Pythian at Collaborate 2012 – Las Vegas

It’s that time of the year again! Collaborate time: the world’s only user-driven, user-run Oracle conference. From April 22nd to 26th, thousands of Oracle professionals are heading to Las Vegas for a week’s worth of presentations, education sessions, networking opportunities, and who knows what else (it’s Vegas, after all!).

Here is what we have planned for Collaborate 12:

Sunday April 22, 2012, 9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Alex Gorbachev will be hosting a deep dive Deploying Oracle Database 11gR2 for High Availability (complementary for IOUG registrants only)

During this deep dive, the speaker will walk you through many database deployment scenarios, explain their pros and cons, and demonstrate how to decide which HA architecture is the most appropriate for your project. We will start from learning how to define and quantify high availability requirements as well as how to choose the right technology. Of course, we will cover various Oracle HA technologies such as Exadata, RAC, ASM, Data Guard, Streams, Golden Gate, and various smaller Oracle features as well as some storage technologies and virtualization. This session will be most useful for database architects and database administrators who are looking to sharpen their architectural skills; however, there is no particular prerequisites for the attendees besides general familiarity with Oracle database technology stack. We will go deep into technical details of some features, but general background will be provided.

Monday April 23, 2012, 12:15 p.m. – 12:45 p.m.

Michael Abbey will be presenting “Measuring Seniority By Years in the Business … I Think Not”

Many organizations hire technologists based on years of experience in the field. More often than not, if given the chance, an Applications DBA with as little as two years experience is more suited to being hired than a candidate that qualifies for consideration based on a “years-in-the-business” requirement. This presentation will outline some best practices to follow to attract the best personnel regardless of their years of experience.

This presentation will offer a list of five skills fundamental to the roles of database administration, Oracle E-Business administration, and disaster recovery specialists.

Tuesday April 24, 2012, 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Christo Kutrovsky will be presenting “The Answer to Free Memory, Swap, Oracle, and Everything”

Do I have enough memory? Why is my free memory so low? Am I swapping to disk? Can I increase my SGA (db cache) size? Can I add another instance to this server? Are my system resources used optimally? These are all questions that often haunt DBAs. This presentation is The Answer. It covers in detail the different types of memory, how to monitor memory, and how to optimally use it with Oracle. Multiple examples in the presentation demonstrate how certain actions on the database side cause different memory areas to be allocated and used on the OS side. Key underlying differences in operating systems approaches to managing memory will be highlighted, with special attention given to Linux, Solaris, and Windows. Using Linux as an example throughout, this presentation explains how to effectively use tools such as “top”, “vmstat”, and “/proc/meminfo” to look into a system’s allocation and use of memory.

Tuesday April 24, 2012, 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Yury Velikanov/Michael Abbey — High Availability Boot Camp: 10 Problems with Your RMAN Backup Script

The author is called to audit RMAN backup scripts on a regular basis for several years now as part of his Day to Day duties. He sees the same errors in scripts that Oracle DBAs use to backup critical databases over and over again. Those errors may play a significant role in a recovery process when you’re working under stress. During that presentation, you will be introduced to typical issues and hints to help you address those. The author will give away a prize to any Oracle DBA who has a script without any issues mentioned in the presentation.

Tuesday April 24, 2012, 4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.

Danil Zburivsky — Security Boot Camp: Security Around MySQL

When you ask a MySQL DBA about security, they will usually tell you one or more of these three things: 1) strong MySQL passwords; 2) proper [email protected] grants and 3) SSL connectivity. In reality, however, MySQL is not deployed in an isolated secure room with no network access like the CIA computer room in the ‘Mission Impossible’ movie (even then you have to protect yourself against Tom Cruise), but is in fact connected to a vast array of other computers through a complex network and even eventually the world wide Internet. In this talk, we will look at the different ways to compromise MySQL security in typical deployment scenarios through vulnerabilities in the underlying hardware, operating system, applications, and network. We will not be focusing just on security from hackers, but from internal sources as well who may be intending to compromise data.

Wednesday April 25, 2012, 9:00 a.m – 10:30 a.m.

Marc Fielding: Using GoldenGate to minimize database upgrade risk

Even the best-planned database upgrades can leave nagging questions: What happens if my upgraded system performs unexpectedly? Is there a way I can go back to the previous version without downtime and data loss? Oracle GoldenGate allows DBAs to give affirmative answers to these questions. Drawing on upgrade experiences ranging from mid-sized databases to a large 10TB 90-CPU OLTP system, this session will show you how to optimally configure Oracle GoldenGate, minimize downtime, maximize replication performance, and integrate Oracle GoldenGate into existing infrastructure such as Oracle ASM and storage-based replication.

Wednesday April 25, 2012, 11:00 a.m – 12:00 p.m.

Michael Abbey — DBA 101 Boot Camp: RACing up the Miles as a Beginner

This presentation is a high-level introduction to Oracle RAC. Many RAC beginner presentations are given by seasoned RAC experts and contain an overwhelming suite of technical discussions, covering a way too much information for the level of expertise of most attendees. This presentation is given by a beginner with the RAC and will introduce attendees to RAC rather than bombard them with information they need not know when getting started.

Thursday April 26, 2012, 12:15 p.m. – 1:15 p.m.

Yury Velikanov and Todd Carlson — Oracle Database 11g SCAN: Sharing a Successful Implementation

Come meet us in person – send an email to [email protected] or tweet us @pythian to meet with someone onsite or talk to us about what it’s like to work at Pythian. We are always looking to hire talented DBAs from around the globe.

Follow us on twitter – @pythian or @pythianjobs