Re: Amazon RDS Oracle

From: Jeremiah Wilton <jwilton_at_bluegecko.net>
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2012 10:47:30 -0700
Message-Id: <BB716B26-7186-49EE-A8BC-FB3D288A7076_at_bluegecko.net>

On Mar 26, 2012, at 10:13 AM, Michael McMullen wrote:

> Anyone using this for production db's? We're thinking of using it for a
> small db and we might also use the mulit a-z deployment. Is everything done
> through a console? You never get access to the image via ssh? I'm also
> wondering if you can still use datapump to export data.

Hi Michael,

We have customers using Amazon RDS for Oracle.

You can't log into the underlying host via SSH like with an EC2 instance. Connections are only via SQL*Net. You can do almost everything you would usually be able to do from within SQL*Plus or any other OCI-based tool (like Data Pump). I did a little playing around with RDS for Oracle when Amazon announced it, and notable exceptions to "normal operation" are described here: http://bit.ly/jzsE4G. In a nutshell:

You CAN:

	• Create users
	• Create tablespaces
	• Create tables, indexes, and all other usual objects

You CAN'T

	• Grant alter system or database
	• Grant restricted session
	• Grant create or drop any directory
	• Grant any privilege
	• DATAPUMP_EXP_FULL_DATABASE, DATAPUMP_IMP_FULL_DATABASE, IMP_FULL_DATABASE, EXP_FULL_DATABASE
	• DDL on any object owned by SYS
	• Alter user, revoke or any DDL on SYS, SYSTEM or RDSADMIN (a special user installed by Amazon)
	• Drop tablespace RDSADMIN
	• Create public synonyms for objects belonging to SYS, SYSTEM or RDSADMIN

It looks like you already understand about RDS maintenance windows, since you are considering a multi A-Z deployment. The main thing is to go over any features Amazon RDS doesn't support and make sure you don't need them. If you find that RDS provides too little control, you can always use EC2, although that doesn't allow a the license-provided option for Oracle like RDS.

--
Jeremiah Wilton
http://www.bluegecko.net

--
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l

Received on Mon Mar 26 2012 - 12:47:30 CDT