Happy Holidays to all Oracle Linux fans, we wish you all the best for 2017.

Here are the top 5 blogs of 2016:

Deployment of Oracle Applications and Database with OpenStack Murano (Beta)

Take Action on Dirty Cow

Are Cloudlets in Your Forecast?

What is on tap for Linux Container strategy in 2016?

Training Thursdays: Learn about Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux

See you all in 2017!

This post is courtesy of Margaret Errington. 

In an era where storage is very affordable, collecting and storing data is no longer an issue. This explosion in data growth within the enterprise can bring new headaches, that of protecting it. Additionally,  if we are to add budget constraints, high service-level agreements, and technologies, such as virtualization to the mix, the capabilities of traditional backup and recovery processes may be a bit strained.

Customers are looking for backup/recovery solutions that address scalability, the ability to backup applications and databases both in the cloud and on-premises, and at the level of files to complete VMs.

In collaboration with Oracle, Backup and Recovery Software Partners have certified solutions for enterprise infrastructures built on Oracle Linux and/or Oracle VM. These solutions are available whether the customer’s IT environment who are on-premises or in the cloud. Below are some partners with currently supported data protection solutions:

• Acronis with Acronis Backup Advanced
• Actifio with Actifio Sky. Actifio Sky for Oracle Cloud is  available in Oracle Cloud Marketplace
• Asigra with Asigra Cloud backup
• Zmanda, a Carbonite company with Amanda Enterprise
• Arcserve with two backup products: Arcserve Backup and Arcserve Unified Data Protection
• Barracuda Networks with Barracuda Backup
• CloudBerrry Lab with CloudBerry Backup. CloudBerry Explorer provides a user interface to Oracle cloud storage
• Commvault with Commvault Software (formerly Simpana)
• Dell with Rapid Recovery and NetVault
• EMC with its Data Protection Suite (DPS), with Avamar and NetWorker as key components
• FalconStor Optimized backup (VTL & NAS)
• Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Data Protector; StoreOnce
• R1Soft  with Server backup Manager
• SEP with Sesam
• Storware with vProtect
• Storix System Backup Administrator
• Veritas Technologies with Backup Exec and  NetBackup, available in the Oracle Cloud Marketplace

Visit: Oracle Cloud Marketplace; Oracle Cloud; Infrastructure for Open Cloud: Oracle Linux; Oracle VM

Need more information? Contact us at: ol-ovm-info_ww at oracle.com. 

The Oracle Linux curriculum contains courses that are very popular with students. Here is what students have to say about the Oracle Linux system administration courses:

• Highly enjoyable and informative
• The contents of this course corresponded exactly to my expectations.
• I got a good understanding of Oracle Linux through this training.
• This training helped me fill my knowledge gaps.
• This training was a great experience and very applicable to my new job responsibilities.
• The labs corresponded very well to what we covered in the lectures
• This training struck the right balance between practical learning and volume of topics.
• Very good practical environment. This course was relevant to my job function.

Join these satisfied students by delving into the Oracle Linux curriculum. Learn more about the courses, delivery formats and schedules at http://oracle.com/education/linux.

Docker is becoming even more popular for customers and users to optimise their deployment processes, particularly when integrated into a Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) pipeline. Docker forms the basis of several Oracle Cloud products, including the Oracle Developer Cloud, Oracle Application Container Cloud and Oracle Container Cloud.

As part of Oracle's ongoing commitment to security, we regularly release updates to the official Oracle Linux base images hosted on the Docker Hub and in the official Oracle GitHub repository. In the past month, we have released 5 updates across the Oracle Linux 5, 6 and 7 images to cover several CVEs that have been fixed.

Learn more about ensuring your Docker images are built using the latest images provided by Oracle. 

Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux maintains the flexibility of OpenStack, while allowing you to deploy different configurations and integrate with a range of software and hardware vendors.

The, JUST RELEASED, Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux: Getting Started seminar is ideal for those new to OpenStack. You can take this one-day seminar as a:

• Live-Virtual Event: Attend a live event from your own desk, no travel required. Events are added to the schedule to suit different time-zones.
• In-Class Event: Travel to an education center to take this class.

Be the first to influence the schedule for this course by registering your interest here. To learn more about the Oracle Linux curriculum, go to http://oracle.com/education/linux.

Many customer are using Oracle Linux and Oracle VM in private clouds integrated with Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control. With the update release of Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 13c R2 (13.2.0.0), customers have greater benefits to manage Oracle Linux,  Oracle VM, and Oracle Private Cloud Appliance within their existing or future private clouds.

Read  How to Manage Oracle Private Cloud Appliance with Oracle Enterprise Manager 13c Cloud Control.

HugePages allow larger pages to manage memory, provide faster overall memory performance and decrease page table overhead, making them crucial for faster Oracle database performance. You can use HugePages in both 32-bit and 64-bit configurations since release 2.6 of the Linux kernel.

To learn more about HugePages and many more topics, take the Oracle Linux 7: System Administration course. You can take this course in the following formats:

• Training-on-Demand: Start training within 24 hours of registration, following lecture delivery by expert instructors at your own pace through streaming video and booking time to get hands-on experience when suits your schedule.
  
• Live-Virtual Event: Attend a live event from your own desk, no travel required. Events are added to the schedule to suit different time-zones. Live-Virtual events currently on the schedule include 15, 23, and 30 January, 27 February, 6 March, 2 and 10 April 2017.
  
• In-Class Event: Travel to an education center to take this class, below is a selection of the in-class events on the schedule:
  

• Training-on-Demand: Start training within 24 hours, following lecture delivery by expert instructors at your own pace through streaming video and booking time to get hands-on experience when suits your schedule.
• Live-Virtual Event: Attend a live event from your own desk, no travel required. Events are added to the schedule to suit different time-zones. Live-Virtual events currently on the schedule include 5 February 2017.
  
• In-Class Event: Travel to an education center to take this class, below is a selection of the in-class events on the schedule:

To register for an event or learn more about the Oracle Linux curriculum, go to http://oracle.com/education/linux.

Oracle can help you improve your private cloud architecture while lowering your risk and cost of getting to the public cloud.

Are you migrating your mission critical workloads to the cloud? Oracle’s already done it and Oracle drinks its own champagne! In other words, while lots of cloud vendors offer solutions that they want customers to buy, very few of them run their entire business in the cloud. Oracle runs a $37 billion organization, with 115,000 employees, supporting over 420,000 customers in 145 countries in the cloud.

For example:

• Our entire product development and support environments are in the cloud
• Our business processes (HR, CRM, Supply Chain, Financials, Analytics, etc.) are in the cloud
• We provide SaaS, PaaS and IaaS services to our customers in the cloud in public, private and hybrid environments

Oracle defined the optimal process over the past 10 years and avoided many of the problems affecting typical migrations to cloud. Why is that important to you? According to Gartner, most Cloud ERP systems are doomed to fail by 2018 and 95% of Private Cloud projects fail to meet business objectives. What are the common problems identified in these two assessments? Relying on complex legacy architecture to support your move to cloud is a mistake that impacts both migration and application integration. Why? Complex legacy architectures are incompatible with the cloud architectures needed to deliver on the promises of agility, responsiveness and cost savings.

Spend an evening with Oracle in learning how Oracle is making it easier for customers to improve their private cloud infrastructure and positioning customers to more effectively move to the cloud. 

Join us for dinner and a discussion with Oracle’s Cloud Executive Team and customers to understand how we overcame these challenges by choosing a specific path from SaaS, to PaaS to IaaS, built the fastest growing cloud business globally, and answer questions like the following to ensure you are on the best path to your success:

Please register as soon as possible to attend since the seats are limited and allocated at first come, first serve basis.

New York : Oracle Linux & Virtualization: Cocktails, Dinner & The Cloud

December 1, 2016 – 6-9pm EST @ Morton’s The Steakhouse

Event Registration here

Chicago : Oracle Linux & Virtualization: Cocktails, Dinner & The Cloud

December 6, 2016 – 6-9pm CST @ Smith & Wollensky

Event Registration here

Minneapolis : Oracle Linux & Virtualization: Cocktails, Dinner & The Cloud

December 7, 2016 – 5-8:30pm CST @ McCormick & Schmicks

Event Registration here

Toronto: Oracle Linux & Virtualization: Cocktails, Dinner & The Cloud

December 13, 2016 – 6-9pm EST @ Harbour Sixty Steakhouse

Event Registration here

Dallas: Oracle Linux & Virtualization: Cocktails, Dinner & The Cloud

January 31, 2017 – 6-9pm CST @ La Cima Club

Event Registration here

Seattle: Oracle Linux & Virtualization: Cocktails, Dinner & The Cloud

Februry 2, 2016 – 6-9pm PST @ Metropolitan Grill

Event Registration here

See you at one of our events!

Administrators can save time and effort by automating the installation of Oracle Linux with Kickstart as follows:

• Create a Kickstart file
• Make the Kickstart file available on a boot medium or network
• Make Oracle Linux installation tree available
• Initiate the Kickstart installation
  

To learn about Kickstart and many other key topics, Linux 7 users can take the Oracle Linux 7: Advanced Administration course. You can take this courses in the following formats:

• Training-on-Demand: Follow streaming video of expert instructors at your own pace and book time to get hands-on exercises when suits your schedule.
• Live-Virtual Event: Attend a live event from your own desk, no travel required. Events are added to the schedule to suit different time-zones. Live-Virtual events on the schedule include 5 and 19 December 2016, 16 January, 6 and 13 February, 27 March and 24 April 2017.
  
• In-Class Event: Travel to an education center to take this class. In-Class events on the schedule include:

If you are using an earlier version of Linux, take the Oracle Linux 5 & 6 Advanced Administration course in the following formats:

• Training-on-Demand: Follow streaming video at your own pace and book time to get hands-on exercises when suits your schedule.
• Live-Virtual Event: Attend a live event from your own desk, no travel required. Events are added to the schedule to suit different time-zones. Live-Virtual events on the schedule include 5 December 2016, 13 February, 13 March, and 24 April 2017.
  
• In-Class Event: Travel to an education center to take this class. In-Class events on the schedule include:

The Oracle Linux 5 & 6 Advanced Administration course is one step for those preparing to take the Oracle Linux 6 Advanced System Administrator OCP certificate exam.

To register for an event or learn more about the Oracle Linux curriculum, go to http://oracle.com/education/linux.

Recognized for their technical expertise, Oracle ACEs contribute knowledge with articles, technical advice, blog posts, and tweets. The Oracle ACE Program is comprised of 3 levels: Oracle ACE Associate, Oracle ACE, and Oracle ACE Director. The "Associate" designation is base level entry into the program for those who are just getting started with their community activities and aspire to contribute at higher levels. You can join the community and learn from their insights and experience. 

We are always searching for Oracle Linux ACEs. As an example for you and a way to promote one of our Oracle Linux ACEs,  Johan Louwers,  here's a compilation of his November blogposts and few examples below:

• Oracle Linux : sending mail with Sendmail

In need to send mails from a bash script? You can check some examples on how to use sendmail on Oracle Linux in this blogpost

• Oracle Cloud - persistent IaaS storage

In cases where you do not want to loose your Oracle Linux instance storage device on the Oracle IaaS cloud you can now make your storage more persistent in the latest version. You can read about it in this blogpost

• Oracle Linux and understanding Oracle Cloud IP's

Trying to understand how the cloud IP’s work in the Oracle Cloud while using Oracle Linux. Check this blogpost

Read more.

Oracle Linux is battle tested. Thousands of the world's largest enterprises trust Oracle Linux for their mission critical workloads. These companies benefit from the rich compliance reporting and remediation available with Oracle Linux.

Join these companies on Oracle Linux by adopting Oracle Linux 7. Linux administrators can learn what is new in Oracle Linux 7 by taking the Oracle Linux 7: What's New for Administrators training in the following formats:

• Live-Virtual Event: Attend a live event from your own desk, no travel required. Live-Virtual Events on the schedule include 18 January, 15 March, 26 April, and 31 May 2017.
  
• In-Class Event: Travel to an education center to attend a class. Below are a selection of the In-Class Events already on the schedule:

To register for an event or to learn more about the Oracle Linux curriculum, go to http://oracle.com/education/linux.

The Oracle Linux and Virtualization Team is pleased to announce the general availability of Oracle Linux 7 Update 3 for x86-64 servers.

Users with a support subscription can download ISOs from My Oracle Support. ISO installation images can also be downloaded from Oracle Software Delivery Cloud. Individual RPM packages for Oracle Linux 7 Update 3 are available on the public yum server and the Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN).

This is the first Oracle Linux 7 ISO to include UEK Release 4 (UEK R4). Please note that new installations of Oracle Linux 7 Update 3 will install and boot the UEK R4 kernel by default. However, updates to existing Oracle Linux 7 environments require the user to explicitly install UEK R4 and will not automatically replace existing UEK R3 kernels.

Kernel Support with Oracle Linux 7 Update 3

The Oracle Linux 7 Update 3 ISO includes and installs two sets of kernel packages: Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK) and Red Hat Compatible Kernel (RHCK). The installation process configures the system to boot with UEK as the default kernel, and configures RHCK as an alternate kernel.

The Oracle Linux 7 Update 3 ISO contains the following kernel packages:

•           kernel-uek-4.1.12-61.1.18.el7uek (UEK R4u2 +errata)

•           kernel-3.10.0-514.el7

Oracle Linux 7 Update 3 continues to support, but does not ship with, the latest UEK R3u7 and later.

Application Compatibility

Oracle Linux maintains user space compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which is independent of the kernel version that underlies the operating system. Existing applications in user space will continue to run unmodified on Oracle Linux 7 Update 3 with UEK R4 and no re-certifications are needed for applications already certified with RHEL 7 or Oracle Linux 7.

Notable in Oracle Linux 7 Update 3:

•           UEFI Secure Boot Support - This update allows you to install and use Oracle Linux 7 on systems that have enabled UEFI Secure Boot, which is fully supported on Oracle Linux 7 Update 3.

For more details on this and other new features and changes in Oracle Linux 7 Update 3, please consult the release notes in the Oracle Linux Product Documentation Library.

Oracle Linux can be downloaded, used and distributed free of charge and all updates and errata are freely available. For support, you decide which of your systems require a support subscription. This makes Oracle Linux an ideal choice for your development, testing and production systems. You decide which support coverage is the best for each of your systems individually, while keeping all of your systems up-to-date and secure. For customers with Oracle Linux Premier Support, you also receive access to zero-downtime kernel updates using Oracle Ksplice and support for Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux.