TL;DR: Size matters.

After Oracle’s surprise announcement of their containerization of Oracle DB, Oracle WebLogic and a few of their other core technologies, I decided to test it out for myself. (Speaking authentically, I’m leery of their commitment; however, I recognize that I work on Open Source at Microsoft, so who am I to judge?)

My end-goal is to get Oracle DB 12.2 running in a container on Kubernetes inside Azure Container Service. This is Part 1 of my walkthrough from 0 to operational.

Build and Verify the Container

Unlike most Docker projects, Oracle does not have a public image on Docker Hub. To get started, you’ll need to:

• Clone their Github repo
• Download the Oracle DB instance
• Run their buildDockerImage.sh from the Github Repo
• Start the container

Clone the github repo

git clone git@github.com:oracle/docker-images.git
...
Receiving objects: 100% (5643/5643), 425.77 MiB | 5.41 MiB/s, done.


Wait…what?! 425MB?!

After some sleuthing, it appears they once included the OracleLinux binaries in the git repo but have not purged them. Poor Github. I have a tremendous amount of appreciation for their architects and support engineers. Below is the SHA1 of the blob, the # of bytes of each file and the path.

Moving right along…

Download the Oracle DB instance from their website

Since Oracle does not allow anyone else to distribute their software, you must go to their site, register (Larry Ellison now has my email), and download. Unfortunately, the login process does not allow me to “wget” the file and put on a remote machine, so I must download locally via browser. I chose “Oracle Database 12c Release 2”

-rw-r--r--@ 1 thfalgou staff 3.2G Apr 27 10:07 linuxx64_12201_database.zip


Another 3.2GB.

I now have an alternate version of Sir Mix A Lot’s infamous song going in my head: I LIKE BIG BINARIES AND I CANNOT LIE…

Moving right along…

Run their buildDockerImage.sh from the Github Repo

The documentation isn’t explicit about where to store the downloaded image. (in my case the ‘OracleDatabase/dockerfiles/12.2.0.1’ directory)

Now the moment of truth. From the “OracleDatabase/dockerfiles” directory, run buildDockerImage.sh

10 Minutes later, the container is finally built. 10 minutes. 10!

Perhaps I’m being overly dramatic; however, the Docker Ecosystem has lots of high expectations and one of those is rapid development and deployment through small, composable artifacts. Granted, building and deploying a new version of database is not a common occurrence; however, the process it not conducive to DevOps. That said, this is their first foray into this, so I’m still excited to see the change.

dockerfiles git:(master) docker images
oracle/database 12.2.0.1-se2 f788cd5b4b9d 4 minutes ago 14.8 GB
oraclelinux 7-slim 442ebf722584 6 days ago 114 MB
fedora latest 15895ef0b3b2 7 days ago 231 MB
microsoft/mssql-server-linux latest 7b1c26822d97 7 days ago 1.35 GB
nginx latest 5766334bdaa0 3 weeks ago 183 MB
ubuntu latest 0ef2e08ed3fa 8 weeks ago 130 MB
...


14GB? I take that back.

Start the container

Let’s get the party started…

dockerfiles git:(master) docker run --name oracledb -p 1521:1521 -p 5500:5500 oracle/database:12.2.0.1-se2
ORACLE PASSWORD FOR SYS, SYSTEM AND PDBADMIN:

LSNRCTL for Linux: Version 12.2.0.1.0 - Production on 28-APR-2017 03:21:48

Copyright (c) 1991, 2016, Oracle. All rights reserved.

Starting /opt/oracle/product/12.2.0.1/dbhome_1/bin/tnslsnr: please wait...

TNSLSNR for Linux: Version 12.2.0.1.0 - Production
System parameter file is /opt/oracle/product/12.2.0.1/dbhome_1/network/admin/listener.ora
Log messages written to /opt/oracle/diag/tnslsnr/91c68ac2b2bf/listener/alert/log.xml
Listening on: (DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=ipc)(KEY=EXTPROC1)))
Listening on: (DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcp)(HOST=0.0.0.0)(PORT=1521)))
...
Copying database files
1% complete
...


Huzzah! After about 9 minutes, it’s finally started! Let’s test it!

~ docker exec -ti oracledb sqlplus pdbadmin@ORCLPDB1

SQL*Plus: Release 12.2.0.1.0 Production on Fri Apr 28 03:58:10 2017

Copyright (c) 1982, 2016, Oracle. All rights reserved.

Enter password:

Connected to:
Oracle Database 12c Standard Edition Release 12.2.0.1.0 - 64bit Production

SQL>


We’re in!!! It worked!

It is at this point that I realize I’ve already gone through 2 drams of Aberlour and I should probably stop for the night. Provided there is enough interest (and whiskey), I’ll write-up Step 2 of getting this running on Kubernetes in ACS. As for now, I should stop while the world is only mildly spinning.

NOTE 1: If the database auto-generates a password with a “/” in it, I’ve found it doesn’t work. You can change that by running:
docker exec ./setPassword.sh

NOTE 2: If you run this multiple times, make sure to run “docker system prune” as it fills up your disk fast. On my 3rd try, I hit the following error, even with lots of space on my disk.
[FATAL] [DBT-06604] The location specified for 'Fast Recovery Area Location' has insufficient free space.
CAUSE: Only (9,793MB) free space is available on the location (/opt/oracle/oradata/fast_recovery_area/ORCLCDB/).
ACTION: Choose a 'Fast Recovery Area Location' that has enough space (minimum of (12,780MB)) or free up space on the specified location.


NOTE 3: It looks like everyone uses Docker now…