DSP-Explorer: What a Year for OCI - Part 2

Following on from "DSP-Explorer What a year for OCI - Part 1", here are our final standout features of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure through 2021, picked out by our CTO, Phil Brown.  

July 2021: Performance Hub Reports

Performance Hub Reports - Oracle Release Notes

Performance Hub Reports now support external databases outside of OCI. One trend I’ve seen occurring over the last few years is Cloud providers extending their Cloud services to either hybrid, on-premises, or other infrastructure. The more this happens the better in my opinion. It signals a maturity of cloud products knowing that ‘other infrastructures’ will always be in the mix in some way, shape or form.

August 2021: Cross Region Volume Group Backup Copies

Cross Region Volume Group Backup Copies - Oracle Release Notes

Try and say that after a few glasses of Mulled Wine. Data movement and flexibility for several of our Global ISVs is key, anything that will help replicate backups across regions will be helpful. Seems like an odd thing to call out on a hotlist, but the need to do this crops up time and time again, it is great now it is there.

September 2021: Shielded Instances

Shielded Instances - Oracle Release Notes

Oracle released Shielded Instances in September. Shielded Instances provide additional protection for boot level malware. It’s worth reading the documentation as using Shielded Instances on VMs does modify some of the operational elements you take for granted, such as reboot migration. However, it's another great option to enhance your security.

Read our blog on Shielded Instances for Uncompromised Boot Security...

October 2021: Certificate Service

Certificate Service - Oracle Release Notes

OCI now has a service to generate certificates that can be used for SSL connections. Having spent many hours using OpenSSL to generate certificates for PoVs this is a much better solution. It looks like the service is pretty comprehensive and I look forward to road testing it in the New Year.

November 2021a: Cloud Guard and Data Safe

Cloud Guard and Data Safe - Oracle Release Notes

Oracle’s Cloud Guard is now more tightly integrated with Data Safe. Cloud Guard and Data Safe should be a part of every single deployment because they are free and can assist in improving your security posture. It’s great that now Cloud Guard will recognise if Data Safe has been enabled or not. Security enabling by default is best but security highlighting something should be switched on is a close second.

November 2021b: Oracle Support Rewards

Oracle Support Rewards - Oracle Release Notes

Can’t not mention this!!!! If you missed it then take a look at how to reduce your TCO.
Then, if you want to double down on it read this…

December 2021: Even Father Christmas has OCI

New Oracle Cloud Regions - Oracle Release Notes

According to Google… Lapland is in Scandinavia, and also according to Google, Sweden is in Scandinavia. Therefore Father Christmas has OCI on his doorstep… maybe he is using the new map features in APEX 21.1 to plot his journey, or HPC to check the weather…maybe analytics to provide a breakdown of who has been naughty or nice, split by geography, age range, hair colour and if they like sprouts or not. It was just last month that the Italian Region went live, which brings me onto another Christmas favourite, Panettone.

That concludes our 2021 Oracle Cloud Infrastructure overview. We can't wait to see Oracle go from strength to strength in 2022 along with our own growth at DSP-Explorer.  

If you would like any further information on our Oracle Cloud Services check out our Oracle Cloud Consultants or email us at: enquiries@dsp.co.uk.