Oracle® BI Applications on Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Best Practices
ORACL E WHIT E PAPER | AUGUST 2 0 2 2
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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Disclaimer ..................................................................................................................... 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................ 3

Disclaimer 2......................................................................................................... 3

INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................. 4

1.0 COMPUTE FOR ORACLE CLOUD PLATFORM AS A SERVICE (PaaS) 4

1.1 OS Oracle Linux Image 5

1.1.1 Oracle Linux Tuning Parameters 5

1.1.2 Install Required Packages 5

1.2.1 Attaching a Block Volume to an Instance 5

1.2.2 Mounting a Block Volume on a Linux Instance. 6

2.0 DATABASE as a Service (DBaaS) FOR ORACLE CLOUD PLATFORM AS A

SERVICE (PaaS) ............................................................................................................ 7

2.1 Tune Oracle init.ora Parameters 7

2.2 Convert default AES 128 Encryption to AES 256 Encryption 7

INTRODUCTION

This whitepaper provides Oracle’s Best Practices for deploying Oracle BI Applications on Oracle Cloud
Platform as a Service (PaaS), which include Compute, Database Cloud (DBCS), and Oracle Analytics
Cloud (OAC) services. The following best practice configurations are based on our real world
experiences with installing and configuring Oracle BI Applications and Oracle Business Intelligence on
Oracle® Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) for key Oracle customers.

1.0 COMPUTE FOR ORACLE CLOUD PLATFORM AS A SERVICE (PaaS)

Some key configurations that you must follow while creating the Compute Instances that includes Storage
on Oracle Cloud (PaaS) are discussed in this section.

Apply these configurations on the following layers while creating Compute Instances:

1.1 OS Oracle Linux Image

1.2 Block Volumes Configurations
1.3 Placement of Compute Instance to Reduce Network Latency
1.1 OS Oracle Linux Image
It is recommended to use the latest supported version of Oracle Linux image for Oracle Business
Intelligence and Oracle BI Applications (OBIA). Ensure that you use Oracle Linux version as per the
Oracle Certification Matrix for Oracle BI Applications.

1.1.1 Oracle Linux Tuning Parameters

This topic describes how to tune the Oracle Linux operating system to optimize Oracle Business
Intelligence and Oracle BI Application installation and operations.

Make the following changes to the newly created install user. For example, “oracle” user
/etc/security/limits.conf file:
oracle soft nofile 999999
oracle hard nofile 999999
oracle soft nproc 131072
oracle hard nproc 131072
oracle soft core unlimited
oracle hard code unlimited

It is recommended to implement above ulimits settings to avoid following potential Oracle BI Applications
system issues:

- If file descriptors (open files - nofile) is set to low value, then the Oracle BI Applications processes
(sawserver, nqsserver) stop responding and throw too many “Open Files” error messages in the
BI logs. You can check current open files value using the "ulimit -n" command.

If a max user processes (nproc) value is low (default is 1024), then the exception
“java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: unable to create new native thread” occurs for bi_serverN/JavaHost
processes or fork failed error message is logged in the system/BI logs. Linux has a maximum allowed
process per user limit. You can check this value using the "ulimit -u" command.

1.1.2 Install Required Packages

You must install the following packages if X11, VNC, and Firefox aren’t present in the existing selected
OS Linux image:
 yum groupinstall “X Window System” –y
 yum groupinstall “Desktop”
 yum groupinstall “Desktop Platform”
 yum groupinstall “General Purpose Desktop”
 yum groupinstall “Graphical Administration Tools”
 yum install tigervnc-server
 yum install gnome-panel
 yum install “firefox”

1.2 Block Volumes Configurations

The OCI Block Volume service lets you dynamically provision and manage block storage volumes. You
can create, attach, connect, and move volumes as needed to meet your storage and application
requirements. Latency performance is independent of the instance shape or volume size, and is always
sub-millisecond at the 95th percentile for the Balanced and Higher Performance elastic performance
options. For more information, see Block Volume performance.
1.2.1 Attaching a Block Volume to an Instance

Note: Don’t attach Storage Volume to store BI Apps/OAS files while creating the Compute instance. You
can’t detach Storage Volume for storing BI Apps/OAS files if you attached this Storage Volume while
creating the Compute instance.

It is recommended to attach a Storage Volume for storing BI Apps/OAS files after the Compute instance
is successfully created. See Updating an Instance in Using Oracle Compute Cloud Service (for PaaS).

1.2.2 Mounting a Block Volume on a Linux Instance.

To access a Block volume, you must attach it to your instance and mount it. After attaching a storage
volume to an instance, mount it by following Mounting a Block Volume on a Linux Instance in Using
Oracle Compute Cloud Service (for PaaS).

Note: Select file system EXT4 and add /dev/xvdd /u01 ext4 defaults 0 0 in /etc/fstab to ensure mount isn’t
deleted when you reboot the box.

1.3 Placement of Compute Instance to Reduce Network Latency

Reduced network traffic/latency between the Compute instance and DBaaS node can improve the
performance of queries. Since network latency is critical for query performance, it is recommended to
place all services (Compute, DBaaS) in the same data center, if your account allows.

For example, for Oracle BI Application/Business Intelligence and the database mustn’t be in two different
data centers.
2.0 DATABASE as a Service (DBaaS) FOR ORACLE CLOUD PLATFORM AS A SERVICE
(PaaS)

Some key configurations that you must follow while creating Database as a Service (DBaaS) on Oracle
Cloud (PaaS) are discussed in this section.

Apply these configurations on the following layers:

2.1 Tune Oracle init.ora Parameters

2.2 Convert default AES 128 Encryption to AES 256 Encryption
2.3 Recommended DBaaS Software Edition

2.1 Tune Oracle init.ora Parameters

Consider the following as basic preliminary recommendations to set the database parameters:
 alter system set processes=1500 scope=spfile;
 alter system set sessions=3000 scope=spfile;
Ultimately, however, the database administrator must monitor, on periodic basis, the database health
and tune parameters.

2.2 Convert default AES 128 Encryption to AES 256 Encryption

AES 256 encryption is done at the TableSpace level. The easiest way to enable AES 256 encryption is
to do it prior to running the RCU for Oracle BI Applications. To encrypt the TableSpace, extract the DDL
that is used to create the OAS and BIAPPS schemas from an existing installation, modify the DDL to
use AES 256 encryption, and create the TableSpaces through SQL Developer. When running the RCU
process, select the prefix of the TableSpace that was created with AES 256 encryption instead of creating
a new prefix.

Note: If AES 256 encryption is done after the fact, then you must export the TableSpaces through
datapump, drop existing TableSpace, recreate the TableSpaces using AES 256 encryption, and then
import the TableSpaces through datapump.

Example: Append the AES 256 encryption notation to the bottom of the DDL such as:
CREATE TABLESPACE "TEST_BIPLATFORM" DATAFILE
'/u02/app/oracle/oradata/TEST_biplatform.dbf' SIZE 67108864
AUTOEXTEND ON NEXT 16777216 MAXSIZE 1073741824
LOGGING ONLINE PERMANENT BLOCKSIZE 8192
EXTENT MANAGEMENT LOCAL AUTOALLOCATE SEGMENT SPACE MANAGEMENT AUTO
ENCRYPTION USING 'AES256' DEFAULT STORAGE (ENCRYPT);

2. Recommended DBaaS Software Edition

Use the DBaaS High Performance version for production because it comes with a Diagnostics and Tuning
pack that helps in debugging performance issues. While creating a DBaaS instance, for Software Edition,
select the Enterprise Edition - High Performance version, or above, for production installations. The
Standard Edition lacks Automatic Workload Repository and other diagnostic and tuning features.
CONNECT W ITH US

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Oracle® BI Applications on Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Best

Practices
Aug 2022
Oracle® Customer Engineering & Advocacy Lab - CEAL Team @
http://blogs.oracle.com/pa