What is ODC Appreciation Day?

The Oracle Developer Community (ODC) Appreciation Day formally known as OTN Appreciation Day, is a great initiative by Tim Hall aka Oracle-Base.com.  Where we take the opportunity to say thanks to the Oracle Developer Community #ThanksODC.

More info on Oracle Developer Community can be found here:
About Oracle Developer Community

When is it?

This year, it is on Thursday 11th October 2018.

You can see my previous post here:
2017 – ODC Appreciation Day : Oracle Exadata Database Machine

You can see a summary of previous years blog posts here:
2016 – OTN Appreciation Day : Summary
2017 – ODC Appreciation Day 2017 : It’s a Wrap (#ThanksODC)

My Contribution : Oracle dcli Utility

When thinking of a subject, Oracle’s dcli Utility on Oracle Exadata Database Machine came to mind due to the frequent use 🙂

What is dcli Utility?

Distributed Command Line Interface (dcli), which it’s main purpose is to execute commands on storage cells on Exadata in parallel.  Which actually is just a Python script.  Those who don’t know Exadata, it’s an Engineered Systems which includes storage in the form of storage cells i.e. servers that have multiple disks utilised by Automatic Storage Management (ASM).  However, the smaller of offer still has 3 storage cells that can go up to 18 storage cells in a rack (elastic configuration).  More info on Exadata can be found here on the latest datasheet (at time of writing):
Exadata X7-2 Datasheet

So as you can imagine, executing commands on 3 servers is tidiuos enough, let alone 18, hence the power and usefulness of dcli!  I don’t just use it for storage cells but compute nodes (database servers), as well as the InfiniBand switches 🙂

More info on dcli can be found in the Exadata Documentation:
Exadata System Software User’s Guide -> 9 Using the dcli Utility

Example usage

Quickly see the version of Exadata Software on your Exadata Machine:

Storage Cells:

[root@v1ex1dbadm01 ~]# dcli -g /opt/oracle.SupportTools/onecommand/cell_group -l root imageinfo | grep "Kernel version\|Active image version"
v1ex1celadm01: Kernel version: 4.1.12-94.8.4.el6uek.x86_64 #2 SMP Sat May 5 16:14:51 PDT 2018 x86_64
v1ex1celadm01: Active image version: 18.1.7.0.0.180821
v1ex1celadm02: Kernel version: 4.1.12-94.8.4.el6uek.x86_64 #2 SMP Sat May 5 16:14:51 PDT 2018 x86_64
v1ex1celadm02: Active image version: 18.1.7.0.0.180821
v1ex1celadm03: Kernel version: 4.1.12-94.8.4.el6uek.x86_64 #2 SMP Sat May 5 16:14:51 PDT 2018 x86_64
v1ex1celadm03: Active image version: 18.1.7.0.0.180821
[root@v1ex1dbadm01 ~]#

Compute Nodes:

[root@v1ex1dbadm01 ~]# dcli -g /opt/oracle.SupportTools/onecommand/dbs_group -l root imageinfo | grep "Kernel version\|Image version"
v1ex1dbadm01: Kernel version: 4.1.12-94.8.4.el6uek.x86_64 #2 SMP Sat May 5 16:14:51 PDT 2018 x86_64
v1ex1dbadm01: Image version: 18.1.7.0.0.180821
v1ex1dbadm02: Kernel version: 4.1.12-94.8.4.el6uek.x86_64 #2 SMP Sat May 5 16:14:51 PDT 2018 x86_64
v1ex1dbadm02: Image version: 18.1.7.0.0.180821
[root@v1ex1dbadm01 ~]#

InfiniBands:

[root@v1ex1dbadm01 ~]# dcli -g /opt/oracle.SupportTools/onecommand/ib_group -l root version | grep "version"
v1ex1sw-iba01: SUN DCS 36p version: 2.2.9-3
v1ex1sw-iba01: BIOS version: SUN0R100
v1ex1sw-ibb01: SUN DCS 36p version: 2.2.9-3
v1ex1sw-ibb01: BIOS version: SUN0R100
[root@v1ex1dbadm01 ~]#

The usage are endless 🙂

When I get a chance, I will create a more in depth blog post about dcli including, how to setup, etc.  I will add the link here, for ease of reference.

Finally Happy ODC Appreciation Day! #ThanksODC #ThanksOTN 🙂

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Thanks

Zed DBA (Zahid Anwar)