Oracle University Podcast

When your business runs on data, even a few seconds of downtime can hurt. That's why this episode focuses on what keeps Oracle Database@AWS running when real-world problems strike.
 
Hosts Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham are joined by Senior Principal Database Instructor Rashmi Panda, who takes us inside the systems that keep databases resilient through failures, maintenance, and growing workloads.
 
Oracle Database@AWS Architect Professional: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/oracle-databaseaws-architect-professional/155574
Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/
X: https://x.com/Oracle_Edu
 
Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, Anna Hulkower, Kris-Ann Nansen, Radhika Banka, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode.
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Episode Transcript:

00:00
Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started!
00:26
Lois: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I'm Lois Houston, Director of Communications and Adoption with Customer Success Services, and with me is Nikita Abraham, Team Lead: Editorial Services with Oracle University.
Nikita: Hi everyone! In our last episode, we explored the security and migration strengths of Oracle Database@AWS. Today, we're joined once again by Senior Principal Database Instructor Rashmi Panda to look at how the platform keeps your database available and resilient behind the scenes.
01:00
Lois: It's really great to have you with us, Rashmi. As many of you may know, keeping critical business applications running smoothly is essential for success. And that's why it's so important to have deployments that are highly resilient to unexpected failures, whether those failures are hardware-, software-, or network-related. With that in mind, Rashmi, could you tell us about the Oracle technologies that help keep the database available when those kinds of issues occur?
Rashmi: Databases deployed in Oracle Database@AWS are built on Oracle's Foundational High Availability Architecture. Oracle Real Application Cluster or Oracle RAC is an Active-Active architecture where multiple database instances are concurrently running on separate servers, all accessing the same physical database stored in a shared storage to simultaneously process various application workloads.
Even though each instance runs on a separate server, they collectively appear as a single unified database to the application. As the workload grows and demands additional computing capacity, then new nodes can be added to the cluster to spin up new database instances to support additional computing requirements. This enables you to scale out your database deployments without having to bring down your application and eliminates the need to replace existing servers with high-capacity ones, offering a more cost-effective solution.
02:19
Nikita: That's really interesting, Rashmi. It sounds like Oracle RAC offers both scalability and resilience for mission-critical applications. But of course, even the most robust systems require regular maintenance to keep them running at their best. So, how does planned maintenance affect performance? 
Rashmi: Maintenance on databases can take a toll on your application uptime. Database maintenance activities typically include applying of database patches or performing updates. Along with the database updates, there may also be updates to the host operating system. These operations often demand significant downtime for the database, which consequently leads to slightly higher application downtime.
Oracle Real Application Cluster provides rolling patching and rolling upgrades feature, enabling patching and upgrades in a rolling fashion without bringing down the entire cluster that significantly reduces the application downtime. 
03:10
Lois: And what happens when there's a hardware failure? How does Oracle keep things running smoothly in that situation?
Rashmi: In the event of an instance or a hardware failure, Oracle RAC ensures automatic service failover. This means that if one of the instance or node in the cluster goes down, the system transparently failovers the service to an available instance in the cluster, ensuring minimal disruption to your application.
This feature enhances the overall availability and resilience of your database. 
03:39
Lois: That sounds like a powerful way to handle unexpected issues. But for businesses that need even greater resilience and can't afford any downtime, are there other Oracle solutions designed to address those needs?
Rashmi: Oracle Exadata is the maximum availability architecture database platform for Oracle databases. Core design principle of Oracle Exadata is built around redundancy, consisting of networking, power supplies, database, and storage servers and their components.
This robust architecture ensures protection against the failure of any individual component, effectively guaranteeing continuous database availability. The scale out architecture of Oracle Exadata allows you to start your deployment with two database servers and three storage servers, having different number of CPU cores and different sizes and types of storage to meet the current business needs.
04:26
Lois: And if a business suddenly finds demand growing, how does the system handle that? Is it able to keep up with increased needs without disruptions?
Rashmi: As the demand increases, the system can be easily expanded by adding more servers, ensuring that the performance and capacity grow with your business requirements. Exadata Database Service deployment in Oracle Database@AWS leverages this foundational technologies to provide high availability of database system. This is achieved by provisioning databases using Oracle Real Application Cluster, hosted on the redundant infrastructure provided by Oracle Exadata Infrastructure Platform.
This deployment architecture provides the ability to scale compute and storage to growing resource demands without the need for downtime. You can scale up the number of enabled CPUs symmetrically in each node of the cluster when there is a need for higher processing power or you can scale out the infrastructure by adding more database and storage servers up to the Exadata Infrastructure model limit, which in itself is huge enough to support any large workloads.
The Exadata Database Service running on Oracle RAC instances enables any maintenance on individual nodes or patching of the database to be performed with zero or negligible downtime. The rolling feature allows patching one instance at a time, while services seamlessly failover to the available instance, ensuring that the application experienced little to no disruption during maintenance.
Oracle RAC, coupled with Oracle Exadata redundant infrastructure, protects the Database Service from any single point of failure. This fault-tolerant architecture features redundant networking and mirrored disk, enabling automatic failover in the event of a component failure. Additionally, if any node in the cluster fails, there is zero or negligible disruption to the dependent applications.
06:09
Nikita: That's really impressive, having such strong protection against failures and so little disruption, even during scaling and maintenance. But let's say a company wants those high-availability benefits in a fully managed environment, so they don't have to worry about maintaining the infrastructure themselves. Is there an option for that?
Rashmi: Similar to Oracle Exadata Database Service, Oracle Autonomous Database Service on dedicated infrastructure in Oracle Database@AWS also offers the same feature, with the key difference being that it's a fully managed service. This means customers have zero responsibility for maintaining and managing the Database Service.
This again, uses the same Oracle RAC technology and Oracle Exadata infrastructure to host the Database Service, where most of the activities of the database are fully automated, providing you a highly available database with extreme performance capability. It provides an elastic database deployment platform that can scale up storage and CPU online or can be enabled to autoscale storage and compute.
Maintenance activities on the database like database updates are performed automatically without customer intervention and without the need of downtime, ensuring seamless operation of applications.
07:20
Lois: Can we shift gears a bit, Rashmi? Let's talk about protecting data and recovering from the unexpected. What Oracle technologies help guard against data loss and support disaster recovery for databases?
Rashmi: Oracle Database Autonomous Recovery Service is a centralized backup management solution for Oracle Database services in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
It automatically takes backup of your Oracle databases and securely stores them in the cloud. It ensures seamless data protection and rapid recovery for your database. It is a fully managed solution that eliminates the need for any manual database backup management, freeing you from associated overhead.
It implements an incremental forever backup strategy, a highly efficient approach where only the changes since the last backup are identified and backed up. This approach drastically reduces the time and storage space needed for backup, as the size of the incremental changes is significantly lower than the full database backup.
08:17
Nikita: And what's the benefit of using this backup approach?
Rashmi: The benefit of this approach is that your backups are completed faster, with much lesser compute and network resources, while still guaranteeing the full recoverability of your database in the event of a failure. You can achieve zero data loss with this backup service by enabling the real-time protection option, while minimizing the data loss by recovering data up to the last subsecond.
It is highly recommended to enable this option for mission-critical databases that cannot tolerate any data loss, whether due to a ransomware attack or due to an unplanned outage. The protection policy can retain the protected database backups for a minimum of 14 days to a maximum of 95 days.
The recovery service requires and enforces the backups are encrypted. These backups are compressed and encrypted during the backup process. The integrity of the backups is continuously validated without placing a burden on the production database.
This ensures that the stored backup data is consistent and recoverable when needed. This protects against malicious user activity or any ransomware attack. With strict policy-based retention strategy, it prevents modification or deletion of backup data by malicious users.
09:30
Lois: Now, let's look at the next layer of protection. Rashmi, can you tell us about Oracle Active Data Guard?
Rashmi: Oracle Active Data Guard provides highly available data protection and disaster recovery for Enterprise Oracle Databases. It creates and manages one or more transactionally consistent standby copies of production database, which is the active primary.
The standby database is isolated from production environment located miles away in a distance data center, ensuring the standby remains protected and unaffected, even if the primary is impacted by a disaster.
In the event of a disaster or data corruption occurring at the primary, the standby can take over the role as new primary, thus allowing business to continue its operations uninterrupted. It keeps the standby database in sync with the production database by continuously applying change logs from production.
10:25
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10:45
Nikita: Welcome back! Rashmi, how does Oracle Active Data Guard operate in practice?
Rashmi: It uses the knowledge of Oracle Database block format to continuously validate physical blocks or logical intrablock corruption during redo transport and change apply. With automatic block repair feature, whenever any corrupt block is detected in the primary or the standby database, then it is automatically repaired by transferring a good copy of the block from other destination that holds it. This is handled transparently without any error being reported in the application.
It enables you to upload the read-only workloads and backup operations to the standby database, reducing the load on the production database. You can achieve zero data loss at any distance by configuring a special synchronization mechanism known as parsing.
File systems form the attack surface for ransomware. Since Active Data Guard replicates the data at the memory level, any ransomware attack on the primary database will never be replicated to the standby database. This allows for a safe failover to the standby without any data loss, and shielding the database from effects of the attack.
You can enable automatic failover of the primary database to a chosen standby database without any manual intervention by configuring a Data Guard Broker. The Data Guard Broker continuously monitors the primary database and automatically performs a failover to the standby when the predefined failover conditions are met. Active Data Guard enables you to perform database maintenance or database software upgrades with almost zero or minimal downtime.
12:18
Lois: And how does disaster recovery work for Exadata Database Service in Oracle Database@AWS?
Rashmi: Exadata Database Service, by design, are already protected against local failures by use of technologies like Oracle RAC and Oracle Exadata.
Now, by deploying Exadata Database Service across multiple availability zones in an AWS region, it can ensure that your database services remain resilient to site failures. It leverages Oracle Active Data Guard to create standby in a separate availability zone such that if the primary availability zone is affected, then all application traffic can be routed to the database services in the secondary availability zone, restoring business continuity of the application back to normal.
Through continuous validation of the data blocks at both the primary and the standby database, any potential corruption is detected and prevented. This ensures data integrity and protection across the entire database service.
By leveraging zero data loss Autonomous Recovery Service, the database ensures that the backup remains secure and unaffected by ransomware. This enables rapid restoration of clean, uncompromised data in the event of an attack.
Periodic patching and upgrades are performed online in a rolling fashion with little to no impact on the application uptime using a combination of Oracle RAC and Oracle Active Data Guard technologies. For all resource-intensive workloads like database backup or generating monthly reports, which are read-only in nature, they can be uploaded to the standby, reducing the load on the production database.
In the cross-availability zone DR setup, you have the flexibility to configure Active Data Guard to use either the AWS network or the OCI network for keeping database redo logs to the standby database.
Choosing which network to use for the traffic is entirely at the enterprise discretion. However, both are Oracle maximum availability–compliant and the setup is pretty simple. If the network traffic being used is OCI network or AWS network, then respective cloud provider is responsible for ensuring the reliability.
You have to take into account the different charges that each cloud provider may have. And you can provision multiple standby databases using the console. Optionally, you may set up a broker manually to enable automatic failover capability.
14:30
Nikita: We just covered cross-availability-zone protection. But what if an entire AWS region goes down?
Rashmi: This is where we can provide an additional level of protection by provisioning cross-region disaster recovery for your Exadata Database Service in Oracle Database@AWS. 
This deployment protects your database against regional disasters. You can provision another DR environment in a different AWS region that supports Oracle Database@AWS. This deployment, together with the cross-availability zone deployment, complements your highly available and protected database service deployment in Oracle Database@AWS.
Under the hood, it uses the same Oracle Database technologies that include Oracle Active Data Guard, OCI Autonomous Recovery Service, Oracle Exadata, Oracle RAC to provide the same capabilities as in case of cross-availability zone deployment.
Here too, you have the flexibility to configure Oracle Active Data Guard to use either AWS network or OCI network for shipping database redo logs to the standby. And for the network traffic options, the feature remains the same, except a small difference with respect to chargeback.
When using OCI Network for cross-region deployment, there is no charge for the first 10 TB of data transfer per month. Beyond that, standard OCI charges would apply. When using AWS network, you may refer to AWS charging sheet for the cross-region traffic.
15:49
Nikita: Thank you so much, Rashmi, for this insightful episode.
Lois: Yes, thank you! And if you want to dive deeper into the topics we covered today, go to mylearn.oracle.com and search for the Oracle Database@AWS Architect Professional course. Until next time, this is Lois Houston…
Nikita: And Nikita Abraham, signing off!
16:13
That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.

In this episode, hosts Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham are joined by special guests Samvit Mishra and Rashmi Panda for an in-depth discussion on security and migration with Oracle Database@AWS. Samvit shares essential security best practices, compliance guidance, and data protection mechanisms to safeguard Oracle databases in AWS, while Rashmi walks through Oracle's powerful Zero-Downtime Migration (ZDM) tool, explaining how to achieve seamless, reliable migrations with minimal disruption.
 
Oracle Database@AWS Architect Professional: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/oracle-databaseaws-architect-professional/155574
Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/
X: https://x.com/Oracle_Edu
 
Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, Anna Hulkower, Kris-Ann Nansen, Radhika Banka, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode.
 
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Episode Transcript:
00:00
Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started!
00:26
Nikita: Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I'm Nikita Abraham, Team Lead: Editorial Services with Oracle University, and with me is Lois Houston, Director of Communications and Adoption with Customer Success Services.
Lois: Hello again! We're continuing our discussion on Oracle Database@AWS and in today's episode, we're going to talk about the aspects of security and migration with two special guests: Samvit Mishra and Rashmi Panda. Samvit is a Senior Manager and Rashmi is a Senior Principal Database Instructor. 
00:59
Nikita: Hi Samvit and Rashmi! Samvit, let's begin with you. What are the recommended security best practices and data protection mechanisms for Oracle Database@AWS?
Samvit: Instead of everyone using the root account, which has full access, we create individual users with AWS, IAM, Identity Center, or IAM service.
And in addition, you must use multi-factor authentication. So basically, as an example, you need a password and a temporary code from virtual MFA app to log in to the console. 
Always use SSL or TLS to communicate with AWS services. This ensures data in transit is encrypted. Without TLS, the sensitive information like credentials or database queries can be intercepted.
AWS CloudTrail records every action taken in your AWS account-- who did what, when, and from where. This helps with audit, troubleshooting, and detecting suspicious activity. So you must set up API and user activity logging with AWS CloudTrail. 
Use AWS encryption solutions along with all default security controls within AWS services. To store and manage keys by using transparent data encryption, which is enabled by default, Oracle Database@AWS uses OCI vaults. Currently, Oracle Database@AWS doesn't support the AWS Key Management Service.
You should also use advanced managed security services such as Amazon Macie, which assists in discovering and securing sensitive data that is stored in Amazon S3. 
03:08
Lois: And how does Oracle Database@AWS deliver strong security and compliance?
Samvit: Oracle Database@AWS enforces transparent data encryption for all data at REST, ensuring stored information is always protected. Data in transit is secured using SSL and Native Network Encryption, providing end-to-end confidentiality.
Oracle Database@AWS also uses OCI Vault for centralized and secure key management. This allows organizations to manage encryption keys with fine-grained control, rotation policies, and audit capabilities to ensure compliance with regulatory standards. At the database level, Oracle Database@AWS supports unified auditing and fine-grained auditing to track user activity and sensitive operations.
At the resource level, AWS CloudTrail and OCI audit service provide comprehensive visibility into API calls and configuration changes. At the database level, security is enforced using database access control lists and Database Firewall to restrict unauthorized connections. At the VPC level, network ACLs and security groups provide layered network isolation and access control. Again, at the database level, Oracle Database@AWS enforces access controls to Database Vault, Virtual Private Database, and row-level security to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data. And at a resource level, AWS IAM policies, groups, and roles manage user permissions with the fine-grained control.
05:27
Lois Samvit, what steps should users be taking to keep their databases secure?
Samvit: Security is not a single feature but a layered approach covering user access, permissions, encryption, patching, and monitoring.
The first step is controlling who can access your database and how they connect. At the user level, strong password policies ensure only authorized users can login. And at the network level, private subnets and network security group allow you to isolate database traffic and restrict access to trusted applications only.
One of the most critical risks is accidental or unauthorized deletion of database resources. To mitigate this, grant delete permissions only to a minimal set of administrators. This reduces the risk of downtime caused by human error or malicious activity.
Encryption ensures that even if the data is exposed, it cannot be read. By default, all databases in OCI are encrypted using transparent data encryption. For migrated databases, you must verify encryption is enabled and active. Best practice is to rotate the transparent data encryption master key every 90 days or less to maintain compliance and limit exposure in case of key compromise.
Unpatched databases are one of the most common entry points for attackers. Always apply Oracle critical patch updates on schedule. This mitigates known vulnerabilities and ensures your environment remains protected against emerging threats.
07:33
Nikita: Beyond what users can do, are there any built-in features or tools from Oracle that really help with database security?
Samvit: Beyond the basics, Oracle provides powerful database security tools. Features like data masking allow you to protect sensitive information in non-production environments. Auditing helps you monitor database activity and detect anomalies or unauthorized access.
Oracle Data Safe is a managed service that takes database security to the next level. It can access your database configuration for weaknesses. It can also detect risky user accounts and privileges, identify and classify sensitive data. It can also implement controls such as masking to protect that data. And it can also continuously audit user activity to ensure compliance and accountability.
Now, transparent data encryption enables you to encrypt sensitive data that you store in tables and tablespaces. It also enables you to encrypt database backups. After the data is encrypted, this data is transparently decrypted for authorized users or applications when they access that data.
You can configure OCI Vault as a part of the transparent data encryption implementation. This enables you to centrally manage keystore in your enterprise. So OCI Vault gives centralized control over encryption keys, including key rotation and customer managed keys.
09:23
Lois: So obviously, lots of companies have to follow strict regulations. How does Oracle Database@AWS help customers with compliance? 
Samvit: Oracle Database@AWS has achieved a broad and rigorous set of compliance certifications. The service supports SOC 1, SOC 2, and SOC 3, as well as HIPAA for health care data protection. If we talk about SOC 1, that basically covers internal controls for financial statements and reporting. SOC 2 covers internal controls for security, confidentiality, processing integrity, privacy, and availability.
SOC 3 covers SOC 2 results tailored for a general audience. And HIPAA is a federal law that protects patients' health information and ensures its confidentiality, integrity, and availability. It also holds certifications and attestations such as CSA STAR, C5.
Now C5 is a German government standard that verifies cloud providers meet strict security and compliance requirements. CSA STAR attestation is an independent third-party audit of cloud security controls. CSA STAR certification also validates a cloud provider's security posture against CSA's cloud controls matrix. And HDS is a French certification that ensures cloud providers meet stringent requirements for hosting and protecting health care data.
Oracle Database@AWS also holds ISO and IEC standards. You can also see PCI DSS, which is basically for payment card security and HITRUST, which is for high assurance health care framework. So, these certifications ensure that Oracle Database@AWS not only adheres to best practices in security and privacy, but also provides customers with assurance that their workloads align with globally recognized compliance regimes.
11:47
Nikita: Thank you, Samvit. Now Rashmi, can you walk us through Oracle's migration solution that helps teams move to OCI Database Services?
Rashmi: Oracle Zero-Downtime Migration is a robust and flexible end-to-end database migration solution that can completely automate and streamline the migration of Oracle databases. With bare minimum inputs from you, it can orchestrate and execute the entire migration task, virtually needing no manual effort from you.
And the best part is you can use this tool for free to migrate your source Oracle databases to OCI Oracle Database Services faster and reliably, eliminating the chances of human errors. You can migrate individual databases or migrate an entire fleet of databases in parallel.
12:34
Nikita: Ok. For someone planning a migration with ZDM, are there any key points they should keep in mind? 
Rashmi: When migrating using ZDM, your source databases may require minimal downtime up to 15 minutes or no downtime at all, depending upon the scenario. It is built with the principles of Oracle maximum availability architecture and leverages technologies like Oracle GoldenGate and Oracle Data Guard to achieve high availability and online migration workflow using Oracle migration methods like RMAN, Data Pump, and Database Links.
Depending on the migration requirement, ZDM provides different migration method options. It can be logical or physical migration in an online or offline mode. Under the hood, it utilizes the different database migration technologies to perform the migration.
13:23
Lois: Can you give us an example of this?
Rashmi: When you are migrating a mission critical production database, you can use the logical online migration method. And when you are migrating a development database, you can simply choose the physical offline migration method.
As part of the migration job, you can perform database upgrades or convert your database to multitenant architecture. ZDM offers greater flexibility and automation in performing the database migration.
You can customize workflow by adding pre or postrun scripts as part of the workflow. Run prechecks to check for possible failures that may arise during migration and fix them. Audit migration jobs activity and user actions. Control the execution like schedule a job pause, resume, if needed, suspend and resume the job, schedule the job or terminate a running job. You can even rerun a job from failure point and other such capabilities.
14:13
Lois: And what kind of migration scenarios does ZDM support?
Rashmi: The minimum version of your source Oracle Database must be 11.2.0.4 and above. For lower versions, you will have to first upgrade to at least 11.2.0.4. You can migrate Oracle databases that may be of the Standard or Enterprise edition.
ZDM supports migration of Oracle databases, which may be a single-instance, or RAC One Node, or RAC databases. It can migrate on Unix platforms like Linux, Oracle Solaris, and AIX. For Oracle databases on AIX and Oracle Solaris platform, ZDM uses logical migration method.
But if the source platform is Linux, it can use both physical and logical migration method. You can use ZDM to migrate databases that may be on premises, or in third-party cloud, or even within Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. ZDM leverages Oracle technologies like RMAN datacom, Database Links, Data Guard, Oracle GoldenGate when choosing a specific migration workflow.
15:15
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15:35
Nikita: Welcome back! Rashmi, before someone starts using ZDM, is there any prep work they should do or things they need to set up first?
Rashmi: Working with ZDM needs few simple configuration. Zero-downtime migration provides a command line interface to run your migration job. First, you have to download the ZDM binary, preferably download from my Oracle Support, where you can get the binary with the latest updates.
Set up and configure the binary by following the instructions available at the same invoice node. The host in which ZDM is installed and configured is called the zero-downtime migration service host. The host has to be Oracle Linux version 7 or 8, or it can be RCL 8.
Next is the orchestration step where connection to the source and target is configured and tested like SSH configuration with source and target, opening the ports in respective destinations, creation of dump destination, granting required database privileges. Prepare the response file with parameter values that define the workflow that ZDM should use during Oracle Database migration.
You can also customize the migration workflow using the response file. You can plug in run scripts to be executed before or after a specific phase of the migration job. These customizations are called custom plugins with user actions.
Your sources may be hosted on-premises or OCI-managed database services, or even third-party cloud. They may be Oracle Database Standard or Enterprise edition and on accelerator infrastructure or a standard compute.
The target can be of the same type as the source. But additionally, ZDM supports migration to multicloud deployments on Oracle Database@Azure, Oracle Database@Google Cloud, and Oracle Database@AWS.
You begin with a migration strategy where you list the different databases that can be migrated, classification of the databases, grouping them, performing three migration checks like dependencies, downtime requirement versions, and preparing the order migration, the target migration environment, et cetera.
17:27
Lois: What migration methods and technologies does ZDM rely on to complete the move?
Rashmi: There are primarily two types of migration: physical or logical.
Physical migration pertains to copy of the database OS blocks to the target database, whereas in logical migration, it involves copying of the logical elements of the database like metadata and data.
Each of these migration methods can be executed when the database is online or offline. In online mode, migration is performed simultaneously while the changes are in progress in the source database.
While in offline mode, all changes to the source database is frozen. For physical offline migration, it uses backup and restore technique, while with the physical online, it creates a physical standby using backup and restore, and then performing a switchover once the standby is in sync with the source database.
For logical offline migration, it exports and imports database metadata and data into the target database, while in logical online migration, it is a combination of export and import operation, followed by apply of incremental updates from the source to the target database. The physical or logical offline migration method is used when the source database of the application can allow some downtime for the migration.
The physical or logical online migration approach is ideal for scenarios where any downtime for the source database can badly affect critical applications. The only downtime that can be tolerated by the application is only during the application connection switchover to the migrated database.
One other advantage is ZDM can migrate one or a fleet of Oracle databases by executing multiple jobs in parallel, where each job workflow can be customized to a specific database need. It can perform physical or logical migration of your Oracle databases. 
And whether it should be performed online or offline depends on the downtime that can be approved by business.
19:13
Nikita: Samvit and Rashmi, thanks for joining us today.
Lois: Yeah, it's been great to have you both. If you want to dive deeper into the topics we covered today, go to mylearn.oracle.com and search for the Oracle Database@AWS Architect Professional course. Until next time, this is Lois Houston…
Nikita: And Nikita Abraham, signing off!
19:35
That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.

If you've ever wondered how Oracle Database really works inside AWS, this episode will finally turn the lights on.
 
Join Senior Principal OCI Instructor Susan Jang as she explains the two database services available (Exadata Database Service and Autonomous Database), how Oracle and AWS share responsibilities behind the scenes, and which essential tasks still land on your plate after deployment.
 
You'll discover how automation, scaling, and security actually work, and which model best fits your needs, whether you want hands-off simplicity or deeper control.
 
Oracle Database@AWS Architect Professional: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/oracle-databaseaws-architect-professional/155574
Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/
X: https://x.com/Oracle_Edu
 
Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, Anna Hulkower, Kris-Ann Nansen, Radhika Banka, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode.
 
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Episode Transcript:
 
00:00
Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started!
00:26
 
Lois: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I'm Lois Houston, Director of Communications and Adoption with Customer Success Services, and with me is Nikita Abraham, Team Lead: Editorial Services with Oracle University. 
Nikita: Hi everyone! In our last episode, we began the discussion on Oracle Database@AWS. Today, we're diving deeper into the database services that are available in this environment. Susan Jang, our Senior Principal OCI Instructor, joins us once again. 
00:56
Lois: Hi Susan! Thanks for being here today. In our last conversation, we compared Oracle Autonomous Database and Exadata Database Service. Can you elaborate on the fundamental differences between these two services?  
 
Susan: Now, the primary difference is between the service is really the management model. The Autonomous is fully-managed by Oracle, while the Exadata provides flexibility for you to have the ability to customize your database environment while still having the infrastructure be managed by Oracle.  
01:30
Nikita: When it comes to running Oracle Database@AWS, how do Oracle and AWS each chip in? Could you break down what each provider is responsible for in this setup? 
Susan: Oracle Database@AWS is a collaboration between Oracle, as well as AWS. It allows the customer to deploy and run Oracle Database services, including the Oracle Autonomous Database and the Oracle Exadata Database Service directly in AWS data centers.  
Oracle provides the ability of having the Oracle Exadata Database Service on a dedicated infrastructure. This service delivers full capabilities of Oracle Exadata Database on the Oracle Exadata hardware. It offers high performance and high security for demanding workloads. It has cloud automation, resource scaling, and performance optimization to simplify the management of the service. 
Oracle Autonomous Database on the dedicated Exadata infrastructure provides a fully Autonomous Database on this dedicated infrastructure within AWS. It automates the database management tasks, including patching, backups, as well as tuning, and have built-in AI capabilities for developing AI-powered applications and interacting with data using natural language. The Oracle Database@AWS integrates those core database services with various AWS services for a comprehensive unified experience. 
AWS provides the ability of having a cloud-based object storage, and that would be the Amazon S3. You also have the ability to have other services, such as the Amazon CloudWatch. It monitors the database metrics, as well as performance. You also have Amazon Bedrock. It provides a development environment for a generative AI application.  
And last but not the least, amongst the many other services, you also have the SageMaker. This is a cloud-based platform for development of machine learning models, a wonderful integration with our AI application development needs. 
03:54
Lois: How has the work involved in setting up and managing databases changed over time? 
Susan: When we take a look at the evolution of how things have changed through the years in our systems, we realize that transfer responsibility has now been migrated more from customer or human interaction to services. As the database technology evolves from the traditional on-premise system to the Exadata engineered system, and finally to the Autonomous Database, certain services previously requiring significant manual intervention has become increasingly automated, as well as optimized. 
04:34
Lois: How so? 
Susan: When we take a look at the more traditional database environment, it requires manual configuration of hardware, operating system, as well as the software of the database, along with initial database creation. As we evolve into the Exadata environment, the Exadata Database, specifically the Exadata cloud service, simplifies provisioning through web-based wizard, making it faster and easier to deploy the Oracle Database in an optimized hardware.  
 
But when we move it to an Autonomous environment, it automates the entire provisioning process, allowing users to rapidly deploy mission-critical databases without manual intervention, or DBA involvement. So as customers move toward Autonomous Database through Exadata, we have fewer components that the customer needs to manage in the database stack, which gives them more time to focus more on important parts of the business. 
With the Exadata Database, it provides a co-management of backup, restore, patches and upgrade, monitoring, and tuning. And it allows the administrator the ability to customize the configuration to meet their very specific business needs. With Autonomous Database, it's now fully automated and it's a greater responsibility is shift toward the service. With Autonomous Database on dedicated infrastructure, it provides that fine-grained tuning more for Oracle to help you perform that task. 
06:15
Nikita: If we narrow it down just to Oracle and AWS for a moment, which parts of the infrastructure or day-to-day ops are handled by each company behind the scenes? 
Susan: When we take a look at Oracle Database@AWS, it operates under a shared responsibility model, dividing the service responsibilities between AWS, as well as Oracle, as well as you, the customer.  
The AWS has the data center. Remember, this is where everything is running. The Oracle Database@AWS, the Oracle Database infrastructure may be managed by Oracle and run in OCI, but is physically located within the AWS regions, as well as the availability zones and the AWS data centers. 
The AWS infrastructure, in this case, is AWS's responsibility to secure the environment, including the physical security of the data center, the network infrastructure, and the foundational services like the compute, the storage, and the networking, all within AWS. 
The next thing of who's responsible for the shared responsibility, it's Oracle. And that would be the hardware. We provide the hardware. While the hardware may physically reside in the AWS data center, Oracle's Cloud Infrastructure operational team will be the one managing this infrastructure, including software patching, infrastructure update, and other operations through a connection to OCI. This means Oracle handles the provisioning, as well as the maintenance of any of the underlying Exadata infrastructure hardware. 
When we take a look at the next thing that it manages, it is also responsible besides the infrastructure of the Exadata. It is also the ability to manage the hardware, the environment of that hardware through the database control plane. So Oracle manages the administration and the operational for the Oracle Database@AWS service, which resides in OCI. So this includes the capabilities for management, upgrade, and operational features. 
08:37
Nikita: And what are the key things that still remain on the customer's plate?  
Susan: If you are in an Exadata environment or in an Autonomous environment, it is you, the customer, who is responsible for most of the database administration operation, as well as managing the users and the privileges of the user to access the database. No one knows the database and who should be accessing the data better than you. 
You will be responsible for securing the applications, the data of the database, which now allows you to define who has access to it, control the data encryption, and securing the application that interacts with the Oracle Database@AWS. 
09:29
Lois: Susan, we've talked about both Autonomous Database and Exadata Database Service being available on Oracle Database@AWS, but what's different about how each works in this environment, and why might someone pick one over the other? 
Susan: Both databases, even though they run on the same Exadata Cloud Infrastructure, both can be deployed on both public cloud, as well as the customer data center, which is Oracle Cloud@Customer. 
The Autonomous Database is a fully managed, completely automated environment. And this provides a capability of having a fully Autonomous Database Service running on a dedicated Oracle Exadata Infrastructure within your AWS data center. 
The Exadata is a service that is provided and managed by Oracle and is physically running in the AWS data center, but is designed for mission critical workload and includes RAC environment, Real Application Cluster, offering a high performance availability and full feature capability that is similar to other Exadata environment, such as those running in our customers' data center. 
The primary difference is really between the two services. When you take a look at the Exadata, the customer only pays for the compute resources that is used. Autoscaling can be used for a variety or variable resources, the workload, to automatically scale to the compute resources up or down when required. 
The Autonomous Database also has automatic optimization for data warehousing, transaction processing, as well as JSON workload. The Exadata service, the customer again, also pays for the compute resources that they allocate. But that's the key thing. The customer can initiate the scaling because it's very specific to the workload that is needed. 
So when you take a look at the two database services, one gives the ability to let Oracle fully manage it, including the scaling capability. The other, the Exadata, provides you the capability of having the environment that it's running on the infrastructure be managed by Oracle that adds a database administrator. You may wish to have a little bit more granular control of how you want the database to not only be scaling, but how you wish to customize how the database will be running. 
12:10
Nikita: Focusing on Autonomous Database for a moment, what should teams know about how it actually runs within AWS?  
Susan: The Autonomous Database on the Oracle Database@AWS brings the power of the Oracle's self-managing, self-securing, and self-repairing database into your AWS environment. 
It provides the capability of the database automatically, automates many of the traditional, complex, and time-consuming database management tasks, such as the provisioning of the database, the patching, the backing up, and the scaling, and the performance tuning, reducing the need for any manual intervention by the database administrator. 
Running the Autonomous Database in your AWS region enables low latency access for your AWS applications and services that is deployed within AWS, thus improving performance and response time. With the Autonomous Database, it automates many of the traditional things that is now automatically done by Oracle. It also supports integration with various AWS services, such as the ability of the not in addition to AIM, but the cloud formation, the CloudWatch for monitoring and the S3 for the storage. 
You can easily migrate existing Exadata workload, including those running on Oracle RAC to AWS with minimum or no change to any of your databases or applications. In addition, there's a really powerful capability and feature of the database is called zero ETL, and that's zero extract, transformation, and load. 
It's an integration capability with services like your Amazon Redshift, enabling near real time analytics and machine learning on your transactional database that is stored within the Autonomous Database on in your AWS environment. So with the Autonomous Database, it checks off many of the boxes for automatic capability, securing, tuning, as well as scaling the database. 
With the Autonomous Database in the Dedicated Exadata Infrastructure, the Exadata Cloud Infrastructure resource represents the physical system, which can be expanded with storage, as well as compute services, the compute host. This now provides the ability to have an isolated zone for the highest protection from other tenants. The data is stored on a dedicated server only for one customer. That would be you. 
14:56
Lois: Could you explain the role of Autonomous VM? What are its primary benefits? 
Susan: The virtual machine or as we refer to them as the cluster, includes the grid infrastructure and provides a private network isolation. This provides you the capability of having custom memory, core, and storage allocation. 
The Oracle Grid Infrastructure includes the Oracle Clusterware, which manages the cluster, as well as the servers, and ensure that the database can failover to another server in case of any failure. 
15:34
Be a part of something big by joining the Oracle University Learning Community! Connect with over 3 million members, including Oracle experts and fellow learners. Engage in topical forums, share your knowledge, and celebrate your achievements together. Discover the community today at mylearn.oracle.com. 
15:55
Nikita: Welcome back! Susan, what is the Autonomous Container Database? 
Susan: With the Autonomous Container Database, and you need that if you're going to create an Autonomous Database, you need to provision that within your Autonomous Exadata VM Cluster. It serves as a container to hold or to house one or more Autonomous Databases. 
This allows multiple Autonomous Databases to coexist in the same infrastructure while still being logically separated. And this allows for the separation of databases based on their intended use. Think of a database for production. Think of a database for development. Think of a database for testing. You may have different database versions within the same infrastructure. 
This isolation makes it easier for you to be able to meet your SLA, your Service Level Agreement, any long-term backups you may have, very specific encryption key needs to prevent issues from one database impacting another. So, the ability to have everything be isolated and secure is still grouping it in a manner that will meet your business needs. 
17:08
Lois: Looking at Exadata Database Service specifically, what are some standout advantages for customers who deploy it on Oracle Database@AWS? Is there anything in particular they should get excited about in terms of performance or integration with AWS? 
Susan: The Exadata Database Service is running on a dedicated Exadata Infrastructure that's deployed within your AWS data center. It delivers the same Exadata service experience in cloud control planes as the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, allowing you to leverage existing skills and processing across your multi-cloud environment. 
It addresses the data resiliency, or residency rather. And that's the scenario where many of our customers has the need. You have a need because of your security compliance to have the data local to you. By having the Exadata Database in your Oracle Database@AWS, it is running in your data center. So, this addresses that very important need, data residency, to have it close to you. 
It also allows for seamless integration with other AWS services and applications. So now you have a capability of a hybrid cloud architecture leveraging the benefit of both Oracle Exadata and your AWS system. It has built-in high availability, the RAC application cluster, as well as Data Guard, a capability of addressing disaster recovery capability. 
This also provides the ability for you to scale your compute, as well as your storage and your I/O resources independently. So as mentioned with Exadata, you have flexibility of how you want your database to be running individually. So just like the Autonomous, the Exadata Database checks off many of the boxes for running a mission-critical with high availability, highly redundant hardware and software features, along with extreme performance, scalability, and reliability. 
This now allows you to run your AI environment, your online transaction processing, your analytic workload on any scale on the Exadata Infrastructure running in the Oracle Cloud. And in this case, running in your data center. 
19:45
Nikita: If a business suddenly needs more capacity, how does scaling work with Exadata Database Service versus Autonomous Database on Oracle Database@AWS?  
Susan: So with the Exadata scaling, you now can scale to meet expected demands so you know at certain point I will need more. I will then ask it to scale at that point when I will assign it-- and I'm using an example, I will assign it three computer cores all the time. But there may be demands. Think of your end of the quarter, end of the year processing that you may need more. So, you are enabling the compute cores to scale at the time you need it. 
And what's cool is it will then, when it's no longer needed, it will then scale back down to the original three cores that you assign. So, you only pay for the enabled cores. But what's very cool about the Autonomous is that it is real-time scaling. So, with Autonomous, now you have the capability using Autonomous Database since it is self-tuning, self-monitoring, the Autonomous Database actually monitors the workload requirement and scales to match the workload demand. 
Once the minimum level of the compute is defined and enabled, the automatic scaling is set. Autonomous Database will adjust to the consumption when it's needed, and it will scale back down when it's not. So though the Exadata is pretty cool, it will scale up and down on the workload demand. 
This is with the Autonomous is even more powerful. It is real-time scaling based on that usage at that moment. Built-in automatic increase to meet the workload demands when it spikes and it automatically scales back when it's not needed. 
A very powerful capability with all of our Oracle databases, the ability, even with traditional, to allow you to define what you may need with Exadata scaling for peak demands, as well as Autonomous scaling for real-time consumption and scaling when needed. 
When you look at all of our options, one of the key things to bear in mind is a phrase that we use: performance scale as more servers are added. And what this is really saying is Oracle's automated scaling ability for the database, it basically has the ability to maintain or improve its performance under increased workload by automatically adding computational resources when needed. 
This process is also known as horizontal scaling. It involves adding more servers, compute instances, to a cluster to share the processing load. And it has that capability automatically. 
22:53
Nikita: There's so much more we can discuss about Oracle Database@AWS, but let's pause here for today! Thank you so much Susan for joining us. 
Lois: Yeah, it's been really great to have you, Susan. If you want to dive deeper into the topics we covered today, go to mylearn.oracle.com and search for the Oracle Database@AWS Architect Professional course. Until next time, this is Lois Houston… 
Nikita: And Nikita Abraham, signing off! 
23:23
That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.

In this episode, hosts Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham take you inside how Oracle brings its industry-leading database technology directly to AWS customers.
 
Senior Principal OCI Instructor Susan Jang unpacks what the OCI child site is, how Exadata hardware is deployed inside AWS data centers, and how the ODB network enables secure, low-latency connections so your mission-critical workloads can run seamlessly alongside AWS services.
 
Susan also walks through the differences between Exadata Database Service and Autonomous Database, helping teams choose the right level of control and automation for their cloud databases.
 
Oracle Database@AWS Architect Professional: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/oracle-databaseaws-architect-professional/155574
Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/
X: https://x.com/Oracle_Edu
 
Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, Anna Hulkower, Kris-Ann Nansen, Radhika Banka, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode.
 
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Episode Transcript:
 
00:00
Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started!
00:26
Nikita: Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I'm Nikita Abraham, Team Lead: Editorial Services with Oracle University, and with me is Lois Houston, Director of Communications and Adoption with Customer Success Services. 
Lois: Hi there! Last week, we talked about multicloud and the partnerships Oracle has with Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Amazon Web Services. If you missed that episode, do listen to it as it sets the foundation for today's discussion, which is going to be about Oracle Database@AWS. 
00:59
Nikita: That's right. And we're joined by Susan Jang, a Senior Principal OCI Instructor. Susan, thanks for being here. To start us off, what is Oracle Database@AWS? 
Susan: Oracle Database@AWS is a service that allows Oracle Exadata infrastructure that is managed by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or OCI, to run directly inside an AWS data center.  
01:25
Lois: Susan, can you go through the key architecture components and networking relationships involved in this? 
 
Susan: The AWS Cloud is the Amazon Web Service. It's a cloud computing platform. The AWS region is a distinct, isolated geographic location with multiple physically separated data center, also known as availability zone. The availability zone is really a physically isolated data center with its own independent power, cooling, and network connectivity. 
When we speak of the AWS data center, it's a highly secured, specialized physical facility that houses the computing storage, the compute servers, the storage server, and the networking equipment. The VPC, the Virtual Private Cloud, is a logical, isolated virtual network. 
The AWS ODB network is a private user-created network that connects the virtual private cloud network of Amazon resources with an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Exadata system. This is all within an AWS data center. The AWS-ADB peering is really an established private network connection that's between the Oracle VPC, the Virtual Private Cloud, and the Oracle Database@AWS network. And that would be the ODB. 
Within the AWS data center, you have something that you see called the child site. Now, an OCI child site is really a physical data center that is managed by Oracle within the AWS data center. It's a seamless extension of the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. The site is hosting the Exadata infrastructure that's running the Oracle databases. 
The Oracle Database@AWS service brings the power as well as the performance of an Oracle Exadata infrastructure that is managed by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to run directly in an AWS data center. 
03:57
Nikita: So essentially, Oracle Database@AWS lets you to run your mission-critical Oracle data load close to your AWS application, while keeping management simple. Susan, what advantages does Oracle Database@AWS bring to the table? 
Susan: Oracle Database@AWS offers a powerful and flexible solution for running Oracle workloads natively within AWS. Oracle Database@AWS streamlines the process of moving your existing Oracle Database to AWS, making migration faster as well as easier. 
You get direct, low latency connectivity between your application and Oracle databases, ensuring a high performance for your mission-critical workloads.  
Billing, resource management, and operational tasks are unified, allowing you to manage everything through similar tools with reduce complexity. And finally, Oracle Database@AWS is designed to integrate smoothly with your AWS environments' workloads, making it so much easier to build, deploy, and scale your solutions. 
05:15
Lois: You mentioned the OCI child site earlier. What part does it play in how Oracle Database@AWS works?  
Susan: The OCI child site really gives you the capability to combine the physical proximity and resources of AWS with the logical management and the capability of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. This integrated approach allows us to enable the ability for you to run and manage your Oracle databases seamlessly in your AWS environment while still leveraging the power of OCI, our Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. 
06:03
Did you know that Oracle University offers free courses on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for subscribers! Whether you're interested in multicloud, databases, networking, security, AI, or machine learning, there's something for everyone. So, what are you waiting for? Pick your topic and get started by visiting mylearn.oracle.com.  
06:29
Nikita: Welcome back! Susan, I'm curious about the Exadata infrastructure inside AWS. What does that setup look like? 
Susan: The Exadata Infrastructure consists of physical database, as well as storage servers. That is deployed-- the database and the storage servers are interconnected using a high-speed, low-latency network fiber, ensuring optimal performance and reliable data transfer. 
Each of the database server runs one or more Virtual Machines, or VMs, as we refer to them, providing flexible compute resources for different workloads. You can create, as well as manage your virtual machine, your VM clusters in this infrastructure using various methods. Your AWS console, Command-Line Interface, CLI, or Application Program Interface, that's your API, giving you various options, several options for automating, as well as integrating your existing tools. 
When you're creating your Exadata Infrastructure, there are a few things you need to define and set up. You need to define the total number of your database servers, the total number of your storage server, the model of your Exadata system, as well as the availability zone where all these resources will be deployed. 
This architecture delivers a high-performance resiliency and flexible management capability for running your Oracle Database on AWS. 
08:18
Lois: Susan, can you explain the network architecture for Oracle Database deployments on AWS?  
Susan: The ODB network is an isolated network within the AWS that is designed specifically for Exadata deployments. It includes both the client, as well as the backup subnet, which are essential for securing and efficient database operations. 
When you create your Exadata Infrastructure, you need to specify the ODB network as you need the connectivity. This network is mapped directly to the corresponding network in the OCI child site. This will enable seamless communication between AWS, as well as the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. 
The ODB network requires two separate CIDR ranges. And in addition, the client subnet is used for the Exadata VM cluster, providing connectivity for database operations. Well, you do also have another subnet. And that subnet is the backup subnet. And it's used to manage database backups of those VM cluster, ensuring not only data protection, but also data recovery. 
Within your AWS region and availability zone, the ODB network contains these dedicated client, as well as backup subnet. It basically isolates the Exadata traffic for both the day-to-day access, and that would be for the client, as well as the backup operations, and that would be for the backup subnet. This network design supports secure, high performance, and connectivity in a reliable backup management of the Oracle Database deployments that is running on AWS. 
10:23
Nikita: Since we're on the topic of networking, can you tell us about ODB peering within the Oracle Database architecture? 
Susan: The ODB peering establishes a secure private connection between your AWS Virtual Private Cloud, your VPC, then the Oracle Database, the ODB network that contains your Exadata Infrastructure. 
This connection makes it possible for application servers that's running in your VPC, such as your Amazon EC2 instances to access your Oracle databases that is being hosted on Exadata within your ODB network. You specify the ODB network when you set up your infrastructure, specifically the Exadata Infrastructure. This network includes dedicated client, as well as backup subnets for an efficient and secure connectivity. 
If you wish to enable multiple VPCs to connect to the same ODB network and access the Oracle Database@AWS resources, you can leverage AWS Transit Gateways or even an AWS Cloud WAN for scalable and centralized connectivity.  
The virtual private cloud contains your application server, and that's securely paired with the Oracle Database network, creating a seamless, high-performance path to your application to interact with your Oracle Database. 
ODB peering simplifies the connectivity between the AWS application environments and the Oracle Exadata Infrastructure, thus supporting a flexible, high performance, and secure database access. 
12:23
Lois: Now, before we close, can you compare two key databases that are available with Oracle Database@AWS: Oracle Exadata Database Service and Oracle Autonomous Database Service? 
Susan: The Exadata Database Service offers a fully managed and dedicated infrastructure with operational monitoring that is handled by you, the customer. In contrast, the Autonomous Database is fully managed by Oracle, taking care of all the operational monitoring. 
Exadata provides very high scalability though resources, such as disk and compute, must be sized manually. Where in the Autonomous Database, it offers high scalability through automatic elastic scaling. When we speak of performance, both service deliver strong results. Exadata offers ultra-low latency and Exadata-level performance, while the Autonomous Database delivers optimal performance with automation. 
Both services provide high migration capability. Exadata offers full compatibility and the Autonomous Database includes a robust set of migration tools. When it comes to management, Exadata requires manual management and administration. And that's really in a way to provide you the ability to customize it in the manner you desire, making it meets your very specific business needs, especially your database needs. 
In contrast, the Autonomous Database is fully managed by Oracle, including automated administration tasks, optimal self-tuning features to further reduce any management overhead. When we speak of the feature sets, the Exadata delivers a full suite of Oracle features, including the RAC application cluster, or the Real Application Cluster, RAC, whereas the Autonomous offers a complete feature set, but specifically that is designed for optimized Autonomous operations. 
Finally, when we speak of integration, integration for both of this service integrates seamlessly with AWS service, such as your EC2, your network, the VPC, your policies, the Identity and Access Management, your IAM, the monitoring with your CloudWatch, and of course, your storage, your SC, ensuring a consistent experience within your AWS ecosystem. 
15:21
Nikita: So, you could say that the Exadata Database Service is better for customers who want dedicated infrastructure with granular control, while the Autonomous Database is built for customers who want a fully automated experience. Thank you, Susan, for taking the time to talk to us about Oracle Database@AWS. 
Lois: That's all we have for today. If you want to learn more about the topics we discussed, head over to mylearn.oracle.com and search for the Oracle Database@AWS Architect Professional course. In our next episode, we'll find out how to get started with the Oracle Database@AWS service. Until then, this is Lois Houston… 
Nikita: And Nikita Abraham, signing off! 
16:06
That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.

Multicloud is changing the way modern teams run their workloads: with real choice and real control.
 
In this episode, hosts Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham welcome Senior Principal OCI Instructor Sergio Castro, who explains how Oracle has partnered with Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and AWS to bring Oracle Database directly inside their data centers, unlocking sub-millisecond latency and new levels of flexibility.
 
They discuss how organizations can seamlessly migrate from on-premises or between clouds with minimal disruption, take advantage of best-in-class cloud services, and enhance business continuity.
 
Oracle Database@AWS Architect Professional: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/oracle-databaseaws-architect-professional/155574
Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/
X: https://x.com/Oracle_Edu
 
Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, Anna Hulkower, Kris-Ann Nansen, Radhika Banka, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode.
 
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Episode Transcript:
 
00:00
Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started!
00:26
Lois: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I'm Lois Houston, Director of Communications and Adoption with Customer Success Services, and with me is Nikita Abraham, Team Lead: Editorial Services.
Nikita: Hi everyone! We're kicking off a new season of the podcast today, this time on Oracle Database@AWS. But before we fully dive into that, we've got Sergio Castro with us to introduce multicloud and talk about some of its use cases. Sergio, who you may have heard on the podcast before, is a Senior Principal OCI Instructor with Oracle University.  
01:02
Lois: Hi Sergio! Thanks for joining us today. We've spoken a lot about multicloud before, but we couldn't possibly discuss Oracle Database@AWS without another quick intro to multicloud. So, for anyone who doesn't already know, what is multicloud? And could you also talk about what Oracle is doing in this space? 
Sergio: It is the use of several Cloud providers to deliver an IT service.
Basically, a multi-cloud strategy allows organizations to distribute their workloads across multiple Cloud platforms and providers. This will help aiding the flexibility when picking the right tool for each job.
Basically, by selecting the best Cloud Service, IT architects can take advantage of each provider's strengths, including custom hardware, software, and service capabilities. And Oracle is a pioneer in multi-cloud.
We have partnerships with Azure, Google Cloud, AWS, and we've been doing multi-cloud since 2019, including Oracle Interconnect for Azure and Oracle Interconnect for Google Cloud.
Our multi-cloud products is the Oracle Database Service at Azure, at Google Cloud, and at AWS. Here we have our database inside the data centers of these Cloud Service providers. And multi-cloud can be complemented by resources that you have on-premises, providing you with a hybrid Cloud model.
And our public Cloud offerings are not limited to the commercial realm. Multi-cloud is beginning to be available also in the government realm. You can now find Oracle Interconnect for Azure in the US government realm.
We also have government realm offerings in the UK and in the European Union. And of course, dedicated Cloud. If you're going to be involving on-premises, you can also have all the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure resources behind your firewall, behind your routers with dedicated Cloud.
So the offers from Oracle Cloud Infrastructure are really exceptional. It offers you great flexibility and choice. And the choice is yours. You select the platform for your Oracle Cloud solutions. 
03:39
Nikita: You've already mentioned a few of them, but could you talk about the various benefits of multicloud?
Sergio: A solid multi-cloud approach enables organizations to leverage the unique strengths and offerings of various Cloud service providers. By not being limited to a single vendor's capabilities or policies, businesses can adapt quickly to changing environments, deploy workloads where they fit best, and rapidly integrate new solutions as market demands evolve. 
Relying on a single Cloud vendor can make it challenging and costly to migrate workloads or switch providers if businesses needs change. Multi-cloud strategies mitigate this risk by distributing applications and data across multiple platforms, making technology transition smoother and giving organizations greater bargaining power. 
Now, diminishing single points of failure at the Cloud service provider level is great, because distributing systems and data across multiple clouds can definitely reduce dependence on a single provider or region. 
This increased geographic diversity improves resilience and provides a more robust backup and recovery option, helping to ensure business continuity in the event of a disaster or even an outage. With access to a range of pricing models and service levels from different providers, organizations can allocate workloads based on cost effectiveness. 
This best fit approach encourages cost savings by enabling the selection of the most economical provider for each workload. And this facilitates continuous cost optimization efforts. For example, OCI provides significantly lower data egress charges, this in comparison to our competitors. 
Multicloud management empowers organizations to place their workloads in the environments where they perform the best. By distributing workloads based on latency, processing power, or data proximity, businesses can realize performance improvements and achieve higher availability for their critical services. 
Now regarding best of breed, each Cloud provider brings unique innovations and specialized services to the market. With a multi-cloud approach, organizations can tailor solutions to meet specific business needs. 
Operating across multiple Cloud platforms means access to a wider array of data centers worldwide. This extended reach supports expansion into new markets, improves local performance for users, and helps satisfy data sovereignty requirements in diverse jurisdictions. And speaking about jurisdictions, this flexibility helps meet industry standards and regional data protection laws more effectively. 
06:50
Nikita: You mentioned that Oracle's multicloud journey started in 2019 with Azure. What was that early phase like?
Sergio: The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure multi-cloud offering started with the Oracle Interconnect for Microsoft Azure, where we connect FastConnect, our digital circuit, to the equivalent Express Route, the digital circuit of Microsoft Azure.
Basically FastConnect, it is used typically for extending the OCI services into on-premises. In this case, it is extending these services into another Cloud Service provider, Microsoft Azure or various applications.
07:29
Lois: And then we moved on to Oracle Database Service for Azure, right? 
Sergio: It's very similar to what we have right now, the Oracle Database Service at Azure, except that back then, the interface was on OCI.
Basically on OCI, we had a console that resembled Azure, but all the services were still running on OCI. Now, the difference with Oracle Database Service at Azure is that we extended Oracle Cloud Infrastructure into the Azure data centers.
So Oracle Database at Azure is a child site in the Microsoft Azure data centers. Basically we are placing our hardware in Azure data centers. And this gives us a very good latency, sub-one millisecond latency.
08:24
Lois: What about Oracle's multicloud services with Google and Amazon Web Services? 
Sergio: Oracle Interconnect org and Oracle Database app are available for Google Cloud. We do have a service called Oracle Interconnect or Google Cloud, similar to the Azure one.
And we also have the Oracle Database inside the Google Cloud data centers operating as a child site. And back in 2024 during Oracle Cloud World, we announced Oracle Database@AWS.
This product is now available in two AWS regions. In a similar way, we have the Oracle Database inside the AWS data center with sub-one millisecond latency. We are currently in two data centers, but we have brought plans for being available in over 20 plan regions between Oracle Cloud and Amazon Web Services.
09:32
Nikita: Sergio, how do the capabilities of Oracle Database multicloud help enterprises modernize?
Sergio: Oracle Database multi-cloud capabilities help enterprise modernize, adopting a Gen AI strategy, obviously, using the Oracle database to bring Oracle's powerful AI to business data. When you move to multi-cloud environments, you have a playground for you to test and run your workloads and then go into productions with your choice of services on the Oracle Exadata.
And reducing risk, it's very easy to move to cloud and gain Oracle maximum availability architecture benefits. And by moving into a multi-cloud environment, you guarantee that you're going to be lowering your cost because you're going to be selecting the best of breed of the services that the Cloud Service provider can offer.
Now, with the Oracle Database on multi-cloud environments, you're able to port your Oracle Database knowledge that you have from on-premises to a single cloud provider to a multi-cloud environment. It is the same solution, the same Oracle Database capabilities available everywhere-- on-premises, on your private cloud, on a single cloud provider, or on a multi-cloud environment.
Having the same capabilities make it very easy to migrate from on-premises or to migrate from one cloud service provider to the other. Oracle Database multi-cloud solutions really offer the best of both worlds. So a choice of services directly from hyperscaler marketplace and the vendor's cloud portal.
11:21
Lois: And when you say "hyperscalers," who exactly are you referring to?
Sergio: These hyperscalers, we're talking about OCI, we're talking about Azure, we're talking about Google cloud, we're talking about AWS. Having the Oracle Database inside the Cloud data centers, regardless of who the hyperscaler provider is, guarantees low latency from your application into your database.
But Oracle Database is not the only product. We also offer Oracle Interconnect for Azure and GCP. So if you want to go beyond Oracle Database@Cloud Service provider, or if you're looking to going into a region where the service is not available yet, you can leverage the Oracle Interconnect for Azure or Google Cloud platform.
Basically, this service interconnects the Cloud Service providers. We have a partnership and selected regions where we interconnect with either Azure or Google Cloud platform. 
12:25
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12:45
Nikita: Welcome back! Sergio, could you tell us about some key Oracle Database multicloud use cases?
Sergio: Move to cloud. Lift and shift from on-premises to Cloud. Lift and shift from one Cloud Service provider to the other, and consolidate your database on Exadata.
This will guarantee all the tools that you need for building innovative applications, bringing artificial intelligence to your business data, on the Oracle powerful AI suite, and combine Database AI with hyperscaler services and frameworks. Remember, the best of breed from the Cloud Service provider of your choice.
And this will allow you to reduce complexity and cost. Now according to knowledge is not the only thing. You can also lift and ship without refactoring your data, reducing migration times, complexity, and costs with the Oracle Database Exadata and maximum availability architecture.
13:47
Nikita: What are the key differentiators and benefits of moving Oracle Database workloads to the cloud?
Sergio: Extreme performance. Accelerate your database workloads with scalability, scale infrastructure, and consumption, and extreme cost optimization. But that's not all.
You also get extreme availability with the Oracle maximum availability architecture, extreme resiliency, making sure that you're always running with high availability and disaster recovery protection and extreme simplicity. So you can use all your Oracle Database and Exadata capabilities.
Build innovative applications with Cloud-First capabilities. These are Cloud native capabilities that are going to enable you to innovate for all your applications. And having a unified multi-cloud environment reduce complexity and cost because you can leverage your Exadata infrastructure with share licenses, low administration with database lifecycle automation, and purchase through your hyperscaler marketplace.
So you can only have one vendor running all billing, even if you're leveraging multi-cloud solutions. And you can leverage your Oracle investments with bring-your-own-license and earn up to 33% towards Oracle tech license.
Reduce administration by up to 65% with the Autonomous self-driving database. Only pay consumption for actual usage with online scaling, Autonomous Database, elastic pools, and per second billing. And enjoy advanced features at no added cost, like using the built-in AI vector search.
15:31
Lois: Can you give us a real-world example of a company using Oracle Database@AWS?
Sergio: Fidelity Investments rely on Oracle Database@AWS. They were one of the very first customers to leverage the best of both worlds, in this case, the offering from the AWS hyperscale applications and the Oracle Database Exadata Cloud service inside AWS.
Specifically, Fidelity uses this integration to make it easier to move some of its database workloads to AWS, combining the reliability and security of AWS with the critical enterprise software provided by Oracle. 
16:17
Lois: Thank you, Sergio, for joining us on the podcast! To learn more about what we discussed today, head over to mylearn.oracle.com and search for the Oracle Database@AWS Architect Professional course. Join us next week when we dive deep into what Oracle Database@AWS is all about. Until then, this is Lois Houston…
Nikita: And Nikita Abraham, signing off!
16:43
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