12th Day of #Cloud: Thoughts

12 Days of #Cloud: Day 12

After playing with Oracle Database Cloud Service (DBaaS) for past several days, I have mixed feeling. I like quite a lot of features and the amount of automation went into the product. For example, creating an RAC instance and creating a Data Guard instance by picking a check box is pretty awesome. These two configurations are pretty good, in my quick validation. If Oracle development team takes care of few cosmetic items in the Cloud interface to make it consistent across all services and simplify the data entry portion, users like me would start liking and adopting the service. I also expect a lot of automation.

I had two pain points – storage and cloud tooling. The trial account navigation on the Cloud dashboard is too slow as well.

From the Dashboard after you click on a Cloud Service (for example Database Cloud Service or Golden Gate Cloud Service), you get to the screen where you have a button on the top right to open the console.

The Storage Console URL is tied to the data center (not sure why), hence I think the “Open Service Console” button is missing in Storage Cloud Service main screen.

Still, I do not think it is a big deal to generate my storage cloud console URL as my data center is known to Oracle and provide a consistent interface. The URL is https://storageconsole.us2.oraclecloud.com/

When entering storage container information, I have to create URL. Would it be easier to ask me the domain name and container name instead of asking me to coin the URL? From the storage domain name and container name, Oracle developer can easily build the URL.

When I am subscribing to a service, I expect everything latest and greatest, especially the cloud tools to manage my service. I am not sure why I should manually update the cloud tooling to the latest? In my view, updating cloud tooling to latest release must be part of provisioning and automatic ongoing.

When creating a DBaaS service, enabling backup is easy through the GUI. But, if we have to change the backup configuration, it is a lot of manual steps. I would expect a DBaaS modify service GUI similar to the create service GUI where I can change the backup configuration.

These may be minor, and once you are used to the service may not be a big deal. For a new product, the challenge is to get people to get used to the tool. If you turn them off initially with a non-friendly interface, it does not matter how good the product is.

Hope these posts will help you try out Oracle #DBaaS. I will continue to play with Cloud service as long my trial account is active 🙂

Happy New Year!