I recently built a two-node Oracle RAC 19c cluster on Oracle Linux 8.10 with Pure Storage FlashArray backend. The hardware was solid, the network was configured, the storage was presented. What should have been a straightforward installation turned into a four-hour troubleshooting session because of issues that aren’t documented in Oracle’s installation guides. This post
Installing Oracle Database 19c RAC on OEL 8: Four Traps Read More »
This is the third in my series analyzing data-centric markets. See also: Demystifying the Database Market in 2025 and Demystifying the Data Governance Market in 2025. It’s interesting how major vendors position themselves now, none of them lead with “analytics”. Databricks calls itself “the Data and AI company.” Snowflake is “the AI Data Cloud.” dbt
Demystifying the Analytics Market in 2025 Read More »
Oracle ranks #1 on the DB-Engines database popularity ranking, ahead of MySQL, SQL Server, and PostgreSQL. Running Oracle benchmarks alongside SQL Server in my day-to-day testing made perfect sense from the start, but HammerDB-Scale v1.0 focused on getting SQL Server working properly first. Version 1.1 adds Oracle support with the same parallel orchestration framework that
Oracle Database Support for HammerDB-Scale Read More »
You will end up here: v$dnfs_servers returns no rows. You’ve checked everything. The library is linked. The alert log shows dNFS loaded. Your oranfstab is syntactically perfect. The NFS mounts are there. And you’re convinced it’s broken, I was too. I spent three hours proving dNFS was configured correctly while simultaneously proving it wasn’t working.
Schrödinger’s dNFS: The Empty Row Mystery Read More »
The Economics of Data Gravity In 2010, Dave McCrory introduced the concept of “data gravity” to describe a phenomenon IT professionals were increasingly experiencing: as data accumulates in one location, it becomes harder to move, and the systems that depend on it tend to cluster nearby. The metaphor suggested that data, like physical mass, exerts
The Economics of Data Gravity Read More »
Your storage vendor claims 500K IOPS. Your server vendor promises 128 cores of “enterprise-grade performance.” Your hypervisor can “easily handle” 50 VMs. Your network fabric has “plenty of headroom.” Then you consolidate eight production databases onto the platform and everything falls over at 3 AM on a Tuesday. What happened? Nobody actually tested what happens
Stress Testing Consolidated Platforms with Database Workloads Read More »
This is the second in my series analyzing data centirc markets. Read part one: Demystifying the Database Market in 2025. According to Gartner (2024), by 2027, 80% of data and analytics governance initiatives will fail due to a lack of a real or manufactured crisis. This is a pretty loaded statement, because it tells us
Demystifying the Data Governance Market in 2025 Read More »
This is the unmanaged experience of Apache Spark in 2025, and it is a Screen Play in length, you were warned! P.s. – Netflix greenlight me! A few weeks ago, I dove deep into Apache Spark through hands-on implementation of a Customer 360 use case, using the medallion pipeline processing architecture (Bronze → Silver →
Apache Spark in 2025: Handle with Gloves Read More »
