Expert Oracle Exadata - Parent Directory

C H A P T E R 13Migrating to ExadataSo the day is finally here. Your Exadata Database Machine is installed, configured, tuned, tweaked andready to go. By now you’ve probably invested many, many hours learning about Exadata, proving itsvalue to the company, and planning how you will make the most of this powerful database platform. Nodoubt it has been a long road to travel but you aren’t there quite yet. Now the real work begins—migration.This was a much more difficult chapter to write than we expected. We can’t count all the migrationswe’ve been through over the years. But when we considered all the various versions of Oracle, themigration tools available, and how they have changed from one version to the next, it became clear thatwe needed to narrow the scope somewhat. So to keep this interesting and save a few trees we’ll befocusing on version 11.2 Enterprise Edition for a majority of this chapter. Along the way we’ll point outways to make the most of the features available in previous versions of the Oracle database.There are many methods, tools, and techniques for migrating your database from legacy hardwareto Exadata, but generally speaking they fall into two broad categories: physical migration and logicalmigration. While there are several factors that determine which method is best, the decision makingprocess is usually dominated by one factor, the available down time to complete the move. The goodnews is that there are several strategies to help you get there. Each method comes with its own pro’s andcon’s. In this chapter we’re going to dig into each of these methods. We’ll talk about reasons you mightuse one over the other, the relative advantages and disadvantages, and what common pitfalls you shouldwatch out for. Note: Migrating your applications to Oracle Exadata from non-Oracle platforms is out of the scope of this book,so it won’t be covered here.419