Prerequisites to deploying OCI

Overview

This article outlines the prerequisites for deployment of the Delphix Engine on OCI. The setup user should have experience launching and configuring instances in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure environment. Review and complete the tasks in the next section before deployment.

Prerequisites

1. Contact a Delphix representative to request this capability. Delphix will assist in assuring that all Oracle Cloud requirements are met to successfully run a Delphix Engine with the most appropriate configuration for the use case.

2. Review the Checklist of information required for installation and configuration

3. Review Oracle's Creating an instance documentation

4. Make sure that the Oracle account being used to deploy the Delphix Engine has an appropriate level of permissions to upload files to a Bucket in Object Storage, and use that object to produce a Custom Image.

5. Determine which virtual cloud network (VCN) is being used when launching the virtualization instance. To maximize performance, deploy the Delphix Engine instance in the same VCN/subnet in which the virtual databases (VDBs) will be created.
   Note:

   Provisioning a VDB requires a compute instance running the same database engine as the source. Please note, however, that the target instance only needs storage to accommodate the OS, database platform binaries, etc., because Delphix delivers all of the data files.

6. Make sure that the necessary ports are open.

   Using the Delphix Engine for OCI will require connections to source and target database servers. Such connections require various ports to be open, enabling communications. For a detailed list of the network and port requirements, click the link that corresponds with the relevant database platform.

   • Network and Connectivity Requirements for Oracle Environments

   • Network and Connectivity Requirements for SQL Server Environments

   • Network and Connectivity Requirements for SAP ASE Environments

   • Network and Connectivity Requirements for Db2 Environments

7. Update Security Group (or Security List) settings to accommodate the necessary connections.

   1. Select the same Security Group that your current (or future) non-production compute nodes utilize.

   2. Modify the Security Group to allow access to all of the networking ports used by the Delphix Engine and the various source and target platforms. See Oracle Network Security Groups

8. Allocate storage.

   1. To properly size the initial storage capacity and determine the number and size of Provisioned IOPs Volumes required, first create a list of the data sources intended for making dSources. A data source is typically a production database linked to the Virtualization Engine, enabling to create virtual, full, read-write copies of the source within minutes. The list should include the database name, platform (for example, Oracle or SQL Server), current size (in GB), the estimated number of virtual copies, and retention period (in days) of snapshots (backup copies).

   2. Delphix only supports using Block Volume devices for data storage. These block devices must be attached to the Delphix Engine using the Paravirtualized attach mode (iSCSI is not currently supported). Block Volumes must be provisioned in the same Availability Domain as the Delphix Engine, otherwise, they will not be discoverable. Block Volumes should be configured to use the “Higher performance” performance option. All Block Volumes attached to a single Delphix Engine should be of the same size. A minimum of four (4) Block Volumes should be attached to a Delphix Engine.

9. During the Manual Deployment option, use the guidelines outlined in Virtual machine requirements for OCI