, we take complete responsibility for provisioning, and the client would not usually have or require access to OCI administration functions.
Mentor
We run formal courses on OCI, database, and system administration.
We also also offer training in APEX, SQL, and PL/SQL development. We can even build the environment or application with the client, accomplishing the necessary skills transfer along the way.
Support
There are various options for continuous support services.
Following the commissioning a system or application, support services can be reactive or proactive, with different levels depending on the demands of the application and client needs.
OCI FAQ's
-
What is OCI?
OCI stands for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. It is Oracle’s cloud computing platform, a competitor to AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. OCI provides a broad suite of cloud services to help businesses and organizations run various workloads and applications in the cloud. It provides Oracle Database in two models, Autonomous Database (ADB) and DB System.
Data Centers are located around the globe, making it suitable for various use cases, from small-scale applications to enterprise-grade solutions.
Some of the primary features include:
- Compute: OCI offers multiple compute options, including virtual machines (VMs) with customizable configurations, bare metal instances for high-performance computing, and GPU instances for graphics-intensive workloads.
- Networking: OCI provides Virtual Cloud Networks (VCNs) that allow users to define their own network topology, along with subnets, security rules, and VPN connections to securely connect on-premises data centers to the cloud.
- Storage: OCI offers various storage options, including block storage, object storage, file storage, and archive storage, catering to different application and data storage needs.
- Databases: OCI provides managed database services for Oracle Database, MySQL, and NoSQL databases, offering high availability, automated backups, and scalability.
- Security: OCI incorporates robust security features such as Identity and Access Management (IAM) for access control, Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) for network isolation, and native encryption for data protection.
- Analytics and AI: OCI offers services for data analytics, machine learning, and big data processing, enabling businesses to derive valuable insights from their data.
- Developer Tools: OCI provides tools and services for developers, including APIs, SDKs, and a range of development environments for building and deploying applications.
- Integration and Management: OCI offers services to integrate with existing on-premises infrastructure and other cloud providers, as well as tools for monitoring, logging, and managing resources.
New services and features are still being added.
-
SkillBuilders primary hosting platform is now OCI. What is OCI?
OCI is Oracle Corp’s full featured cloud offering. It compares to AWS, Google Cloud and Azure. It (obviously) has great support for Oracle Database which is available as either Autonomous Database and “DB System”.
-
What are the benefits of hosting a mission-critical application?You concentrate solely on application design and development. SkillBuilders takes complete care of the platform including all standard maintenance tasks, patching and upgrades and custom requests (e.g. cloning, wallet updates for web services and much much more). And, it’s typically the lowest cost solution (consider the costs of hardware, real estate, cooling, software, database and OS administration).
-
Is it secure?Yes. Consider SkillBuilders experience, specifically as related to security: We are HIPAA-compliant and follow all best practices for security. Also consider the vast compliance programs supported by OCI - https://www.oracle.com/corporate/cloud-compliance/. Also AWS - https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/programs/.
-
With the shared package customers share a server and a database. Security is implemented with Oracle user privileges. Dedicated packages provide servers and software exclusively for one customer. Dedicated packages provide customers with the ultimate in control, maintenance, security and performance.
-
Can I run Oracle APEX on Oracle Database SE2 (versus Enterprise Edition)?Yes. In fact the great majority of customers run APEX on SE2. There are a few requirements that dictate the use of EE such as Transparent Encryption or Data Guard. However, even some of these requirements can be eliminated with code.
-
Can I use an older version of the Database (e.g. 19c) with the newest versions of ORDS and APEX?Yes. In fact, as of June 2023, this is part of the standard package (shared or dedicated).
-
Can dedicated package customers clone a production PDB to a development or test PDB?Yes. Customers can have the privileges to clone or, if preferred, SkillBuilders can clone it on demand.
-
The web services calls invoked by my application require a wallet similar to Autonomous DB. Is this supported?Yes. SkillBuilders provides a wallet for OCI DB System (or AWS) that supports most services. We will update the wallet if necessary.