SUN ORACLE Flash Acelerator F40 400GB Solid State on PC

I have been lucky to pick 2 of these cards at under $ 120 each on eBay. After initial problems, getting the cards going, and reading up quite a bit, I decided to jot down the information and requirements for using these cards. And in the end, for $ 236, I had 800 GB of pcie SSD available....

Using it in a PC :

In order to use in a normal PC, you need a Standard Long Bracket for LSI Nytro WarpDrive, which is easily replaced with the half height bracket. Keep in mind the new bracket should be attached to the top-side of the card (same side as the disks) in order for the card to align correctly to the pcie slot. Hint: if you only see the disks green LEDs light up, without any status indicators - the LEDs closest to the bracket - then your card is not seated correctly in the pcie slot.

Firmware/Drivers:

To get the latest firmware, BIOS upgrade, you have to use Oracle support, and download Patch 24669037: F40 SW2.0 (PHASE 13.05.10.01 FW) UPDATE.  To apply the patch under Windows (10 included), you have to use the Seagate Nytro Utility Management. Inside the zip file, there is a folder win x86 rel, which contains the Windows ddcli exe tool. Note that you have to use the "Run as administrator" on the Command Prompt to access hardware.

ddcli on Windows 10

I was not able to apply the patch under Linux, or more specific, Oracle Linux 7, with a custom kernel 4.3.7, but was successful with Windows 10, and the firmware in the patch, using the same machine. However the ddcli (Linux version) included in the patch worked as expected.

Other than that, you can use the documentation for the NWD-BLP4-400.

Drivers are available in all modern O/S's.

Performance:

In comparison to OCZ RevoDrive 3, please note, nothing scientific, only for indication. I have a  4x disk Stripe, to get to Apples vs Apples, since the OCZ RevoDrive 3 uses 4 drives in a hardware RAID 0:

F40 Performance

OCZ RevoDrive 3

One complaint, though, the card tend to run quite hot, so adequate cooling/flow is required.

More than 1 card can be attached at a time, and the master (configured in BIOS) will take control of all the other cards. From O/S side, you still see separate controllers. If more than one card is going to be used, make sure that the Firmware/BIOS is on the same revision level.

Disks presented in Windows by 2 cards

Device Drivers

Oracle JCS - Peer-to-Peer VPN Tunnel

Please note that OpenVPN is not a supported configuration on JCS/SOACS, so proceed at own risk.

On JCS, all commands running as root :

1. wget ftp://195.220.108.108/linux/epel/6/x86_64/pkcs11-helper-1.11-3.el6.x86_64.rpm

2. wget http://pkgs.repoforge.org/openvpn/openvpn-2.2.2-1.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm

3. yum installlocal openvpn-2.2.2-1 lzo pkcs11-helper-1.11-3

4. openvpn —genkey —secret /etc/openvpn/vpn.key

5. Configure the /etc/openvpn/server.conf:

remote xx.xx.xx.xx    <— Remote node (In my case router IP with NAT configured to my local host)

float

port 8000

dev tun

ifconfig 192.168.2.1 192.168.2.2   <— Virtual Network, something different than local and remote network

persist-tun

persist-local-ip

comp-lzo

ping 15

secret /etc/openvpn/vpn.key

route 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0   <— Remote network (ie. what is going to be forwarded through tun device)

chroot /var/empty

user nobody

group nobody

log vpn.log

verb 1

6. service openvpn start

On the target (on premise) , again as root, assuming that OpenVPN is installed (yum install openssl openvpn) 

1. Create the /etc/openvpn/vpn.key  (copy text content of the vpn.key on the JCS Node and paste)

2. Configure /etc/openvpn/server.config:

remote yy.yy.yy.yy  <— JCS public ip

float

port 8000

dev tun

ifconfig 192.168.2.2 192.168.2.1  <— swapped ie 2<->1

persist-tun

persist-local-ip

comp-lzo

ping 15

secret /etc/openvpn/vpn.key

route zz.zz.zz.0 255.255.255.0 <— Remote network ie. JCS local network

#chroot /var/empty/openvpn

user nobody

group nobody

log vpn.log

verb 1

3. service openvpn start

On JCS side open the OpenVPN port 8000 (udp and tcp), using Security Rules and Security Application.

From the JCS node you will only have access to target machine, and other means needs to be implemented to access nodes in same network as the target. OAG and OTD can help with this situation.

For debugging purposes there is a "vpn.log" file created under /etc/openvpn. Also remember that traceroute can give you details about the hops and the route a request is going to follow.

JDeveloper 12.2.1.0.0 MacOSX Exception - sun.lwawt.macosx.LWCToolkit.getImage

If you ran into the following issue in JDeveloper on MacOSX :

java.lang.NullPointerException
  sun.net.util.URLUtil.getConnectPermission(URLUtil.java:84)
  sun.awt.SunToolkit.checkPermissions(SunToolkit.java:921)
  sun.awt.SunToolkit.imageExists(SunToolkit.java:898)
  sun.lwawt.macosx.LWCToolkit.getImage(LWCToolkit.java:555)
  jx.s.ImageIcon.(ImageIcon.java:198)

upgrade your JDK 1.8 to the latest, it was fixed after Update 45.

JDeveloper 12c 12.1.3 - Adding Mobile Application Framework (MAF) to SOA/BPM Quick Install

To add the Mobile Framework extension, you will have to install the the following:

1. Mobile Application Framework JDeveloper Patch
2. Mobile Application Framework Extension

Follow the following steps:

1. Download the MAF JDeveloper patch through JDeveloper's Check for Updates
2. Don't restart JDeveloper, rather just close it after the download has completed.
3. Find the folder 12.1.3.0.0 under the users home directory. Under Windows it is under /users/user/AppData/Roaming/jdeveloper, under Unix it is under user home directory/.jdeveloper
4. Delete the 12.1.3.0.0 and the system12.1.3* directories.
5. Start JDeveloper and wait for the patch to be applied.
6. Download the MAF Extension
7. Stop JDeveloper
8. Delete the same directories as in step 4, as well as the tmp directory and any *.txt files in the jdeveloper folder
9. Start JDeveloper
10. It might pop up with a warning that a serious error occured, just ignore and restart JDeveloper to get rid of the error.

To specify the JDeveloper 'system' directory, you can also set an environment variable JDEV_USER_HOME 

Hostless Agent in EM12c

If you encounter an agent without any associated 'host' with it, and you did a manual installation of your agent, using '12.1.0.3.0_AgentCore_xxx.zip' file, you probably missed the required plugins. These plugins can be found in the '12.1.0.3.0_PluginsOneoffs_xxx.zip' file. Copy this zip file into the same directory where you extracted the AgentCore zip file, before installing the agent. Both of these archives can be extracted from the command line tool emcli, for example :

emcli get_agentimage -destination=/home/oracle/agent_inst -platform="Microsoft Windows x64 (64-bit)" -version=12.1.0.3.0

Oracle BPM quick and dirty SQL Scripts

All these queries are based on the 'soainfra' schema, and requires the CubeCommand to be enabled:

1. Count of assigned (as in open) human tasks by assignees.

select distinct count(*),assignees from wftask wf where state like 'ASSIGNED' group by wf.ASSIGNEES;

2. Activity Performance across the BPM stack:

BPM_ACTIVITY_PERFORMANCE_V -

For example to extract the averages for all activities:

select activity_label "BPM Activity", avg(ACTIVITY_RUNNING_TIME_IN_MSEC) "ms running time" from bpm_activity_performance_v group by activity_label;

3. Process Performance End to End time

BPM_PROCESS_PERFORMANCE_V - Start to End time

4. Count of Active BPM Processes:

select count(*) "Running Processes" from bpm_process_instance_v where sequence_id not in (select sequence_id from bpm_process_performance_v);

Oracle Case Management Tips

BPM-73420

Error in starting cases.
Error in starting cases.
Contact system administrator for assistance.

....
         at oracle.bpm.casemgmt.persistence.model.CaseStakeHolder.toString(CaseStakeHolder.java:224)
.........


Make sure that all the Stakeholders in the Case Configuration points to a valid  member configuration with a valid member type defined.

Rules going 'haywire'

Remember that any Case Activity can only contain one primitive parameter, or else you are going to break the wiring on the composite level.

Oracle Rules only accept a single primitive type, and multiple complex types (if required).