Unsubscribe 
Hi [subscriber:firstname | default:subscriber],
This is OCI newsletter #8, last week I mentioned about some of the limited availability programs. Turns out you can request to have access on the cloud native limited availability programs, at this time it means Oracle Functions and Events. Thanks for the tip!
Feedback is always valued! Contact me via Twitter @svilmune or just send an email if you have any ideas or comments.

New Features
Another new APAC region was announced this week, Seoul, South Korea! In the release notes you can see not all services are available there yet.

Services that are planned but not available at launch are: Autoscaling, Health Checks, Monitoring, Notifications, Streaming, and Web Application Acceleration and Security.
Note that this region has only one Availability Domain as well. One thing to consider is that Object Storage is promised to be replicated into multiple Availability Domains and block volume backups are stored in Object Storage. Could there be some internal Availability Domain not visible for customers though to keep backups in multiple locations?

When you enable automatic backups for Bare Metal or VM database the retention time for backups can now be customized to one of the preset periods: 7 days, 15 days, 30 days, 45 days, or 60 days. This functionality is included also in the latest Terraform release. There is support for KMS throttling and audit logs as well.

Regarding Terraform, it now provides free remote state management from their cloud. The files are encrypted and stored in Vault. You can still use local state files or store the files in other remote state locations like Amazon S3 or OCI Object Storage. I recommend to look on remote state files instead of local state files as soon as you do any real deployment in OCI.
New Terraform version 0.11.14 has command terraform 012.checklist to see what changes your configuration will require when you start using v0.12. Definitely worth checking as 0.12 will be a big change and hopefully bring lots of benefits how you use Terraform!
Blogs & News
Two posts from Richard Garstenhagen's blog. First one shows how to make a nice OCI dashboard using Smashing Framework. Second post deals with importance of shutting down your resources and saving money when you don't need them.
It doesn't actually have to be limited to database services - you need to think your overall strategy with OCI when you are running services. Which services you can shutdown when they are not needed or scale down? One benefit to easily handle your costs!
Example of using two Kubernetes clusters in OCI and GCP and failing over when needed. Good example how you can achieve more complex setups by using variety of services available.
Demo of using ATP/ADW databases with NodeJS application running in Oracle Kubernetes Engine. Gives a nice overview what type of setup you need to do when backend database is ATP or ADW.
Youtube video on How to install e-Business Suite Demo Image on OCI. I like that they have started to provide these demo images for general use and even instructions for them! If you are using eBS you should also check out the Cloud Manager for eBS to see if it would help you when running e-Business Suite on OCI.
My own post how you can utilize Notification Service when you scale your ATP database in OCI. The possibilities with Notification Service are endless and once events service comes GA you have even more possibilities!

Tip of the week
If you are on twitter then note that the old OCI Twitter account is now merged with the generic @OracleCloud account. I liked the earlier separation but since many of the services are not OCI specific it kinda makes sense.
Let's hope they still post something relevant and not only marketing!
Remember
I'm not in partnership with Oracle in any way so all opinions are my personal views and should not be taken as an official statement from Oracle.
You can unsubscribe at any time using the link below if you feel this newsletter is not for you.
Hope you have a great day and thanks for reading!
Simo
Bitnami