Oracle on ARM, Mac M1/M2 Docker images

Published in

ITNEXT

5 min readSep 19, 2023

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On June 8 Oracle announce Oracle Database for Arm Architectures in the Cloud & On-Premises which means that Oracle RDBMS 19c not only will runs on great server processors such as Ampere/Graviton it also run on Mac with M1/M2 processor without Docker emulation.

This post is about how to make a Mac M1/M2 Docker image ready for running Oracle RDBMS 19c in three flavors, full, slim and fast-start mode, that is, Mac developers using Docker Desktop will have a full performance environment for developing/testing Oracle related projects. Also as collateral efforts OCI Ampere ARM environments can be benefited by using Docker special optimized images for CI/CD pipelines.

Requirements

I am assuming that you already have latest Docker Desktop for Mac up and running, and to facilitate the operation with a minimal impact on Mac OS installation I am using VSCode Docker Desktop Extension, just download them using Extension tab:

as a post installation step add Docker support to VSCode Docker extension using a Mac terminal and this command:

~ % docker exec -ti --user root coder_embedded_dd_vm /bin/sh -c "curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/marcelo-ochoa/coder-docker-extension/main/addDocker.sh | bash"

Getting started, downloading and building full Oracle 19c EE image

Start by downloading 19c Oracle home zip from this page Oracle Database Software Downloads, select Oracle Database 19c for LINUX ARM (aarch64)

Oracle 19c for Linux ARM download link

Next, open VSCode Docker Desktop Extension (new Terminal) and clone repository Docker Images from Oracle

open a Mac Terminal and copy above zip file from Download area into VSCode personal folder:

% cd Downloads
% docker cp LINUX.ARM64_1919000_db_home.zip coder_embedded_dd_vm:/home/coder/myWorkspace/docker-images/OracleDatabase/SingleInstance/dockerfiles/19.3.0

go back to VSCode, open docker-images as project Folder and a Terminal to run a build command:

$ cd OracleDatabase/SingleInstance/dockerfiles/
$ ./buildContainerImage.sh -v 19.3.0 -e

as a result, a new image will be ready at your Docker Desktop

Building Slim and Slim-Faststart docker images

These images are perfect for a typical day-to-day developer work or CI/CD automation. Gerald´s script where a perfect jump start to build a new one for 19c on ARM, just clone my GitHub repo into another folder and open it as VSCode project folder:

$ git clone -b 19c-arm-slim https://github.com/marcelo-ochoa/oci-oracle-free

Cloning oci-oracle-free GitHub repo (19c-arm-slim branch)

$ cd oci-oracle-free

oci-oracle-free opened as VSCode project

build first slim version with:

$ docker buildx build --build-arg BUILD_MODE=SLIM -t oracle/database:19.3.0-ee-slim -f Dockerfile.193 .

and finally build slim-faststart version

$ docker buildx build --build-arg BASE_IMAGE=oracle/database:19.3.0-ee-slim -t oracle/database:19.3.0-ee-sl
im-faststart -f Dockerfile.faststart .

Oracle 19c Slim-Faststart Docker Image ready

Your new Docker Images ready for use at Docker Desktop

Testing Oracle 19c Docker Images

Just using your Mac terminal run:

% docker run -d --name test19c -e ORACLE_PASSWORD=Oracle_2023 -e APP_USER=scott -e APP_USER_PASSWORD=tiger -p 1521:1521 oracle/database:19.3.0-ee-slim-faststart
f3345ceda6908d55978648654789431790d52d9e8efda4b177811b2983041c45
~ % docker logs -f test19c
.......
#########################
DATABASE IS READY TO USE!
#########################
##################################################################
CONTAINER: The following output is now from the alert_FREE.log file:
##################################################################
FREEPDB1(3):Undo initialization finished serial:0 start:7880788 end:7880821 diff:33 ms (0.0 seconds)
FREEPDB1(3):Database Characterset for FREEPDB1 is AL32UTF8
FREEPDB1(3):SUPLOG: Set PDB SUPLOG SGA at PDB OPEN, old 0x18, new 0x0 (no suplog)
FREEPDB1(3):Opening pdb with no Resource Manager plan active
FREEPDB1(3):joxcsys_required_dirobj_exists: directory object exists with required path /opt/oracle/product/19c/dbhome_1/javavm/admin/, pid 133 cid 3
Pluggable database FREEPDB1 opened read write
Starting background process CJQ0
2023-09-18T19:45:54.724450+00:00
CJQ0 started with pid=47, OS id=191 
Completed: ALTER DATABASE OPEN

Sizes

Memory/CPU usage

Next graph shows CPU and memory usage of 19.3.0-slim image started using:

% docker run -ti --rm --name test19c -e ORACLE_PASSWORD=Oracle_2023 -e APP_USER=scott -e APP_USER_PASSWORD=tiger -p 1521:1521 oracle/database:19.3.0-ee-slim

CPU/Memory consumption of Oracle 19c on Mac M1

There is an spike of 150% of CPU usage during the startup when decompressing datafiles, then no more than 100% usage due the RDBMS is limited by config to use only two CPUs and once all the scheduled tasks are finished the CPU down to zero.

Memory usage is locked to 2.7 Gb (SGA configuration) and remains at this value over time.