It’s easy to provision individual Oracle Cloud services, such as databases or Java application servers, from the instance creation pages in the Oracle cloud consoles. This presentation describes Oracle's Cloud Stack Manager tool which can be used with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic to provision full sets of cloud services in a fully automated and repeatable manner. Presentation was first delivered at Oracle's PaaS Forum in Budapest in March 18.

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PROVISIONING WITH
ORACLE CLOUD STACK MANAGER
Simon Haslam
12th March 2018
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FULLY AUTOMATED PROVISIONING OF CLOUD SERVICES
• We can already fully automate provisioning of Oracle Cloud
services from command line using REST APIs
• It’s a good thing to do as most organisations have more than
one cloud environment:
– Consistency across dev/test/production environments
– Should save administrators time overall
– Reduces the reluctance/inertia for creating new environments
– Automated provisioning can be part of CI/CD pipelines
(especially with metering like Universal Credits)
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FULLY AUTOMATED PROVISIONING OF CLOUD SERVICES
• A cloud environment typically consists of several of the following:
– Storage containers for backups
– SSH keys
– PaaS instances, such as databases
• Cloud console screens simplify provisioning but are still lots of parameters to enter
– E.g. 47 (some duplicates) for a 2 node SOA CS cluster and a single instance database
• Most organisations have a limited number of platform patterns (e.g. clustered, non-
clustered, large, small) with a few parameters to distinguish them:
– ID (e.g. number)
– Tier (dev, prod, etc)
– Environment pattern
– Front-end details3
My goal is (after customer setup) to only
need these parameters for any new
environment creation

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FULLY AUTOMATED PROVISIONING OF CLOUD SERVICES
• There are existing tools to help you build this, e.g.
• Using provisioning REST APIs is not trivial though
– APIs change periodically
– Error messages can be “obscure”
– Less parameter validation than through the console
– Powerful – can leave underlying artefacts in a strange state
• Some people have built this into a product, e.g.
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ENTER…
* Halo is not part of the logo

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WHAT IS AN ORACLE CLOUD STACK?
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Allows you to manage a set of Oracle PaaS
instances as a unit
For all components in the stack you can
• Create/delete
• Stop/start
An abstraction layer above
Oracle PaaS instances

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STACK MANAGER CONSOLE
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WHAT IS AN ORACLE CLOUD STACK?
• Intended for multiple services (“stack”) but can use for just one
– Why would you do build a “stack of one”?
• To simplify
• To standardise
• Even one service has dependencies, e.g. storage
• Can simplify provisioning, especially from console
– Will be even better if/when parameters can be hidden
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STACK MANAGER - CONCEPTS
• Templates
– Describe the Cloud Stack components
– Each template is YAML file that can be imported & exported
– Built-in ones provided but you can create your own custom ones
• Resources
– Cloud Service types & other artefacts that are included in a template
– A resource can depend on another resource
• Parameters
– Inputs during the stack creation process
– Laid out on page in Parameter Groups
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Template
Parameter 1
Parameter 2
Parameter 3
Resource A
Resource B

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AVAILABLE RESOURCE TYPES (MAR-18)
Service
Oracle Database Cloud Service
Oracle Java Cloud Service
Oracle SOA Cloud Service
Oracle Application Container Cloud Service
Oracle Big Data Cloud
Oracle MySQL Cloud Service
Oracle Event Hub Cloud Service
Oracle Event Hub Cloud Service - Platform
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage Classic
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AVAILABLE RESOURCE TYPES – ORACLE TEMPLATES ONLY
Service
Oracle Integration Cloud
Oracle Internet of Things Cloud Service
Oracle Mobile Cloud, Enterprise
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• These resource types are not supported in custom templates

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ORACLE-SUPPLIED TEMPLATES
• Out of the box examples:
– Database
– SOA (inc Insight and MFT)
– OIC
– IOT (several)
– LMP stack
– Mobile (inc Bots)
– VBCS
– …etc
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Oracle-Mobile-Bots-Standard-Rel
Oracle-SOACS-DBCS-Template

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WHY CREATE CUSTOM TEMPLATES?
Oracle-supplied templates cover lots of products and are a great starting point, but…
• I wanted to change:
– IP Networks instead of Shared Network
– Separate backup containers
– VM flavours (e.g. high memory usage)
• Plus I had customer-specific requirements:
– To enforce standards
– To minimise env-specific information needed (e.g. have standard storage user & DB SID naming)
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NOTE: CLOUD STACK NOT YET ON ALL NAVIGATION MENUS
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Dashboard  OCI Classic  DBaaS ✓ SOA✓
Most PaaS
consoles ✓

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STARTER SOA CLOUD STACK TEMPLATE
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DEMO

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ORACLOUDPROV TEMPLATE(S)
Template is freely available on GitHub:
https://github.com/veriton/oracloudprov
Download locally & Import (URL only works for Oracle Cloud Storage)
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CLOUD STACK MANAGER TIPS
• You have to install PSM first – try Windows Subsystem for Linux #WSL ☺
• As ever don’t try to change too much at once
• Use an editor with a YAML syntax highlighter / linter
• Template is a one-use starter – can change later without affecting instances
• Use Oracle-supplied (or free oracloudprov) templates as a starting point
• Note: when delete a Cloud Stack it doesn’t delete object storage – tidy up yourself, e.g.
with REST API
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SUMMARY
• A cloud stack is a set of Cloud Service instances, managed as one
• Stack manager can easily cut down number of parameters you need & improve
consistency
• Cloud Stack Manager is production-ready for many types of Cloud Service types
Remember: Cloud Stack is not silver bullet for all automation – you still usually need to
automate customer-specific configuration of platform (e.g. TLS certificates)
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