Today I am presenting at the Quest Oracle Community DB&T October Meet-Up. The session is called From Runbook to Playbook: Automating Oracle Database Lifecycle with Ansible and Terraform, and it runs today, Wednesday October 21, 2026 from 12:00pm to 1:00pm EDT.

Registration is free: register here.

What the Session Covers

Much of a DBA’s work repeats on every server: preparing the OS, installing database software, creating and configuring databases, patching, and upgrading. When those steps are done by hand, they drift between servers and cause production incidents. Small differences in paths, settings, and execution order add up over time.

This session shows how to replace manual runbooks with repeatable, version-controlled automation using two tools that are widely adopted in DBA and DevOps teams: Ansible and Terraform. We start with a quick comparison of the main options, including Ansible, Terraform, Jenkins, Puppet, Chef, and Salt, and explain why agentless tools suit DBA teams and consultants particularly well.

From there we go into real working examples:

• An Ansible role that installs Oracle Database software silently across multiple servers
• A three-phase upgrade playbook covering pre-upgrade checks, the upgrade itself, and finalization with built-in backups and guaranteed restore points
• The OCI Ansible collection for provisioning compute instances and Autonomous Database from Ansible playbooks
• Terraform for Oracle infrastructure on OCI, including variables, outputs, data sources, and a sensible project layout that scales across environments

Attendees will leave with a practical blueprint and sample code they can adapt to their own environments immediately.

Event Details

Event: Quest Oracle Community DB&T Oracle Database October Meet-Up
Date: Wednesday, October 21, 2026
Time: 12:00pm to 1:00pm EDT
Format: Online, free to attend
Register: questoraclecommunity.my.site.com

About Quest Oracle Community

Quest Oracle Community is the largest independent Oracle user group, providing educational resources, peer networking, and community events for Oracle professionals worldwide. The DB&T SIG (Database and Technology Special Interest Group) runs regular sessions on Oracle Database topics, delivered by practitioners from the Oracle community.

If you work with Oracle databases and have not explored automating your DBA workflows yet, this session is a good starting point. See you there.

Regards,
Osama

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