Configuring vCenter Server Virtual Appliance to use an Oracle database

Why use an Oracle database?

The vCSA comes preinstalled with an embedded DB2 database which has similar use cases as the Windows vCenter Server when configured with SQL Express – intended for small deployments of 5 ESX/ESXi servers or less. The ability for the vCSA to utilise an external Oracle database allows customers to scale and manage larger vSphere infrastructures equivalent to environments with Windows vCenter Servers backed by SQL or Oracle databases.

This post shows how quickly and easily it is to use an external Oracle database instead of the embedded DB2 database. Hopefully you’ll see the benefits of how much quicker it is to configure the Oracle connectivity between the vCSA and the Oracle server vs installing the Oracle 64-bit Client onto a Window Server and configuring tnsnames.ora, followed by configuration of ODBC settings.

Configure an Oracle Database and User

1. Log into SQL*Plus session with the system account. I’m using Oracle 11g R2 x64 on Windows Server 2008.

C:\>sqlplus sys/<password> as SYSDBA

2. Run the following SQL commands to create a vCenter Server database. Note that your directory structure may be different.

CREATE SMALLFILE TABLESPACE “VPX” DATAFILE ‘e:/app/oracle/oradata/orcl/vpx01.dbf’ SIZE 1G AUTOEXTEND ON NEXT 10M MAXSIZE UNLIMITED LOGGING EXTENT MANAGEMENT LOCAL SEGMENT SPACE MANAGEMENT AUTO;

3. Run the following SQL command to create a vCenter Server database user with the correct permissions. I will create a new user named “VPXADMIN” with a password of “oracle”.

CREATE USER "VPXADMIN" PROFILE "DEFAULT" IDENTIFIED BY "oracle" DEFAULT TABLESPACE "VPX" ACCOUNT UNLOCK;

grant connect to VPXADMIN;

grant resource to VPXADMIN;

grant create view to VPXADMIN;

grant create sequence to VPXADMIN;

grant create table to VPXADMIN;

grant create materialized view to VPXADMIN;

grant execute on dbms_lock to VPXADMIN;

grant execute on dbms_job to VPXADMIN;

grant select on dba_tablespaces to VPXADMIN;

grant select on dba_temp_files to VPXADMIN;

grant select on dba_data_files to VPXADMIN;

grant unlimited tablespace to VPXADMIN;

Configure the vCSA

1. Log into the vCSA VMware Studio management interface at https://<vcsa>:5480/

2. stop vCenter services, Navigate to the vCenter Server tab, then click on Database.

3. Select oracle as the Database Type using the drop-down menu and enter your environment information into the fields and then click on Save Settings. Note how easy that was, no messing about with installing the Oracle Client, no need to configure tnsnames.ora and no need for any ODBC configuration either.

4. Wait for around 5 minutes for the vCSA to create the database schema.

5. Now it’s safe to start the vCenter services, navigate to the Status tab and click on Start vCenter.

6. You can then start using vCenter when the Service Status reports as Running.

Cleaning up the Oracle configuration

After you’ve tested that everything is working, you can revoke the following privileges using SQL*Plus again.

revoke select on dba_tablespaces from VPXADMIN;

revoke select on dba_temp_files from VPXADMIN;

revoke select on dba_data_files from VPXADMIN;

Total configuration time approx 10 minutes.