Deploying StandbyMP for Oracle SE on AWS RDS Custom

Firstly, why would you use StandbyMP rather than AWS Multi-AZ for Oracle SE? Well, StandbyMP creates a true warm standby database, whereas Multi-AZ for Oracle SE uses storage replication. The warm standby created by StandbyMP has three main benefits: 

(1) Increases the resiliency of the database by enabling it to be hosted in an out-of-region data center protecting you from in-region downtime; 

(2) Increases flexibility and configurability such as point-in-time restoration;

(3) Enables DR testing / read-only queries not available on Multi-AZ for Oracle SE. 

You can read more in our blog: “Introducing StandbyMP for Oracle SE on AWS RDS Custom”.

PART ONE: Creating the Oracle database

From the AWS Console, navigate to RDS and then click Create Database. Use the ‘Standard create’, as we want to configure each step in this process and select ‘Oracle’.

After choosing Oracle, this will show you the options of choosing Amazon RDS or Amazon RDS Custom. Here choose Amazon RDS Custom and in the edition choose Oracle Standard Edition Two (SE2). The next thing is to build a custom engine version of the latest Oracle release (at the time of writing this was Oracle 19.19). 

We exactly followed the steps provided in the AWS link below:
Preparing to create a CEV - Amazon Relational Database Service

We were doing this as a Dev/Test environment that was for only non-production purposes. 

DB instance name

Next, provide the name for the DB instance and also the admin user to login to the database. The credential has to be self-managed as RDS Custom does not support credential management.

Select your machine configuration 

Now it's time to choose your infrastructure configuration. For this test, I chose db.m6i.large (2vCPU and 8GB RAM), a standard class machine.

Ensure you have sufficient storage added to the instance. The IOPS and storage throughput can be configured, but we left it to default.

Choosing your Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

The next step is to choose a VPC or create one. See the screenshot for details.

Assigning an IP address and configuring security

It's important to ensure that a public IP address is assigned so that any other outside resources can connect to the database instance. Also, ensure that the security group only has the necessary traffic for this instance.  

For this example, we configured ports 1521 for the Oracle database connection and also ports 7890, 5533, and 4433 for the Dbvisit standbyMP configuration.

Configure automation 

Select full automation

Confirm the instance is accessible from the AWS console 

Once the instance is created, using the session manager from the AWS EC2 page, confirm the instance is connected.

PART TWO: Installing Dbvisit StandbyMP

An overview of the architecture

StandbyMP enables the creation and management of a warm standby database two key components. An agent is installed on each of the database VMs and a control center is installed on a separate EC2 VM. The agents communicate with the StandbyMP control center, and between themselves to transfer archive logs between the primary and standby databases. 

Installing the Agent Managers and Control Center

1. Pause the automation on the second (standby) server and drop the database. 
2. Install the agent manager on the primary and also the agent manager and Control Center on the standby. 

Full details of this process can be found in the Installing StandbyMP documentation: https://dbvisit.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/DSMP/pages/3242000447/Installing+Standby+Multiplatform

   

bash-4.2$ ps -ef |grep dbv

rdsdb     6017 23277  0 Aug09 ?        00:00:16 /rdsdbdata/dbvisit/standbymp/bin/dbvhelper -agentManagerId
3oychmd4s3l5 -directorId 3rxxfok6zctlm -hostAddress ip-10-0-10-76.ap-southeast-2.compute.internal -natsAddress ip-10-0-9-20.ap-southeast-2.compute.internal -natsPort 5533 -configurationType Oracle -helperProcessKey oracle:3oychmd4s3l5

rdsdb     8683  6017  0 Aug10 ?        00:02:26 /rdsdbdata/dbvisit/standbymp/oracle/dbvctl                      -d RDSCDB -D run --mode GUI

rdsdb    23277     1  0 Aug09 ?        00:00:20 /rdsdbdata/dbvisit/standbymp/bin/dbvagentmanager service run

rdsdb    28903 20764  0 05:44 pts/0    00:00:00 grep --color=auto dbv
rdsdb    32391  6017  0 04:53 ?        00:00:01 /rdsdbdata/dbvisit/standbymp/oracle/dbvctl                      -d RDSCDB --listener start --mode GU

  
 
[ssm-user@ip-10-0-9-20 bin]$ ps -ef |grep dbv

rdsdb      825     1  0 Aug09 ?        00:00:38 /rdsdbdata/dbvisit/standbymp/bin/dbvagentmanager service run

rdsdb     1154     1  0 Aug09 ?        00:01:03 /rdsdbdata/dbvisit/standbymp/bin/dbvcontrol service run

rdsdb     8604   825  0 Aug09 ?        00:00:17 /rdsdbdata/dbvisit/standbymp/bin/dbvhelper -agentManagerId nm6clvbv4psa -directorId 3rxxfok6zctlm -hostAddress ip-10-0-9-20.ap-southeast-2.compute.internal -natsAddress ip-10-0-9-20.ap-southeast-2.compute.internal -natsPort 5533 -configurationType Oracle -helperProcessKey oracle:nm6clvbv4psa

ssm-user 10471  8101  0 05:45 pts/0    00:00:00 grep --color=auto dbv

rdsdb    27450  8604  0 05:32 ?        00:00:01 /rdsdbdata/dbvisit/standbymp/oracle/dbvctl                                -d RDSCDB --listener start --mode GUI

[ssm-user@ip-10-0-9-20 bin]$