Oracle Database

Migration from Solaris

to Linux on Nutanix
Nutanix Tech Note

Version 1.1 • October 2018 • TN-2018

 Oracle Database Migration from Solaris to Linux on Nutanix

Copyright
Copyright 2018 Nutanix, Inc.
Nutanix, Inc.
1740 Technology Drive, Suite 150
San Jose, CA 95110
All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright and intellectual
property laws.
Nutanix is a trademark of Nutanix, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other
marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

Copyright | 2
 Oracle Database Migration from Solaris to Linux on Nutanix

Contents

1. Executive Summary................................................................................ 4

2. Introduction..............................................................................................5
2.1. Audience........................................................................................................................ 5
2.2. Purpose..........................................................................................................................5

3. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Overview...................................................... 6

3.1. Nutanix Acropolis Architecture...................................................................................... 7

4. Why Run Oracle on Nutanix.................................................................. 8

5. Oracle Environment Overview............................................................. 10

6. Step-by-Step Migration Instructions....................................................11

6.1. Setup............................................................................................................................11
6.2. Example....................................................................................................................... 12

7. Conclusion............................................................................................. 20

Appendix......................................................................................................................... 21
About Nutanix......................................................................................................................21

List of Figures................................................................................................................22

List of Tables................................................................................................................. 23

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 Oracle Database Migration from Solaris to Linux on Nutanix

1. Executive Summary
This technical note describes how to migrate an Oracle database deployed on Oracle Solaris to
Linux running on the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud. Migrating your Oracle databases can help you
simplify system support by consolidating vendors and can enhance capabilities such as backup,
disaster recovery, snapshots, and clones.
The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud provides a complete datacenter infrastructure solution for Oracle
databases. Deploying Oracle databases on Nutanix eliminates the complexities of a traditional
multitier datacenter environment. Whether you are virtualizing critical or tier-1 Oracle databases
or situating them on bare metal, Nutanix solutions bring the predictable performance, scalability,
and cost benefits of web-scale architecture to your database environments.
With excellent linear scaling, as well as great random read and write and sequential storage
performance, the Nutanix platform can support transactional and analytical databases
simultaneously, all while using the hypervisor of your choice, including VMware vSphere,
Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, or Nutanix AHV. Using Nutanix Volumes, Nutanix supports
bare metal Oracle database instances or VMs (using a single instance of either Oracle Database
or Oracle RAC), delivering the benefits of web-scale engineering to all Oracle database
environments.
The Nutanix solution delivers powerful self-healing, data protection, and disaster recovery
capabilities to keep your databases and applications running and your critical data well protected.
It also allows near-instantaneous local and remote backups, using snapshots to offload Recovery
Manager (RMAN) backups to tape, disk, or a WORM (write once, read many) device for offsite
backup. This functionality satisfies Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance, a key consideration for
many enterprises. Nutanix also enables one-click cloning so that administrators can easily and
quickly apply these snapshots to refresh a test or development Oracle instance from production.

1. Executive Summary | 4
 Oracle Database Migration from Solaris to Linux on Nutanix

2. Introduction

2.1. Audience
This technical note is part of the Nutanix Solutions Library for Oracle and is intended for
individuals designing Nutanix solutions for Oracle Database or Oracle Real Application Cluster
(RAC).

2.2. Purpose
This document details a method for migrating an Oracle database deployed on Oracle Solaris to
Linux running on the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud.
Unless otherwise stated, the solution described in this document is valid on all supported AOS
releases.

Table 1: Document Version History

Version
Published Notes
Number
1.0 October 2017 Original publication.
1.1 October 2018 Updated Nutanix overview.

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3. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Overview

Nutanix delivers a web-scale, hyperconverged infrastructure solution purpose-built for
virtualization and cloud environments. This solution brings the scale, resilience, and economic
benefits of web-scale architecture to the enterprise through the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud
Platform, which combines three product families—Nutanix Acropolis, Nutanix Prism, and Nutanix
Calm.
Attributes of this Enterprise Cloud OS include:
• Optimized for storage and compute resources.
• Machine learning to plan for and adapt to changing conditions automatically.
• Self-healing to tolerate and adjust to component failures.
• API-based automation and rich analytics.
• Simplified one-click upgrade.
• Native file services for user and application data.
• Native backup and disaster recovery solutions.
• Powerful and feature-rich virtualization.
• Flexible software-defined networking for visualization, automation, and security.
• Cloud automation and life cycle management.
Nutanix Acropolis provides data services and can be broken down into three foundational
components: the Distributed Storage Fabric (DSF), the App Mobility Fabric (AMF), and AHV.
Prism furnishes one-click infrastructure management for virtual environments running on
Acropolis. Acropolis is hypervisor agnostic, supporting three third-party hypervisors—ESXi,
Hyper-V, and XenServer—in addition to the native Nutanix hypervisor, AHV.

Figure 1: Nutanix Enterprise Cloud

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 Oracle Database Migration from Solaris to Linux on Nutanix

3.1. Nutanix Acropolis Architecture

Acropolis does not rely on traditional SAN or NAS storage or expensive storage network
interconnects. It combines highly dense storage and server compute (CPU and RAM) into a
single platform building block. Each building block delivers a unified, scale-out, shared-nothing
architecture with no single points of failure.
The Nutanix solution requires no SAN constructs, such as LUNs, RAID groups, or expensive
storage switches. All storage management is VM-centric, and I/O is optimized at the VM virtual
disk level. The software solution runs on nodes from a variety of manufacturers that are either
all-flash for optimal performance, or a hybrid combination of SSD and HDD that provides a
combination of performance and additional capacity. The DSF automatically tiers data across the
cluster to different classes of storage devices using intelligent data placement algorithms. For
best performance, algorithms make sure the most frequently used data is available in memory or
in flash on the node local to the VM.
To learn more about the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud, please visit the Nutanix Bible and
Nutanix.com.

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 Oracle Database Migration from Solaris to Linux on Nutanix

4. Why Run Oracle on Nutanix

Digital transformation demands that IT evolve beyond offering basic services and become
more agile, shortening the time to production and increasing the ability to scale. Furthermore,
business-critical applications such as Oracle databases require us to think beyond vanilla
provisioning of the operating system.
Virtualization addresses these needs well, yet sometimes we still must use physical Oracle
Database instances in cases where virtualization isn’t a good fit for licensing or organizational
reasons. The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud supports all kinds of situations, bringing web-scale
benefits to both virtualized and bare-metal deployments of Oracle databases.
Oracle Database is one of the most common enterprise-grade databases in the market. It can
support a wide range of business-critical application functions, including enterprise resource
planning (ERP), supply chain management, customer relationship management, and many more.
Designed to run any application, the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud converges storage and compute
within the same appliance, eliminating the complexity of separate standalone storage solutions.
Nutanix supports VMware vSphere, Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V, Citrix
XenServer, and Nutanix AHV, allowing customers to choose the right hypervisor for their needs.
Nutanix Volumes can export iSCSI volumes to a single instance of Oracle or to Oracle RAC
instances running directly on physical servers. Using our volume group technology, Volumes
can also export volumes directly to VMs running on the same Nutanix cluster. Typical Oracle
database deployment tasks—backup, disaster recovery, snapshots, and clones— are still
available and, in fact, work even better within the Nutanix cluster.
Running Oracle on the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud provides several advantages, including:
• Low latency and predictable performance, so DBAs can start small and linearly scale both
performance and capacity nondisruptively as needs grow.
• Ability to handle a wide range of database workload types, including transactional, analytical,
or a mix of the two on the same platform.
• Datacenter infrastructure deployments in just hours, resulting in faster time to production.
• High availability and data redundancy, allowing the Oracle database and supporting
applications to stay up and running even if the underlying hardware has issues
• Integrated snapshots, remote replication, and metro-level availability to protect the database,
in addition to Oracle’s native data protection capabilities.
• Simplified management without having to deal with storage-related management tasks such
as multipathing, zoning, and masking.

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 Oracle Database Migration from Solaris to Linux on Nutanix

• Support for Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) without any caveats or restrictions.

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 Oracle Database Migration from Solaris to Linux on Nutanix

5. Oracle Environment Overview

The left side of the following figure presents a quick overview of an Oracle environment running
in a three-tier architecture on Oracle Solaris. The right side of the figure represents a Nutanix
cluster. A new Oracle 12c feature allows cross-platform data transport using RMAN backup to
move between systems with different endian formats.

Figure 2: Oracle Environment Overview

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 Oracle Database Migration from Solaris to Linux on Nutanix

6. Step-by-Step Migration Instructions

This section provides the steps for converting user tablespaces from Solaris to Linux. In this
setup, the source database is running on Solaris 11 on Oracle Solaris SPARC with the ZFS file
system. The destination database is running on Oracle Linux 7.3 x86_64 with Oracle ASM.

Note: These instructions cover only one of several available methods you can use
in this situation—it may not be the right method for your specific environment. Check
the Oracle Support website for other methods for converting Oracle from Solaris to
Linux.

6.1. Setup
• Source database
Solaris 11 on Solaris SPARC (64-bit) (big-endian format) with the ZFS file system.
• Destination database
Oracle Linux 7.3 x86_64 (little-endian format) with Oracle ASM disk groups.
Prerequisites:
• Both the source and destination database versions must be 12c Release 1 (12.1) or later.
• Set the COMPATIBLE parameter in the SPFILE of the source database and the destination
database to 12.0.0 or higher.
• Tablespaces are transported in read-only mode, unless you use the ALLOW INCONSISTENT
clause in the BACKUP command.
• Complete the DBMS_TTS.TRANSPORT_SET_CHECK procedure to check for dependencies.
If the TRANSPORT_SET_VIOLATIONS view contains rows corresponding to the specified
tablespaces, then you must resolve the dependencies before creating the cross-platform
backup.
• The source database must be in ARCHIVELOG mode.
• A user for RMAN backup must have SYSBACKUP privileges in both the source and
destination databases.

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 Oracle Database Migration from Solaris to Linux on Nutanix

6.2. Example
In this example, we have a database with two user tablespaces (EMPTS and HRTS) on Solaris
that we want to migrate to a Linux VM running on a Nutanix cluster.
• Run the DBMS_TTS.TRANSPORT_SET_CHECK procedure to check for dependencies for
EMPTS and HRTS tablespaces.

Figure 3: Check Tablespace Dependencies

• Create an RMAN backup user on both the source and destination databases.

Figure 4: Create RMAN User on the Source Database

Figure 5: Create RMAN User on the Destination Database

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 Oracle Database Migration from Solaris to Linux on Nutanix

• Connect to RMAN on the source database and put both tablespaces in read-only mode.

Figure 6: Connect to RMAN on the Source Database and Put Tablespaces in Read-Only Mode

• Run RMAN backups of both tablespaces. Be sure to use the RMAN option TO PLATFORM.

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 Oracle Database Migration from Solaris to Linux on Nutanix

Figure 7: Run RMAN Backup on EMPTS Tablespace

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 Oracle Database Migration from Solaris to Linux on Nutanix

Figure 8: Run RMAN Backup on HRTS Tablespace

• Verify that this process created the backup files.

Figure 9: Verify Backup Files

• Copy the backup files to the Linux server. Alternatively, you can create an NFS share that you
can mount on both servers and use to share the backup files.

Figure 10: Copy Backup Files to Destination Server

• Create the schemas to be migrated before restoring the backup files.

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 Oracle Database Migration from Solaris to Linux on Nutanix

Figure 11: Creating Schemas for Both Tablespaces

• Connect to RMAN and restore the tablespaces. Make sure that you have specified the
keyword foreign.

Figure 12: Connect to RMAN

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 Oracle Database Migration from Solaris to Linux on Nutanix

Figure 13: Restore EMPTS Tablespace

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 Oracle Database Migration from Solaris to Linux on Nutanix

Figure 14: Restore HRTS Tablespace

• Verify that the process has restored both tablespaces and change them to read/write.

Figure 15: Verify Tablespaces After Restoration

Figure 16: Put Both Tablespaces in Read/Write Mode

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 Oracle Database Migration from Solaris to Linux on Nutanix

Figure 17: Final Verification

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 Oracle Database Migration from Solaris to Linux on Nutanix

7. Conclusion
The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud provides a web-scale architecture that allows business-critical
applications such as Oracle to take full advantage of low-latency storage performance and linear
scalability, high availability, and simplified management. With the new RMAN feature in Oracle
12c, you can effortlessly migrate Oracle databases across platforms, making it easier than ever
to get started on Nutanix.
We hope that the sample procedure outlined in this technical note empowers you to begin
moving Oracle user tablespaces from Solaris to Linux on Nutanix. By shifting their workloads to
Nutanix, DBAs and system administrators can achieve a lower TCO and eliminate the complexity
of constantly managing and optimizing their underlying compute and storage in a multitier
architecture.
Engage with Nutanix experts on the Nutanix Next Community, on Twitter @nutanix, or at your
local Nutanix Connect User Groups to learn more about the benefits of the Nutanix Enterprise
Cloud for Oracle databases and other business-critical applications. Send us an email at
[email protected] to set up your own customized briefing, including sizing, TCO analysis, data
protection, and disaster recovery design.

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 Oracle Database Migration from Solaris to Linux on Nutanix

Appendix

About Nutanix
Nutanix makes infrastructure invisible, elevating IT to focus on the applications and services that
power their business. The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS leverages web-scale engineering and
consumer-grade design to natively converge compute, virtualization, and storage into a resilient,
software-defined solution with rich machine intelligence. The result is predictable performance,
cloud-like infrastructure consumption, robust security, and seamless application mobility for a
broad range of enterprise applications. Learn more at www.nutanix.com or follow us on Twitter
@nutanix.

Appendix | 21
 Oracle Database Migration from Solaris to Linux on Nutanix

List of Figures
Figure 1: Nutanix Enterprise Cloud................................................................................... 6

Figure 2: Oracle Environment Overview......................................................................... 10

Figure 3: Check Tablespace Dependencies................................................................... 12

Figure 4: Create RMAN User on the Source Database.................................................. 12

Figure 5: Create RMAN User on the Destination Database............................................12

Figure 6: Connect to RMAN on the Source Database and Put Tablespaces in Read-
Only Mode................................................................................................................... 13

Figure 7: Run RMAN Backup on EMPTS Tablespace....................................................14

Figure 8: Run RMAN Backup on HRTS Tablespace...................................................... 15

Figure 9: Verify Backup Files.......................................................................................... 15

Figure 10: Copy Backup Files to Destination Server...................................................... 15

Figure 11: Creating Schemas for Both Tablespaces...................................................... 16

Figure 12: Connect to RMAN.......................................................................................... 16

Figure 13: Restore EMPTS Tablespace..........................................................................17

Figure 14: Restore HRTS Tablespace............................................................................ 18

Figure 15: Verify Tablespaces After Restoration.............................................................18

Figure 16: Put Both Tablespaces in Read/Write Mode................................................... 18

Figure 17: Final Verification.............................................................................................19

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List of Tables
Table 1: Document Version History.................................................................................. 5

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