Helping Hand Questions for 1z0-902

On Oracle Exadata Database Machine X9M, the default configuration of the IPTables firewall varies between storage servers and database servers:

Storage Servers: After initial deployment, IPTables is installed but remains in an unconfigured and inactive state. The Exadata storage servers focus on providing high availability and performance for database workloads and thus rely on internal security measures. The external firewall or network security policies typically handle firewall responsibilities, so IPTables is not actively configured on these servers by default​​.

Database Servers: Similar to storage servers, IPTables is also installed but neither configured nor running on the database servers. The Oracle Exadata Database Machine X9M emphasizes security through other means, such as its network isolation and dedicated interconnects. As part of Oracle’s engineered systems design philosophy, the database servers are primarily focused on database performance, offloading much of the security management to other parts of the infrastructure and relying on data center-level firewalls for perimeter security​​.

To summarize, both database and storage servers have IPTables installed and available, but they are not configured or running by default on either server type. This setup allows Exadata environments to focus on optimized database performance while integrating with external network security solutions.

https://docs.oracle.com/en/engineered-systems/exadata-database-machine/dbmmn/maintaining-exadata-storage-servers.html#GUID-AE16A1DA-53C6-4E80-94E5-963AA65373AB

The two commands that must be executed to safely power off the storage server in an Exadata X9M Database Machine are E and F.

Command E, CellCLI alter GRIDDISK all inactive, will deactivate all of the GRIDDISKS on the affected storage server. This will ensure that no data is lost during the power-off process.

Command F, shutdown -h now, will shut down the storage server. This will ensure that the storage server is completely powered off and no data is lost.

For more information on how to properly power off an Exadata Storage Server, refer to the Oracle Exadata Database Machine X9M Implementation Essentials official text book and resources [1][2].

https://support.oracle.com/knowledge/Oracle%20Database%20Products/1188080_1.html

To drop all celldisks on all the storage servers in an X9M-2 quarter rack, you should use the CELLADMIN account, which has the necessary privileges to perform this task. You can use the CELLCLI command-line interface to drop the celldisks. The best way to do this is by calling CELLCLI on all cells using DCLI (Oracle Database Command Line Interface) which allows you to run commands on multiple servers at once. Alternatively, you can use an administrator-created storage server user with appropriate privileges on celldisk objects by calling CELLCLI on all cells using exadcli. It is not recommended to use the CELLMONITOR account, as it has a more limited set of privileges. It is also important to note that EXACLI is not a valid tool for this task

https://docs.oracle.com/en/engineered-systems/exadata-database-machine/dbmmn/maintaining-exadata-storage-servers.html

According to Oracle’s documentation12, some of the statements that are true about applying updates on Exadata systems are:

Failed storage server updates are automatically rolled back to a previous release1.

When running a “yum update” for a new Exadata release, all other repositories should be disabled1.