RAC Frequently Asked Questions

Grid Computing / RAC

General RAC

• Is it supported to install Oracle Clusterware and RAC as different users.

• Why does netca always creates the listener which listens to public ip and not VIP only?
• Ct wants to use rconfig to convert a single instance to RAC but ct is using raw devices in
RAC. Does rconfig support RAW ?
• Can we designate the place of archive logs on both ASM disk and regular file system,
when we use SE RAC?
• WARNING: No cluster interconnect has been specified. I get this error starting my RAC
database, what do I do?
• I have changed my spfile with alter system set <parameter_name> =.... scope=spfile. The
spfile is on ASM storage and the database will not start.
• What is Cache Fusion and how does this affect applications?
• What Application Design considerations should I be aware of when moving to Oracle
RAC?
• Do we have to have Oracle Database on all nodes?
• Is it difficult to transition from Single Instance to RAC?
• What are the dependencies between OCFS and ASM in Oracle Database 10g ?
• What software is necessary for RAC? Does it have a separate installation CD to order?
• What kind of HW components do you recommend for the interconnect?
• Is rcp and/or rsh required for normal RAC operation ?
• Can my customer use Veritas Agents to manage their RAC database on Unix with
SFRAC installed?
• Are jumbo frames supported for the RAC interconnect?
• Can I use iSCSI storage with my RAC cluster?
• Why does the NOAC attribute need to be set on NFS mounted RAC Binaries?
• We are using Transparent Data Encryption (TDE).
We create a wallet on node 1 and copy to nodes 2 & 3. Open the wallet and we are able
to select encrypted data on all three nodes.
Now, we want to REKEY the MASTER KEY. What do we have to do?
• How do I check for network problems on my interconect?
• Are block devices supported for OCR, Voting Disks, ASM devices?
• Are there any issues for the interconnect when sharing the same switch as the public
network by using VLAN to separate the network?
• The Veritas installation document on page 219 asks for setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH_64.
Should I remove this?
• Are Sun Logical Domains (ldoms) supported with RAC?
• How can a NAS storage vendor certify their storage solution for RAC ?
• Where can I find a list of supported solutions to ensure NIC availability (for the
interconnect) per platform?
• Can I run RAC 10g with RAC 11g?
• What is Standard Edition RAC?
• My customer has an XA Application with a RAC Database, can I do Load Balancing
across the RAC instances?
• Is there a need to renice LMS processes in Oracle RAC 10g Release 2?
 • I had a 3 node RAC. One of the nodes had to be completely rebuilt as a result of a
problem. As there are no backups, What is the proper procedure to remove the 3rd node
from the cluster so it can be added back in?
• What combinations of Oracle Clusterware, RAC and ASM versions can I use?
• Is relink required for CRS_HOME after OS upgrade?
• Does Oracle Clusterware or Real Application Clusters support heterogeneous platforms?
• Is Infiniband supported for the RAC interconnect?
• Can I run more than one clustered database on a single RAC cluster?
• Can I run 9i RAC and RAC 10g in the same cluster?
• I could not get the user equivalence check to work on my Solaris 10 server when trying to
install 10.2.0.1 Oracle Clusterware. The install ran fine without issue. << Message:
Result: User equivalence check failed for user "oracle". >>
• Does changing uid or gid of the Oracle User affect Oracle Clusterware?
• How many NICs do I need to implement RAC?
• Can we output the backupset onto regular file system directly (not onto flash recovery
area) using RMAN command, when we use SE RAC?
• Should the SCSI-3 reservation bit be set for our Oracle Clusterware only installation?
• A client is a new RAC user and are using it in conjunction with BEA weblogic. Can they
use Connection Load Balancing and Services? What about FCF, FAN, RCLB?
• Why is validateUserEquiv failing during install (or cluvfy run)?
• What are the restrictions on the SID with a RAC database? Is it limited to 5 characters?
• What storage is supported with Standard Edition RAC?
• What would you recomend to customer, Oracle clusterware or Vendor Clusterware (I.E.
MC Service Guard, HACMP, Sun Cluster, Veritas etc.) with Oracle Database 10g Real
Application Clusters?
• Can I use RAC in a distributed transaction processing environment?
• Is it a good idea to add anti-virus software to my RAC cluster?
• When configuring the NIC cards and switch for a GigE Interconnect should it be set to
FULL or Half duplex in RAC?

RAC Assistance

• How do I use DBCA in silent mode to set up RAC and ASM?

High Availability

• How does OCR mirror work? What happens if my OCR is lost/corrupt?

• Is Oracle Application Server integrated with FAN and FCF?
• Why do we have a Virtual IP (VIP) in Oracle RAC 10g? Why does it just return a dead
connection when its primary node fails?
• If I use Services with Oracle Database 10g, do I still need to set up Load Balancing ?
• In Solaris 10, do we need Sun Clusterware to provide redundancy for the interconnect
and multiple switches?
• I am receiving an ORA-29740 error. What should I do?
• Can RMAN backup Real Application Cluster databases?
• What should I do to make my RAC deployment highly available?
• I am using shared services which the following set in init.ora SQL> show parameters
dispatchers=(protocol=TCP)(listener=listen ers_nl01)(con=500)(serv=oltp). I stopped my
service with srvctl stop service but it is still registered with the listener and accepting
connections. Is this expected?
• How do I configure FCF with BPEL so I can use RAC 10g in the backend?
• The client gets this error message in Production in the ons.log file every minute or so:
06/11/10 10:11:14 [2] Connection 0,129.86.186.58,6200 SSL handshake failed 06/11/10
 10:11:14 [2] Handshake for 0,129.86.186.58,6200: nz error = 29049 interval = 0 (180
max)
• Is it possible to use SVRCTL start database with a user account other than oracle ( that is
other than the owner of the oracle software)?
• After executing DBMS_SERVICE.START_SERVICE, the service resource remains
OFFLINE status when confirming it with crs_stat. Is that expected behavior ?
• What are my options for load balancing with RAC? Why do I get an uneven number of
connections on my instances?
• With three primary load balancing options (client-side connect-time LB, server-side
connect-time LB, and the runtime connection load balancing) Is it fair to say Runtime
Connection Load Balancing is the only option to leverage FAN up/down events?
• How can a customer mask the change in their clustered database configuration from their
client or application? (I.E. So I do not have to change the connection string when I add a
node to the RAC database)
• What is Server-side Transparent Application Failover (TAF) and how do I use it?
• What is CLB_GOAL and how should I set it?
• Can our 10g VIP fail over from NIC to NIC as well as from node to node ?
• What does the Virtual IP service do? I understand it is for failover but do we need a
separate network card? Can we use the existing private/public cards? What would
happen if we used the public ip?
• What do the VIP resources do once they detect a node has failed/gone down? Are the
VIPs automatically acquired, and published, or is manual intervention required? Are VIPs
mandatory?

High Availability -- FAN/FCF

• Why am I seeing the following warnings in my listener.log for my RAC 10g environment?
WARNING: Subscription for node down event still pending
• Will FAN work with SQLPlus?
• Do I need to install the ONS on all my mid-tier serves in order to enable JDBC Fast
Connection Failover (FCF)?
• Will FAN/FCF work with the default database service?
• Can I use the 10.2 JDBC driver with 10.1 database for FCF?
• What clients provide integration with FAN through FCF?
• Can I use TAF and FAN/FCF?
• How does the datasource properties initialLimit, minLimit, and maxLimit affect Fast
Connection Failover processing with JDBC?
• Will FAN/OCI work with Instant Client?
• What type of callbacks are supported with OCI when using FAN/FCF?
• Does FCF for OCI react to FAN HA UP events?
• Can I use FAN/OCI with Pro*C?
• Do I have to link my OCI application with a thread library? Why?

Scalability

• I am seeing the wait events 'ges remote message', 'gcs remote message', and/or 'gcs for
action'. What should I do about these?
• What are the changes in memory requirements from moving from single instance to
RAC?
• Will adding a new instance to my Oracle RAC database (new node to the cluster) allow
me to scale the workload?
• What do I do if I see GC CR BLOCK LOST in my top 5 Timed Events in my AWR
Report?
 • How do I change my Veritas SF RAC installation to use UDP instead of LLT?
• A customer is currently using RAC in a 2 node environment. How should one review the
ability to scale out to 4, 6, 8 or even more nodes? What should the requirements of a
scale out test?
• What is the Load Balancing Advisory?
• How do I enable the load balancing advisory?
• What are my options for setting the Load Balancing Advisory GOAL on a Service?
• How can I validate the scalability of my shared storage? (Tightly related to RAC /
Application scalability)
• How many nodes are supported in a RAC Database?
• How do I measure the bandwidth utilization of my NIC or my interconnect?
• Does Database blocksize or tablespace blocksize affect how the data is passed across
the interconnect?
• What is Runtime Connection Load Balancing?

Manageability

• I found in 10.2 that the EM "Convert to Cluster Database" wizard would always fall over
on the last step where it runs emca and needs to log into the new cluster database as
dbsnmp to create the cluster database targets etc. I changed the password for the
dbsnmp account to be dbsnmp (same as username) and it worked OK. Is this a known
issue?
• What storage option should I use for RAC 10g on Linux? ASM / OCFS / Raw Devices /
Block Devices / Ext3 ?
• How do I stop the GSD?
• What is the purpose of the gsd service in Oracle 9i RAC?
• How should I deal with space management? Do I need to set free lists and free list
groups?
• I was installing RAC and my Oracle files did not get copied to the remote node(s). What
went wrong?
• If I am using Vendor Clusterware such as Veritas, IBM, Sun or HP, do I still need Oracle
Clusterware to run Oracle RAC 10g?
• Srvctl cannot start instance, I get the following error PRKP-1001 CRS-0215, however
sqlplus can start it on both nodes? What is the problem?
• When I look at ALL_SERVICES view in my database I see services I did not create, what
are they for?
• Does RAC work with NTP (Network Time Protocol)?
• I have 2 clusters named "crs" (the default), how do I get Grid Control to recognize them
as targets?
• If using plsql native code, the plsql_native_library_dir needs to be defined. In RAC
environement, must the directory be in the shared storage?
• How do I determine whether or not an OneOff patch is "rolling upgradeable"?
• What is the Cluster Verification Utiltiy (cluvfy)?
• What versions of the database can I use the cluster verification utility (cluvfy) with?
• What are the implications of using srvctl disable for an instance in my RAC cluster? I
want to have it available to start if I need it but at this time to not want to run this extra
instance for this database.

Platform Specific

• How many nodes can be had in an HP-UX/Solaris/AIX/Windows/Linux cluster?

• How do I check RAC certification?
• Is crossover cable supported as an interconnect with RAC on any platform ?
 • What is Oracle's position with respect to supporting RAC on Polyserve CFS?
• Is it possible to run RAC on logical partitions (i.e. LPARs) or virtual separate servers.
• Can the Oracle Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA) be used to create a database
with Veritas DBE / AC 3.5?
• Is RAC on VMWare supported?
• Is Veritas Storage Foundation supported with RAC?

Platform Specific -- Linux

• Is 3rd Party Clusterware supported on Linux such as Veritas or Redhat?

• Can you have multiple RAC $ORACLE_HOME's on Linux?
• Is there a CFS Available for Linux?
• After installing patchset 9013 and patch_2313680 on Linux, the startup was very slow
• Is the hangcheck timer still needed with Oracle RAC 10g and 11g?
• Customer did not load the hangcheck-timer before installing RAC, Can the customer just
load the hangcheck-timer ?
• How do I configure raw devices in order to install 10g Clusterware on RHEL5 or OEL5?
• How to reorder or rename logical network interface (NIC) names in Linux
• Are Red Hat GFS and GULM certified for DLM?
• Oracle Clusterware fails to start after a reboot due to permissions on raw devices
reverting to default values, How to fix?
• How do I configure my RAC Cluster to use the RDS Infiniband?
• Can RAC 10g and 9i RAC be installed and run on the same physical Linux cluster?
• My customer is about to install 10202 clusterwere on new Linux machinges. He is getting
"No ORACM running" error when run rootpre.sh and exited? Should he worry about this
message?
• Is OCFS2 certified with RAC 10g?
• A customer installed 10g R2 on Linux RH4 Update 2, 2.6.9-22.ELsmp #1 SMP x86_64
GNU/Linux, and got the error Error in invoking target 'all_no_orcl'. Customer ignored the
error and the install succeeded without any other errors and oracle pparently worked fine.
What should they do?
Because of compatibility with their storage array (EMC DMX with Powerpath 4.5) they
must use update 2. Oracle install guide states that RH4 64 bits update 1 "or higher"
should be used for 10g R2.
• How to configure bonding on Suse SLES8.
• How to configure bonding on Suse SLES9.

Platform Specific -- Solaris

• Can I configure IPMP in Actie/Active to increase bandwidth of my interconnect?

• Does Oracle Support RAC with Solaris 10 Containers (aka Zones)?
• Does Sun Solaris have a multipathing solution ?

Platform Specific -- HP-UX

• Is HMP supported with Oracle RAC 10g on all HP platforms ?

• Can I configure HP's Autoport aggregation for NIC Bonding after the install? (i.e. not
present beforehand)

Platform Specific -- Windows

 • Does the Oracle Cluster File System (OCFS) support network access through NFS or
Windows Network Shares?
• The OracleCRService does not start with my windows RAC implementation, what do I
do?
• When running Oracle RAC on Windows 2003, what is the recommended OS level?
• How do I verify that Host Bus Adapter Node Local Caching has been disabled for the
disks I will be using in my RAC cluster?
• My customer has a failsafe cluster installed, what are the benefits of moving their system
to RAC?
• When I try to login to the +ASM2 on node2 with asmcmd (after setting ORACLE_HOME
and ORACLE_SID correctly) I get: ORA-01031: insufficient privileges (DBD ERROR: OCI
SessionBegin). When I try to login to +ASM2 using sqlplus (connect / as sysdba) I get the
same ORA-01031: insufficient privileges. When I try to login to +ASM2 using sqlplus
(connect sys/passwd as sysdba) I get connected successfully.
• Can I run my 9i RAC and RAC 10g on the same Windows cluster?
• My customer wants to understand what type of disk caching they can use with their
Windows RAC Cluster, the install guide tells them to disable disk caching?

Platform Specific -- IBM AIX

• Is HACMP needed for RAC on AIX 5.2 using GPFS file system?
• Do I need HACMP/GPFS to store my OCR/Voting file on a shared device.
• Is VIO supported with RAC on IBM AIX?

Platform Specific -- IBM-z/OS (Mainframe)

• Can I run Oracle RAC 10g on my IBM Mainframe Sysplex environment (z/OS)?

Other Applications & RAC

• Can I use Oracle Clusterware for failover of the SAP Enqueue and VIP services when
running SAP in a RAC environment?
• Are Oracle Applications certified with RAC?

Diagnosibility

• How do I gather all relevant Oracle and OS log/trace files in a RAC cluster to provide to
Support?
• What are the cdmp directories in the background_dump_dest used for?

EBusiness Suite with RAC

• Is the Oracle E-Business Suite (Oracle Applications) certified against RAC?

• Can I use TAF with e-Business in a RAC environment?
• How to configure concurrent manager in a RAC environment?
• Should functional partitioning be used with Oracle Applications?
• Which e-Business version is prefereable?
• Can I use Automatic Undo Management with Oracle Applications?
• Is Server Side Load Balancing supported/recommended/proven technology in Oracle
EBusiness Suite?
Clustered File Systems

• Can I use OCFS with SE RAC?

• What is the optimal migration path to be used while migrating the E-Business suite to
RAC?
• What are the maximum number of nodes under OCFS on Linux ?
• What files can I put on Linux OCFS?
• Where can I find documentation on OCFS ?
• What are the Best Practices for using a clustered file system with Oracle RAC?
Can I use it for OCR, Voting Disk, Binaries as well as database files?
• What is the maximum number of nodes I can have in my cluster if I am using OCFS2?
• Is Red Hat GFS(Global File System) is certified by Oracle for use with Real Application
Clusters?
• Is Sun QFS supported with RAC? What about Sun GFS?
• Is Linux OCFS2 (OCFS version 2) supported with RAC?

Oracle Clusterware

• Can I run a 10.1.0.x database with Oracle Clusterware 10.2 ?

• In the course of failure testing in an extended RAC environment we find entries in the
cssd logfile which indicate actions like 'diskShortTimeout set to (value)' and
'diskLongTimeout set to (value)'.
Can anyone please explain the meaning of these two timeouts in addition to disktimeout?
• Customer is hitting bug 4462367 with an error message saying low open file descriptor,
how do I work around this until the fix is released with the Oracle Clusterware Bundle for
10.2.0.3 or 10.2.0.4 is released?
• Can I change the public hostname in my Oracle Database 10g Cluster using Oracle
Clusterware?
• What do I do, I have a corrupt OCR and no valid backup?
• Is it supported to rerun root.sh from the Oracle Clusterware installation ?
• My customer has noticed tons of log files generated under $CRS_HOME/log//client, is
there any way automated way we can setup through Oralce Clusterware to
prevent/minimize/remove those aggressively generated files?
• Can I set up failover of the VIP to another card in the same machine or what do I do if I
have different network interfaces on different nodes in my cluster (I.E. eth0 on node1,2
and eth1 on node 3,4)?
• Is it possible to use ASM for the OCR and voting disk?
• Is it supported to allow 3rd Party Clusterware to manage Oracle resources (instances,
listeners, etc) and turn off Oracle Clusterware management of these?
• What is the High Availability API?
• How to move the OCR location ?
• I made a mistake when I created the VIP during the install of Oracle Clusterware, can I
change the VIP?
• Can I configure a firewall (iptables) on the cluster interconnect?
• Does the hostname have to match the public name or can it be anything else?
• I have a 2-node RAC running. I notice that it is always node2 that is evicted when I test
private network failure scenario by disconnecting the private network cable. Doesn't
matter whether it is node1's or node2's private network cable that is disconnected, it is
always the node2 that is evicted. What happens in a 3-nodes RAC cluster if node1's
cable is disconnected?
• How do I use multiple network interfaces to provide High Availability and/or Load
Balancing for my interconnect with Oracle Clusterware?
 • Can the Network Interface Card (NIC) device names be different on the nodes in a
cluster, for both public and private?
• Can I use Oracle Clusterware to provide cold failover of my single instance Oracle
Databases?
• What are the licensing rules for Oracle Clusterware? Can I run it without RAC?
• How do I protect the OCR and Voting in case of media failure?
• What happens if I lose my voting disk(s)?
• During Oracle Clusterware installation, I am asked to define a private node name, and
then on the next screen asked to define which interfaces should be used as private and
public interfaces. What information is required to answer these questions?
• Can I change the name of my cluster after I have created it when I am using Oracle
Clusterware?
• Which processes access the OCR ?
• Why does Oracle Clusterware use an additional 'heartbeat' via the voting disk, when
other cluster software products do not?
• Why does Oracle still use the voting disks when other cluster sofware is present?
• How do I identify the voting file location ?
• How much I/O activity should the voting disk have?
• What is the voting disk used for?
• Does Oracle Clusterware have to be the same or higher release than all instances
running on the cluster?
• Can I use Oracle Clusterware to monitor my EM Agent?
• When ct run the command 'onsctl start' receives the message "Unable to open
libhasgen10.so". Any idea why the message "unable to open libhasgen10.so" ?
• What are the IP requirements for the private interconnect?
• How to Restore a Lost Voting Disk used by Oracle Clusterware 10g
• How can I register the listener with Oracle Clusterware in RAC 10g Release 2?
• How is the voting disk used by Oracle Clusterware?
• Does Oracle Clusterware support application vips?
• Why is the home for Oracle Clusterware not recommended to be subdirectory of the
Oracle base directory?
• How do I put my application under the control of Oracle Clusterware to achieve higher
availability?
• With Oracle Clusterware 10g, how do you backup the OCR?
• Is it a requirement to have the public interface linked to ETH0 or does it only need to be
on a ETH lower than the private interface?: - public on ETH1 - private on ETH2
• How do I restore OCR from a backup? On Windows, can I use ocopy?
• What should the permissions be set to for the voting disk and ocr when doing a RAC
Install?

Streched/Extended RAC -- No Sub Category

• Can I use ASM to mirror Oracle data in an extended RAC environment?

• How should voting disks be implemented in an extended cluster environment? Can I use
standard NFS for the third site voting disk?
• Can a customer use SE RAC to implement an "Extended RAC Cluster" ?
• What are the network requirements for an extended RAC cluster?
• Can I use ASM as mechanism to mirror the data in an Extended RAC cluster?

Cluster Verification Utility (CVU) -- No Sub Category

• Can I check if the storage is shared among the nodes?

• What are the default values for the command line arguments?
 • How do I check the Oracle Clusterware stack and other sub-components of it?
• Is there a way to verify that the Oracle Clusterware is working properly before proceeding
with RAC install?
• At what point cluvfy is usable? Can I use cluvfy before installing Oracle Clusterware?
• What is CVU? What are its objectives and features?
• What is a stage?
• What is a component?
• What is nodelist?
• Do I have to be root to use CVU?
• What about discovery? Does CVU discover installed components?
• How do I report a(or tons of) bug?
• What are the requirements for CVU?
• How do I install 'cvuqdisk' package?
• How do I know about cluvfy commands? The usage text of cluvfy does not show
individual commands.
• Do I have to type the nodelist every time for the CVU commands? Is there any shortcut?
• How do I get detail output of a check?
• How do I check network or node connectivity related issues?
• How do I check whether OCFS is properly configured?
• How do I check user accounts and administrative permissions related issues?
• How do I check minimal system requirements on the nodes?
• Is there a way to compare nodes?
• Why the peer comparison with -refnode says passed when the group or user does not
exist?
• How do I turn on tracing?
• Where can I find the CVU trace files?
• Why cluvfy reports "unknown" on a particular node?
• What are the known issues with this release?
• When I run 10.2 CLUVFY on a system where RAC 10g Release 1 is running I get
following output:

Package existence check failed for "SUNWscucm:3.1".

Package existence check failed for "SUNWudlmr:3.1".
Package existence check failed for "SUNWudlm:3.1".
Package existence check failed for
"ORCLudlm:Dev_Release_06/11/04,_64bit_3.3.4.8_reentrant".
Package existence check failed for "SUNWscr:3.1".
Package existence check failed for "SUNWscu:3.1".
Checking this Solaris system I don't see those packages installed. Can I continue my
install?
• What is 'cvuqdisk' rpm? Why should I install this rpm?

Answers
I have changed my spfile with alter system set <parameter_name>
=.... scope=spfile. The spfile is on ASM storage and the database
will not start.
How to recover:

In $ORACLE_HOME/dbs
. oraenv <instance_name>

sqlplus "/ as sysdba"

startup nomount

create pfile='recoversp' from spfile

/
shutdown immediate
quit
Now edit the newly created pfile to change the parameter to something sensible.

Then:

sqlplus "/ as sysdba"

startup pfile='recoversp' (or whatever you called it in step one).

create spfile='+DATA/GASM/spfileGASM.ora' from pfile='recoversp' / N.B.The name of the

spfile is in your original init<instance_name>.ora so adjust to suit shutdown immediate
startup
quit

Is it supported to install Oracle Clusterware and RAC as different

users.
Yes, Oracle Clusterware and RAC can be installed as different users. The Oracle Clsuterware
user and the RAC user must both have OSDBA as their primary group, and they should both
have OINSTALL as a secondary group.

WARNING: No cluster interconnect has been specified. I get this

error starting my RAC database, what do I do?
It simply means you do not have cluster_interconnects parameter set and nothing was set in the
OCR, so the private interconnect is picked at random by the database and hence the warning...
You can either set cluster_interconnects parameter in the init.ora to the private interconnect IP;
OR play with oifcfg getif and setif (type oifcfg without anything for help message)

$ oifcfg getif
eth0 138.2.236.0 global public
eth2 138.2.238.0 global cluster_interconnect

What does your output look like?

Note that if hardware is not identical you'll have to provide each node with it's own correct value, if
it's identical hardware you can use the -global switch.

Ct wants to use rconfig to convert a single instance to RAC but ct

is using raw devices in RAC. Does rconfig support RAW ?
No. rconfig supports ASM and shared file system only.

Can we designate the place of archive logs on both ASM disk and
regular file system, when we use SE RAC?
Yes, - customers may want to create a standby database for their SE RAC database so placing
the archive logs additionally outside ASM is OK.

Why does netca always creates the listener which listens to public
ip and not VIP only?
This is for backward compatibility with existing clients: consider pre-10g to 10g server upgrade. If
we made upgraded listener to only listen on VIP, then clients that didn't upgrade will not be able
to reach this listener anymore.

Do we have to have Oracle Database on all nodes?

Each node of a cluster that is being used for a clustered database will typically have the database
and RAC software loaded on it, but not actual datafiles (these need to be available via shared
disk). For example, if you wish to run RAC on 2 nodes of a 4-node cluster, you would need to
install the clusterware on all nodes, RAC on 2 nodes and it would only need to be licensed on the
two nodes running the RAC database. Note that using a clustered file system, or NAS storage
can provide a configuration that does not necessarily require the Oracle binaries to be installed
on all nodes.
What kind of HW components do you recommend for the
interconnect?
The general recommendation for the interconnect is to provide the highest bandwith interconnect,
together with the lowest latency protocol that is available for a given platform. In practice, Gigabit
Ethernet with UDP has proven sufficient in every case it has been implemented, and tends to be
the lowest common denominator across platforms.

What Application Design considerations should I be aware of when

moving to Oracle RAC?
The general principals are that fundamentally no different design and coding practices are
required for RAC however application flaws in execution or design have a higher impact in RAC.
The performance and scalability in RAC will be more sensitive to bad plans or bad schema
design. Serializing contention makes applications less scalable. If your customer uses standard
SQL and schema tuning, it solves > 80% of performance problems

Some of the scaleability pitfalls they should look for are:

* Serializing contention on a small set of data/index blocks
--> monotonically increasing key
--> frequent updates of small cached tables
--> segment without automatic segment space management (ASSM) or Free List Group (FLG)

* Full table scans

--> Optimization for full scans in 11g can save CPU and latency

* Frequent invalidation and parsing of cursors

--> Requires data dictionary lookups and synchronizations

* Concurrent DDL ( e.g. truncate/drop )

Look for:
* Indexes with right-growing characteristics
--> Use reverse key indexes
--> Eliminate indexes which are not needed

* Frequent updated and reads of small tables

--> small =fits into a single buffer cache
--> Use Sparse blocks ( PCTFREE 99 ) to reduce serialization

* SQL which scans large amount of data

--> Perhaps more efficient when parallelized
--> Direct reads do not need to be globally synchronized ( hence less CPU for global cache )
What is Cache Fusion and how does this affect applications?
Cache Fusion is a new parallel database architecture for exploiting clustered computers to
achieve scalability of all types of applications. Cache Fusion is a shared cache architecture that
uses high speed low latency interconnects available today on clustered systems to maintain
database cache coherency. Database blocks are shipped across the interconnect to the node
where access to the data is needed. This is accomplished transparently to the application and
users of the system. As Cache Fusion uses at most a 3 point protocol, this means that it easily
scales to clusters with a large numbers of nodes. For more information about cache fusion see
the following links:

Additional Information can be found at:

<> Understanding 9i Real Application Clusters Cache Fusion

Is it difficult to transition from Single Instance to RAC?

If the cluster and the cluster software are not present, these components must be installed and
configured. The RAC option must be added using the Oracle Universal Installer, which
necessitates the existing DB instance must be shut down. There are no changes necessary on
the user data within the database. However, a shortage of freelists and freelist groups can cause
contention with header blocks of tables and indexes as multiple instances vie for the same block.
This may cause a performance problem and require data partitioning. However, the need for
these changes should be rare.

Recommendation: apply automatic space segment management to perform these changes

automatically. The free space management will replace the freelists and freelist groups and is
better. The database requires one Redo thread and one Undo tablespace for each instance,
which are easily added with SQL commands or with Enterprise Manager tools.

Datafiles will need to be moved to either a clustered file system (CFS) or raw devices so that all
nodes can access it. Also, the MAXINSTANCES parameter in the control file must be greater
than or equal to number of instances you will start in the cluster.

For more detailed information, please see Migrating from single-instance to RAC in the Oracle
Documentation

With Oracle Database 10g Release 2, $ORACLE_HOME/bin/rconfig tool can be used to convert
Single instance database to RAC. This tool takes in a xml input file and convert the Single
Instance database whose information is provided in the xml. You can run this tool in "verify only"
mode prior to performing actual conversion. This is documented in the RAC admin book and a
sample xml can be found $ORACLE_HOME/assistants/rconfig/sampleXMLs/ConvertToRAC.xml.
This tool only supports databases using a clustered file system or ASM. You cannot use it with
raw devices. Grid Control 10g Release 2 provides a easy to use wizard to perform this function.
Note: Please be aware that you may hit bug 4456047 (shutdown immediate hangs) as you
convert the database. The bug is updated with workaround and the w/a should is release noted
as well.
What are the dependencies between OCFS and ASM in Oracle
Database 10g ?
In an Oracle RAC 10g environment, there is no dependency between Automatic Storage
Management (ASM) and Oracle Cluster File System (OCFS).
OCFS is not required if you are using Automatic Storage Management (ASM) for database files.
You can use OCFS on Windows( Version 2 on Linux ) for files that ASM does not handle -
binaries (shared oracle home), trace files, etc. Alternatively, you could place these files on local
file systems even though it's not as convenient given the multiple locations.
If you do not want to use ASM for your database files, you can still use OCFS for database files in
Oracle Database 10g.
Please refer to ASM and OCFS Positioning

Is rcp and/or rsh required for normal RAC operation ?

rcp"" and ""rsh"" are not required for normal RAC operation. However ""rsh"" and ""rcp"" should to
be enabled for RAC and patchset installation. In future releases, ssh will be used for these
operations.

What software is necessary for RAC? Does it have a separate

installation CD to order?
Real Application Clusters is an option of Oracle Database and therefore part of the Oracle
Database CD. With Oracle 9i, RAC is part of Oracle9i Enterprise Edition. If you install 9i EE onto
a cluster, and the Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) recognizes the cluster, you will be provided the
option of installing RAC. Most UNIX platforms require an OSD installation for the necessary
clusterware. For Intel platforms (Linux and Windows), Oracle provides the OSD software within
the Oracle9i Enterprise Edition release.

With Oracle Database 10g, RAC is an option of EE and available as part of SE. Oracle provides
Oracle Clusterware on its own CD included in the database CD pack.

Please check the certification matrix (Note 184875.1) or with the appropriate platform vendor for
more information.

@ Sent by Karin Brandauer

What is Standard Edition RAC?
With Oracle Database 10g, a customer who has purchased Standard Edition is allowed to use the
RAC option within the limitations of Standard Edition(SE). For licensing restrictions you should
read the Oracle Database 10g License Doc. At a high level this means that you can have a max
of 4 cpus in the cluster, you must use ASM for all database files. NOTE: 3rd party clusterware
and clustered file systems(other than ASM) are not supported. This includes OCFS and
OCFS2.

Can I use iSCSI storage with my RAC cluster?

For iSCSI, Oracle has made the statement that, as a block protocol, this technology does not
require validation for single instance database. There are many early adopter customers of iSCSI
running Oracle9i and Oracle Database 10g. As for RAC, Oracle has chosen to validate the iSCSI
technology (not each vendor's targets) for the 10g platforms - this has been completed for Linux
and Windows. For Windows we have tested up to 4 nodes - Any Windows iSCSI products that
are supported by the host and storage device are supported by Oracle. We don't support NAS
devices for Windows, however some NAS devices (eg NetApp) can also present themselves as
iSCSI devices. If this is the case then a customer can use this iSCSI device with Windows as long
as the iSCSI device vendor supports Windows as an initiator OS. No vendor-specific information
will be posted on Certify.

What would you recomend to customer, Oracle clusterware or

Vendor Clusterware (I.E. MC Service Guard, HACMP, Sun Cluster,
Veritas etc.) with Oracle Database 10g Real Application Clusters?
You will be installing and using Oracle Clusterware whether or not you use the Vendor
Clusterware. The question you need to ask is whether the Vendor Clusterware gives you
something that Oracle Clusterware does not. Is the RAC database on the same server as the
application server? Are there any other processes on the same server as the database that you
require Vendor Clusterware to fail over to another server in the cluster if the server it is running on
fails? IF this is the case, you may want the vendor clusterware, if not, why spend the extra money
when Oracle Clusterware supplies everything you need to for the clustered database included
with your RAC license. Note: With Oracle Database 10g Release 2, Oracle Clusterware can be
used to manage application processes in the cluster (start, stop, checate)
When configuring the NIC cards and switch for a GigE
Interconnect should it be set to FULL or Half duplex in RAC?
You've got to use Full Duplex, regardless of RAC or not, but for all network communication. Half
Duplex means you can only either send OR receive at the same time.

Is it a good idea to add anti-virus software to my RAC cluster?

For customers who choose to run anti-virus (AV) software on their database servers, they should
be aware that the nature of AV software is that disk IO bandwidth is reduced slightly as most AV
software checks disk writes/reads. Also, as the AV software runs, it will use CPU cycles that
would normally be consumed by other server processes (e.g your database instance). As such,
databases will have faster performance when not using AV software. As some AV software is
known to lock the files whilst is scans then it is a good idea to exclude the Oracle
Datafiles/controlfiles/logfiles from a regular AV scan

Can I use RAC in a distributed transaction processing

environment?
YES. Best practices is to have all tightly coupled branches of a distributed transaction running on
a RAC database must run on the same instance. Between transactions and between services,
transactions can be load balanced across all of the database instances.
You can use services to manage DTP environments. By defining the DTP property of a service,
the service is guaranteed to run on one instance at a time in a RAC database. All global
distributed transactions performed through the DTP service are ensured to have their tightly-
coupled branches running on a single RAC instance.

How can a NAS storage vendor certify their storage solution for
RAC ?
As of January 2007 the OSCP has been discontinued!!

Please refer to this link on OTN for details on RAC Technologies Matrix (storage being part of it).

Old Answer text:

They should obtain an OCE test kit and complete the required RAC tests. They can submit the
request for an OCE kit to ocesup_ie@oracle.com.
The list of certified NAS vendors/solutions is posted on OTN under the OSCP program

Can I run 9i RAC and RAC 10g in the same cluster?

YES. However Oracle Clusterware (CRS) will not support a 9i RAC database so you will have to
leave the current configuration in place. You can install Oracle Clusterware and RAC 10g into the
same cluster. On Windows and Linux, you must run the 9i Cluster Manager for the 9i Database
and the Oracle Clusterware for the 10g Database. When you install Oracle Clusterware, your 9i
srvconfig file will be converted to the OCR. Both 9i RAC and 10g will use the OCR. Do not restart
the 9i gsd after you have installed Oracle Clusterware. Remember to check certify for details of
what vendor clusterware can be run with Oracle Clusterware.

For example on Solaris, your 9i RAC will be using Sun Cluster. You can install Oracle
Clusterware and RAC 10g in the same cluster that is running Sun Cluster and 9i RAC.

Is Infiniband supported for the RAC interconnect?

Today IP over IB is supported, and RDS on Linux is supported with 10.2.0.3 forward. Qlogic
(formerly SilverStorm) is the supported RDS vendor. Watch certify for updates. As other platforms
adopt RDS, we will expand support. There are no plans to support uDAPL or ITAPI protocols.

What combinations of Oracle Clusterware, RAC and ASM versions

can I use?
See Note: 337737.1 for detailed support matrix. Basically the Clusterware version must be at
least the highest release of ASM or RAC. ASM must be at least 10.1.0.3 to work with 10.2
database.

What storage is supported with Standard Edition RAC?

As per the licensing documentation, you must use ASM for all database files with SE RAC. There
is no support for CFS or NFS.
From Oracle Database 10g Release 2 Licensing Doc:
Oracle Standard Edition and Real Application Clusters (RAC) When used with Oracle Real
Application Clusters in a clustered server environment, Oracle Database Standard Edition
requires the use of Oracle Clusterware. Third-party clusterware management solutions are not
supported. In addition, Automatic Storage Management (ASM) must be used to manage all
database-related files, including datafiles, online logs, archive logs, control file, spfiles, and the
flash recovery area. Third-party volume managers and file systems are not supported for this
purpose.

My customer has an XA Application with a RAC Database, can I do

Load Balancing across the RAC instances?
No, not in the traditional Oracle Net Services Load Balancing. We have written a document that
explains the ** best practices for 9i, 10g Release 1 and 10g Release 2** . With the 10g
Services, life gets easier. To understand services, read the RAC Admin and Deployment Guide
for 10g Release 2 Chapter 6.

Should the SCSI-3 reservation bit be set for our Oracle Clusterware
only installation?
If you are using only Oracle Clusterware(no Veritas CM), then you don't need to have SCSI-3
PGR enabled, since Oracle Clusterware does not require it for IO fencing. If the reservation is set,
then you'll get the inconsistent results. So ask your storage vendor to disable the reservation.
Veritas RAC requires that the storage array support SCSI-3 PGR, since this is how Veritas
handles IO fencing. This SCSI-3 PGR is set at the array level; for example EMC hypervolume
level.

What are the restrictions on the SID with a RAC database? Is it

limited to 5 characters?
The SID prefix in 10g Release 1 and prior versions was restricted to five characters by
install/config tools so that an ORACLE_SID of upto max of 5+3=8 characters can be supported in
a RAC environment. The SID prefix is relaxed upto 8 characters in 10g Release 2, see
bug4024251 for more information.
Does Oracle Clusterware or Real Application Clusters support
heterogeneous platforms?
Oracle Clusterware and Real Application Clusters do not support heterogeneous platforms in the
same cluster. Enterprise Manager Grid Control supports heterogeneous platforms. We do support
machines of different speeds and size in the same cluster. All nodes must run the same operating
system (I.E. they must be binary compatible). In an active data-sharing environment, like RAC,
we do not support machines having different chip architectures.

Why is validateUserEquiv failing during install (or cluvfy run)?

SSH must be set up as per the pre-installation tasks. It is also necessary to have file permissions
set as described below for features such as Public Key Authorization to work. If your permissions
are not correct, public key authentication will fail, and will fallback to password authentication with
no helpful message as to why. The following server configuration files and/or directories must be
owned by the account owner or by root and GROUP and WORLD WRITE permission must be
disabled.

$HOME
$HOME/.rhosts
$HOME/.shosts
$HOME/.ssh
$HOME/.ssh.authorized-keys
$HOME/.ssh/authorized-keys2 #Openssh specific for ssh2 protocol.

SSH (from OUI) will also fail if you have not connected to each machine in your cluster as per the
note in the installation guide:

The first time you use SSH to connect to a node from a particular system, you may see a
message similar to the following:

The authenticity of host 'node1 (140.87.152.153)' can't be established. RSA key fingerprint is
7z:ez:e7:f6:f4:f2:4f:8f:9z:79:85:62:20:90:92:z9.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?

Enter |yes| at the prompt to continue. You should not see this message again when you connect
from this system to that node. Answering yes to this question causes an entry to be added to a
"known-hosts" file in the .ssh directory which is why subsequent connection requests do not re-
ask.
This is known to work on Solaris and Linux but may work on other platforms as well.

I had a 3 node RAC. One of the nodes had to be completely rebuilt

as a result of a problem. As there are no backups, What is the
proper procedure to remove the 3rd node from the cluster so it can
be added back in?
Follow the documentation for removing a node but you can skip all the steps in the node-removal
doc that need to be run on the node being removed, like steps 4, 6 and 7 (See Chapter 10 of
RAC Admin and Deployment Guide). Make sure that you remove any database instances that
were configured on the failed node with srvctl, and listener resources also, otherwise
rootdeltenode.sh will have trouble removing the nodeapps.
Just running rootdeletenode.sh isn't really enough, because you need to update the installer
inventory as well, otherwise you won't be able to add back the node using addNode.sh. And if
you don't remove the instances and listeners you'll also have problems adding the node and
instance back again.

Probably a better alternative (than the generic documentation, bug 5929611 filed) for a remove
node is Note 269320.1

A client is a new RAC user and are using it in conjunction with

BEA weblogic. Can they use Connection Load Balancing and
Services? What about FCF, FAN, RCLB?
The key item here is whether or not they are using XA. If they are using XA (Tuxedo for example),
then they should use the DTP service with 10g Release 2. Have the customer review the Best
Practices for using XA with RAC on OTN .
If it is not XA then services and Net Service Connection Load Balancing should work fine. They
can tune aspects of the recovery such as instance recovery time. Using BEA, they do not get the
advanced features such as Fast Connection Failover (FCF) and Runtime Connection Load
Balancing . To understand services, FCF, RCLB, read the RAC Admin and Deployment Guide for
10g Release 2 Chapter 6.

Is relink required for CRS_HOME after OS upgrade?

Oracle Clusterware binaries cannot be relinked on shiphomes. So to answer your question no,
there is not need to relink Oracle Clusterware binaries.

How many NICs do I need to implement RAC?

At minimum you need 2: external (public), interconnect (private). When storage for RAC is
provided by Ethernet based networks (e.g. NAS/nfs or iSCSI), you will need a third interface for
I/O so a minimum of 3. Anything else will cause performance and stability problems under load.
From an HA perspective, you want these to be redundant, thus needing a total of 6.

Can we output the backupset onto regular file system directly (not
onto flash recovery area) using RMAN command, when we use SE
RAC?
Yes, - customers might want to backup their database to offline storage so this is also supported.

Does changing uid or gid of the Oracle User affect Oracle

Clusterware?
There are a lot of files in the Oracle Clusterware home and outside of the Oracle Clusterware
home that are chgrp'ed to the appropriate groups for security and appropriate access. The
filesystem records the uid (not the username), and so if you exchange the names, now the files
are owned by the wrong group.

I could not get the user equivalence check to work on my Solaris

10 server when trying to install 10.2.0.1 Oracle Clusterware. The
install ran fine without issue. << Message: Result: User
equivalence check failed for user "oracle". >>
Cluvfy tries to find Ssh on solaris at /usr/local/bin. Workaround is to create a softlink from
/usr/bin/ssh to /usr/local/bin. To resolve issues with cluvfy, it often helps to turn on tracing:
run cluvfy with -verbose attribute and SRVM_TRACE environment variable set to TRUE
$script run.log
$export SRVM_TRACE=TRUE
$cluvfy -blah ### Add the -verbose
$exit

Can my customer use Veritas Agents to manage their RAC

database on Unix with SFRAC installed?
For details on the support of SFRAC and Veritas Agents with RAC 10g, please see <> Oracle's
Policy for Supporting RAC 10g with Symantec SFRAC on Unix and <> Using Oracle Clusterware
with Vendor Clusterware FAQ

Can I run more than one clustered database on a single RAC

cluster?
You can run multiple databases in a RAC cluster, either one instance per node (w/ different
databases having different subsets of nodes in a cluster), or multiple instances per node (all
databases running across all nodes) or some combination in between. Running multiple
instances per node does cause memory and resource fragmentation, but this is no different from
running multiple instances on a single node in a single instance environment which is quite
common. It does provide the flexibility of being able to share CPU on the node, but the Oracle
Resource Manager will not currently limit resources between multiple instances on one node. You
will need to use an OS level resource manager to do this.

Where can I find a list of supported solutions to ensure NIC

availability (for the interconnect) per platform?
IBM AIX - available solutions:

• Etherchannel (OS based)

• HACMP based network failover solution

More information: Metalink Note 296856.1

HP HP/UX - available solutions:

• APA - Auto Port Aggregation (OS based)

• MC/Serviceguard based network failover solution

• Combination of both solutions

More information: Metalink Note 296874.1 and Auto Port Aggregation (APA) Support Guide

Sun Solaris - available solutions:

• Sun Trunking (OS based)

• Sun IPMP (OS based)

• Sun Cluster based network failover solution (IPMP based)

More information: Metalink Note 283107.1 - IPMP in general. When IPMP is used for the
interconnect: Metalink Note 368464.1
Related RAC FAQ entries: In Solaris 10, do we need Sun Clusterware to provide redundancy for
the interconnect and multiple switches?

Linux - available solutions:

• Bonding

More information: Metalink Note 298891.1

Related RAC FAQ entries: How do I use multiple network interfaces to provide High Availability
and/or Load Balancing for my interconnect with Oracle Clusterware?

Windows - available solutions:

• Teaming

On Windows teaming solutions to ensure NIC availability are usually part of the network card
driver.
Thus, they depend on the network card used. Please, contact the respective hardware vendor for
more information.

Is there a need to renice LMS processes in Oracle RAC 10g

Release 2?
LMS processes should be running in RT by default since 10.2, so there's NO need to renice
them, or otherwise mess with them.
Check with ps -efl:
0 S spommere 31191 1 0 75 0 - 270857 - 10:01 ? 00:00:00 ora_lmon_appsu01
0 S spommere 31193 1 5 75 0 - 271403 - 10:01 ? 00:00:07 ora_lmd0_appsu01
0 S spommere 31195 1 0 58 - - 271396 - 10:01 ? 00:00:00 ora_lms0_appsu01
0 S spommere 31199 1 0 58 - - 271396 - 10:01 ? 00:00:00 ora_lms1_appsu01

7th column, if it is 75 or 76 then this is Time Share, 58 is Real Time.

You can also use chrt to check:
LMS (Real Time):
$ chrt -p 31199
pid 31199's current scheduling policy: SCHED_RR
pid 31199's current scheduling priority: 1

LMD (Time Share)

$ chrt -p 31193
pid 31193's current scheduling policy: SCHED_OTHER
pid 31193's current scheduling priority: 0

How do I check for network problems on my interconect?

1. Confirm that full duplex is set correctly for all interconnect links on all interfaces on both ends.
Do not rely on auto negotiation.
2. ifconfig -a will give you an indication of collisions/errors/overuns and dropped packets
3. netstat -s will give you a listing of receive packet discards, fragmentation and reassembly
errors for IP and UDP.
4. Set the udp buffers correctly
5. Check your cabling
Note: If you are seeing issues with RAC, RAC uses UDP as the protocol. Oracle Clusterware
uses TCP/IP.

Are there any issues for the interconnect when sharing the same
switch as the public network by using VLAN to separate the
network?
RAC and Clusterware deployment best practices recommend that the interconnect be deployed
on a stand-alone, physically seperate, dedicated switch. Many customers have consolidated
these stand-alone switches into larger managed switches. A consequence of this consolidation is
a merging of IP networks on a single shared switch, segmented by VLANs. There are caveats
associated with such deployments. RAC cache fusion exercises the IP network more rigorously
than non-RAC Oracle databases. The latency and bandwidth requirements as well as availability
requirements of the RAC/Clusterware interconnect IP network are more in-line with high
performance computing. Deploying the RAC/Clusterware interconnect on a shared switch,
segmented VLAN may expose the interconnect links to congestion and instability in the larger IP
network topology. If deploying the interconnect on a VLAN, there should be a 1:1 mapping of
VLAN to non-routable subnet and the VLAN should not span multiple VLANs (tagged) or multiple
switches. Deployment concerns in this environment include Spanning Tree loops when the larger
IP network topology changes, Assymetric routing that may cause packet flooding, and lack of fine
grained monitoring of the VLAN/port.
Can I run RAC 10g with RAC 11g?
Yes. The Oracle Clusterware should always run at the highest level. With Oracle Clusterware
11g, you can run both RAC 10g and RAC 11g databases. If you are using ASM for storage, you
can use either Oracle Database 10g ASM or Oracle Database 11g ASM however to get the 11g
features, you must be running Oracle Database 11g ASM. It is recommended to use Oracle
Database 11g ASM.
Yes, you can run 9iRAC in the cluster as well. 9i RAC requires the clusterware that is certified
with 9i RAC to be running in addition to Oracle Clusterware 11g.

Are jumbo frames supported for the RAC interconnect?

Yes. For details see Metalink <> Cluster Interconnect and Jumbo Frames

Are Sun Logical Domains (ldoms) supported with RAC?

Currently Sun Logical Domains (ldoms) are not supported with Oracle Database (both single
instance and RAC). Check certify for the latest information, if certification is completed, it will be
listed in Certify.

The Veritas installation document on page 219 asks for setting

LD_LIBRARY_PATH_64. Should I remove this?
Yes You do not need to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH for Oracle.

Are block devices supported for OCR, Voting Disks, ASM devices?
Block Devices are only supported on Linux. For Unix platforms, the directio symantics not
applicable (or rather not implemented) for the block devices on these platforms.
Note: On Linux, raw devices are being deprecated so you should move to using block devices.
Note the Oracle Database 10g OUI does not support block devices however Oracle Clusterware
and ASM do.
We are using Transparent Data Encryption (TDE).
We create a wallet on node 1 and copy to nodes 2 & 3. Open the
wallet and we are able to select encrypted data on all three nodes.
Now, we want to REKEY the MASTER KEY. What do we have to
do?
After a re-key on node one, 'alter system set wallet close' on all other nodes, copy the wallet with
the new master key to all other nodes, 'alter system set wallet open identified by "password"; on
all other nodes to load the (obfuscated) master key into node's SGA.

Why does the NOAC attribute need to be set on NFS mounted RAC
Binaries?
The noac attribute is required because the installer determines sharedness by creating a file and
checking for that file s existance on remote node. If the noac attribute is not enabled then this
test will incorrectly fail. This will confuse installer and opatch. Some other minor issues issues
with spfile in the default $ORACLE_HOME/dbs will definitely be affected.

How do I use DBCA in silent mode to set up RAC and ASM?

If I already have an ASM instance/diskgroup then the following creates a RAC database on that
diskgroup:

su oracle -c "$ORACLE_HOME/bin/dbca -silent -createDatabase -templateName

General_Purpose.dbc -gdbName $SID -sid $SID -sysPassword $PASSWORD -systemPassword
$PASSWORD -sysmanPassword $PASSWORD -dbsnmpPassword $PASSWORD -
emConfiguration LOCAL -storageType ASM -diskGroupName $ASMGROUPNAME -
datafileJarLocation $ORACLE_HOME/assistants/dbca/templates -nodeinfo $NODE1,$NODE2 -
characterset WE8ISO8859P1 -obfuscatedPasswords false -sampleSchema false -oratabLocation
/etc/oratab"

The following will create a ASM instance & 1 diskgroup

su oracle -c "$ORA_ASM_HOME/bin/dbca -silent -configureASM -gdbName NO -sid NO -

emConfiguration NONE -diskList $ASM_DISKS -diskGroupName $ASMGROUPNAME -
datafileJarLocation $ORACLE_HOME/assistants/dbca/templates -nodeinfo $NODE1,$NODE2 -
obfuscatedPasswords false -oratabLocation /etc/oratab -asmSysPassword $PASSWORD -
redundancy $ASMREDUNDANCY"
where ASM_DISKS = '/dev/sda1,/dev/sdb1' and ASMREDUNDANCY='NORMAL'

w does OCR mirror work? What happens if my OCR is

lost/corrupt?
OCR is the Oracle Cluster Registry, it holds all the cluster related information such as instances,
services. The OCR file format is binary and starting with 10.2 it is possible to mirror it. Location of
file(s) is located in: /etc/oracle/ocr.loc in ocrconfig_loc and ocrmirrorconfig_loc variables.

Obviously if you only have one copy of the OCR and it is lost or corrupt then you must restore a
recent backup, see ocrconfig utility for details, specifically -showbackup and -restore flags. Until a
valid backup is restored the Oracle Clusterware will not startup due to the corrupt/missing OCR
file.

The interesting discussion is what happens if you have the OCR mirrored and one of the copies
gets corrupt? You would expect that everything will continue to work seemlessly. Well.. Almost..
The real answer depends on when the corruption takes place.

If the corruption happens while the Oracle Clusterware stack is up and running, then the
corruption will be tolerated and the Oracle Clusterware will continue to funtion without
interruptions. Despite the corrupt copy. DBA is advised to repair this hardware/software problem
that prevent OCR from accessing the device as soon as possible; alternatively, DBA can replace
the failed device with another healthy device using the ocrconfig utility with -replace flag.

If however the corruption happens while the Oracle Clusterware stack is down, then it will not be
possible to start it up until the failed device becomes online again or some administrative action
using ocrconfig utility with -overwrite flag is taken. When the Clusteware attempts to start you will
see messages similar to:

total id sets (1), 1st set (1669906634,1958222370), 2nd set (0,0) my

votes (1), total votes (2)
2006-07-12 10:53:54.301: [OCRRAW][1210108256]proprioini:disk 0
(/dev/raw/raw1) doesn't have enough votes (1,2)
2006-07-12 10:53:54.301: [OCRRAW][1210108256]proprseterror: Error in
accessing physical storage [26]

This is because the software can't determin which OCR copy is the valid one. In the above
example one of the OCR mirrors was lost while the Oracle Clusterware was down. There are 3
ways to fix this failure:

a) Fix whatever problem (hardware/software?) that prevent OCR from accessing the device.

b) Issue "ocrconfig -overwrite" on any one of the nodes in the cluster. This command will
overwrite the vote check built into OCR when it starts up. Basically, if OCR device is configured
with mirror, OCR assign each device with one vote. The rule is to have more than 50% of total
vote (quorum) in order to safely make sure the available devices contain the latest data. In 2-way
mirroring, the total vote count is 2 so it requires 2 votes to achieve the quorum. In the example
above there isn't enough vote to start if only one device with one vote is available. (In the earlier
example, while OCR is running when the device is down, OCR assign 2 vote to the surviving
device and that is why this surviving device now with two votes can start after the cluster is
down). See warning below

c) This method is not recommend to be performed by customers. It is possible to manually modify

ocr.loc to delete the failed device and restart the cluster. OCR won't do the vote check if the
mirror is not configured. See warning below

EXTREME CAUTION should be excersized if chosing option b or c above since data loss can
occur if the wrong file is manipulated, please contact Oracle Support for assistance before
proceeding.

Bug 5055145 was the basis for this FAQ, also thanks to Ken Lee for his valuable feedback.

Why do we have a Virtual IP (VIP) in Oracle RAC 10g? Why does it

just return a dead connection when its primary node fails?
The goal is application availability.
When a node fails, the VIP associated with it is automatically failed over to some other node.
When this occurs, the following things happen.
(1) VIP detects public network failure which generates a FAN event.
(2) the new node re-arps the world indicating a new MAC address for the IP.
(3) connected clients subscribing to FAN immediately receive ORA-3113 error or equivalent.
Those not subscribing to FAN will eventually time out.
(4) New connection requests rapidly traverse the tnsnames.ora address list skipping over the
dead nodes, instead of having to wait on TCP-IP timeouts
Without using VIPs or FAN, clients connected to a node that died will often wait for a TCP timeout
period (which can be up to 10 min) before getting an error.
As a result, you don't really have a good HA solution without using VIPs and FAN. The easiest
way to use FAN is to use an integrated client with Fast Connection Failover (FCF) such as JDBC,
OCI, or ODP.NET.

If I use Services with Oracle Database 10g, do I still need to set up

Load Balancing ?
Yes, Services allow you granular definition of workload and the DBA can dynamically define
which instances provide the service. Connection Load Balancing (provided by Oracle Net
Services) still needs to be set up to allow the user connections to be balanced across all
instances providing a service. With Oracle RAC 10g Release 2 or higher, set the CLB_GOAL on
service to define the type of load balancing you want, SHORT for short lived connections (IE
connection pool) or LONG (default) for applciations that have connections active for long periods
(IE Oracle Forms applicaiton).
Is Oracle Application Server integrated with FAN and FCF?
Yes, For detailed information on the integration with the various releases of Application Server
10g,
http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/java/newsletter/articles/oc4j_data_sources/oc4j_ds.htm

In Solaris 10, do we need Sun Clusterware to provide redundancy

for the interconnect and multiple switches?
Link Aggregation (GLDv3) is bundled in the OS as of Solaris 10. IPMP is available for Solaris 10
and Solaris 9. Neither require Sun Cluster to be installed. For the interconnect and switch
redundancy, as a best practice, avoid VLAN trunking across the switches. For ease of
configuration (e.g. fewer IP address requirements), use IPMP with link mode failure detection in
primary/standby configuration. This will give you a single failover IP which you will define in
cluster_interconnects init.ora parameter. Remove any interfaces for the interconnect from the
OCR using `oifcfg delif`. AND TEST THIS RIGOROUSLY. For now, as Link Aggregation (GLDv3)
cannot span multiple switches from a single host, you will need to configure the switch
redundancy and the host NICs with IPMP. When configuring IPMP for the interconnect with
multiple switches available, configure IPMP as active/standby and *not* active/active. This is to
avoid potential latencies in switch failure detection/failover which may impact the availability of the
rdbms. Note, IPMP spreads/load balances outbound packets on the bonded interfaces, but
inbound packets are received on a single interface. In an active/active configuration this makes
send/receive problems difficult to diagnose. Both Link Aggregation (GLDv3) and IPMP are core
OS packages SUNWcsu, SUNWcsr respectively and do not require Sun Clusterware.

Can RMAN backup Real Application Cluster databases?

Absolutely. RMAN can be configured to connect to all nodes within the cluster to parallelize the
backup of the database files and archive logs. If files need to be restored, using set
AUTOLOCATE ON alerts RMAN to search for backed up files and archive logs on all nodes.

RAC with RMAN in the Oracle Documentation

I am receiving an ORA-29740 error. What should I do?

This error can occur when problems are detected on the cluster:
Error: ORA-29740 (ORA-29740)
Text: evicted by member %s, group incarnation %s
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cause: This member was evicted from the group by another member of the
cluster database for one of several reasons, which may include a
communications error in the cluster, failure to issue a heartbeat
to the control file, etc.
Action: Check the trace files of other active instances in the cluster
group for indications of errors that caused a reconfiguration.

For more information on troubleshooting this error, see the following Metalink note:

<> Troubleshooting ORA-29740 in a RAC Environment

What does the Virtual IP service do? I understand it is for failover

but do we need a separate network card? Can we use the existing
private/public cards? What would happen if we used the public ip?
The 10g Virtual IP Address (VIP) exists on every RAC node for public network communication. All
client communication should use the VIPs in their TNS connection descriptions. The TNS
ADDRESS_LIST entry should direct clienst to VIPs rather than using hostnames. During normal
runtime, the behaviour is the same as hostnames, however when the node goes down or is
shutdown the VIP is hosted elsewhere on the cluster, and does not accept connection requests.
This results in a silent TCP/IP error and the client fails immediately to the next TNS address. If
the network interface fails within the node, the VIP can be configured to use alternate interfaces
in the same node. The VIP must use the public interface cards. There is no requirement to
purchase additional public interface cards (unless you want to take advantage of within-node card
failover.)

What do the VIP resources do once they detect a node has

failed/gone down? Are the VIPs automatically acquired, and
published, or is manual intervention required? Are VIPs
mandatory?
When a node fails, the VIP associated with the failed node is automatically failed over to one of
the other nodes in the cluster. When this occurs, two things happen:

1. The new node re-arps the world indicating a new MAC address for this IP address. For
directly connected clients, this usually causes them to see errors on their connections to
the old address;
2. Subsequent packets sent to the VIP go to the new node, which will send error RST
packets back to the clients. This results in the clients getting errors immediately.
In the case of existing SQL conenctions, errors will typically be in the form of ORA-3113 errors,
while a new connection using an address list will select the next entry in the list. Without using
VIPs, clients connected to a node that died will often wait for a TCP/IP timeout period before
getting an error. This can be as long as 10 minutes or more. As a result, you don't really have a
good HA solution without using VIPs.

What are my options for load balancing with RAC? Why do I get an
uneven number of connections on my instances?
All the types of load balancing available currently (9i-10g) occur at connect time.
This means that it is very important how one balances connections and what these connections
do on a long term basis.
Since establishing connections can be very expensive for your application, it is good
programming practice to connect once and stay connected. This means one needs to be careful
as to what option one uses. Oracle Net Services provides load balancing or you can use external
methods such as hardware based or clusterware solutions.
The following options exist prior to Oracle RAC 10g Releae 2 (for 10g Release 2 see Load
Balancing Advisory):
Random
Either client side load balancing or hardware based methods will randomize the connections to
the instances.
On the negative side this method is unaware of load on the connections or even if they are up
meaning they might cause waits on TCP/IP timeouts.
Load Based
Server side load balancing (by the listener) redirects connections by default depending on the
RunQ length of each of the instances. This is great for short lived connections. Terrible for
persistent connections or login storms. Do not use this method for connections from connection
pools or applicaton servers
Session Based
Server side load balancing can also be used to balance the number of connections to each
instance. Session count balancing is method used when you set a listener parameter,
prefer_least_loaded_node_listener-name=off. Note listener name is the actual name of the
listener which is different on each node in your cluster and by default is listener_nodename.
Session based load balancing takes into account the number of sessions connected to each node
and then distributes the connections to balance the number of sessions across the different
nodes.

Can our 10g VIP fail over from NIC to NIC as well as from node to
node ?
Yes the 10g VIP implementation is capable from failing over within a node from NIC to NIC and
back if the failed NIC is back online again, and also we fail over between nodes. The NIC to NIC
failover is fully redundant if redundant switches are installed.
What is CLB_GOAL and how should I set it?
CLB_GOAL is the connection load balancing goal for a service. There are 2 options,
CLB_GOAL_SHORT and CLB_GOAL_LONG (default).
Long is for applications that have long-lived connections. This is typical for connection pools and
SQL*Forms sessions. Long is the default connection load balancing goal.
Short is for applications that have short-lived connections.
The GOAL for a service can be set with EM or DBMS_SERVICE.
Note: You must still configure load balancing with Oracle Net Services

What is Server-side Transparent Application Failover (TAF) and

how do I use it?
Oracle Database 10g Release 2, introduces server-side TAF when using services. After you
create a service, you can use the dbms_service.modify_service pl/sql procedure to define the
TAF policy for the service. Only the basic method is supported. Note this is different than the TAF
policy (traditional client TAF) that is supported by srvctl and EM Services page. If your service
has a server side TAF policy defined, then you do not have to encode TAF on the client
connection string. If the instance where a client is connected, fails, then the connection will be
failed over to another instance in the cluster that is supporting the service. All restrictions of TAF
still apply.
NOTE: both the client and server must be 10.2 and aq_ha_notifications must be set to true for the
service.
Sample code to modify service:

execute dbms_service.modify_service (service_name => 'gl.us.oracle.com' -

, aq_ha_notifications => true -
, failover_method => dbms_service.failover_method_basic -
, failover_type => dbms_service.failover_type_select -
, failover_retries => 180 -
, failover_delay => 5 -
, clb_goal => dbms_service.clb_goal_long);

With three primary load balancing options (client-side connect-

time LB, server-side connect-time LB, and the runtime connection
load balancing) Is it fair to say Runtime Connection Load
Balancing is the only option to leverage FAN up/down events?
No. The listener is a subscriber to all FAN events (both from the load balancing advisory and the
HA events). Therefore server side connection load balancing leverages FAN HA events as well
as laod balancing advisory events.
With the Oracle JDBC driver 10g Release 2, if you enable Fast Connection Failover, you also
enable Runtime Connection Load Balancing (one knob for both).

How can a customer mask the change in their clustered database

configuration from their client or application? (I.E. So I do not have
to change the connection string when I add a node to the RAC
database)
The combination of Server Side load balancing and Services allows you to easily mask cluster
database configuration changes. As long as all instances register with all listeners (use the
LOCAL_LISTENER and REMOTE_LISTENER parameters), server side load balancing will allow
clients to connect to the service on currently available instances at connect time.
The load balancing advisory (setting a goal on the service) will give advice as to how many
connections to send to each instance currently providing a service. When a service is enabled on
an instance, as long as the instance registers with the listeners, the clients can start getting
connections to the service and the load balancing advisory will include that instance is its advice.

After executing DBMS_SERVICE.START_SERVICE, the service

resource remains OFFLINE status when confirming it with crs_stat.
Is that expected behavior ?
YES this is expected behaviour. Unfortunately, the DBMS_SERVICE.START_SERVICE does not
update the clusterware. You should use srvctl start service -d dbname then you should see it
come online.

Is it possible to use SVRCTL start database with a user account

other than oracle ( that is other than the owner of the oracle
software)?
YES. When you create a RAC db as a user different than the home/software owner (oracle) user,
the db creation assistant would set the correct permissions/ACLs on the CRS resources that
control the db/instances etc, assuming that you had setup group membership for this user to the
dba group of the home (find it using oracle_home/bin/osdbagrp) and also part of the crs home
owners primary group (usually oinstall) and there was group write permission on the
oracle_home.
The client gets this error message in Production in the ons.log file
every minute or so: 06/11/10 10:11:14 [2] Connection
0,129.86.186.58,6200 SSL handshake failed 06/11/10 10:11:14 [2]
Handshake for 0,129.86.186.58,6200: nz error = 29049 interval = 0
(180 max)
These annoying messages in ons.log are telling you that you have a configuration mismatch for
ONS somewhere in the farm. RAC has its own ONS server for which SSL is disabled by default.
You must either enable SSL for RAC ONS, or disable it for OID ONS(OPMN). You need to create
a wallet for each RAC ONS server, or copy one of the wallets from OPMN on the OID instances.
In ons.conf you need to specify the wallet file and password:
walletfile=
walletpassword=
ONS only uses SSL between servers, and so ONS clients will not be affected. You specify the
wallet password when you create the wallet. If you copy a wallet from an OPMN instance, then
use the same password configured in opmn.xml. If there is no wallet password configured in
opmn.xml, then you don't need to specify a wallet password in ons.conf either.

How do I configure FCF with BPEL so I can use RAC 10g in the
backend?
** Note:372456.1 describes the procedure to set up BPEL with a Oracle RAC 10g Release 1
database.
If you are using SSL, ensure the SSL enable attribute of ONS in opmn.xml file has same value,
either true or false, for all OPMN servers in the Farm. To troubleshoot OPMN at the application
server level, look at appendix A in Oracle Process Manager and Notification Server
Administrator's Guide.

I am using shared services which the following set in init.ora SQL>

show parameters dispatchers=(protocol=TCP)(listener=listen
ers_nl01)(con=500)(serv=oltp). I stopped my service with srvctl
stop service but it is still registered with the listener and accepting
connections. Is this expected?
YES. This is by design of dispatchers which are part of Oracle Net Services. If you specify the
service attribute of the dispatchers init.ora parameter, the service specified cannot be managed
by the dba.
What should I do to make my RAC deployment highly available?
Customers often deploy Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) to provide a highly available
infrastructure for their mission critical applications. Oracle RAC removes the server as a single
point of failure. Load balancing your workload across many servers along with fast recovery
from failures means that the loss of any one server should have little or no impact on the end user
of the application. The level of impact to the end user depends on how well the application has
been written to mask failure. If an outage occurs on a RAC instance, the ideal situation would be
that the failover time + transaction response time to be less then the maximum acceptable
response time. Oracle RAC has many features that customers can take advantage of to mask
failures from the end user however it requires more work than just installing Oracle RAC. To the
application user, the availability metric that means the most is the response time for their
transaction. This is the end-to-end response time which means all layers must be available and
performing to a defined standard for the agreed times.

If you are deploying Oracle RAC and require high availability, you must make the entire
infrastructure of the application highly available. This requires detailed planning to ensure there
are no single points of failure throughout the infrastructure. Oracle Clusterware is constantly
monitoring any process that it under its control, which includes all the Oracle software such as the
Oracle instance, listener, etc. Oracle Clusterware has been programmed to recover from failures,
which occur for the Oracle processes. In order to do it s monitoring and recovery, various
system activities happen on a regular basis such as user authentication, sudo, and hostname
resolution. In order for the cluster to be highly available, it must be able to perform these activities
at all times. For example, if you choose to use the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
for authentication, then you must make the LDAP server highly available as well as the network
connecting the users, application, database and LDAP server. If the database is up but the users
cannot connect to the database because the LDAP server is not accessible, then the entire
system is down in the eyes of your users. When using external authentication such as LDAP or
NIS (Network Information Service), a public network failure will cause failures within the cluster.
Oracle recommends that the hostname, vip, and interconnect are defined in the /etc/hosts file on
all nodes in the cluster.

During the testing of the RAC implementation, you should include a destructive testing phase.
This is a systematic set of tests of your uration to ensure that 1) you know what to expect if the
failure occurs and how to recover from it and 2) that the system behaves as expected during the
failure. This is a good time to review operating procedures and document recovery procedures.
Destructive testing should include tests such as node failure, instance failure, public network
failure, interconnect failures, storage failure, storage network failure, voting disk failure, loss of an
OCR, and loss of ASM.

Using features of Oracle Real Application Clusters and Oracle Clients including Fast Application
Notification (FAN), Fast Connection Failover (FCF), Oracle Net Service Connection Load
Balancing, and the Load Balancing Advisory, applications can mask most failures and provide a
very highly available application. For details on implementing best practices, see the MAA
document Client Failover Best Practices for Highly Available Oracle Databases and the Oracle
RAC Administration and Deployment Guide.
Why am I seeing the following warnings in my listener.log for my
RAC 10g environment?
WARNING: Subscription for node down event still pending
This message indicates that the listener was not able to subscribe to the ONS events which it
uses to do the connection load balancing. This is most likely due to starting the listener using
lsnrctl from the database home. When you start the listener using lsnrctl, make sure you have set
the environment variable ORACLE_CONFIG_HOME = {Oracle Clusterware HOME}, also set it in
racgwrap in the $ORACLE_HOME/bin for the database.

Will FAN work with SQLPlus?

Yes with Oracle RAC 11g, you can specify the -F (FAILOVER) option. This enables SQL*Plus to
interact with the OCI failover mode in a Real Application Cluster (RAC) environment. In this mode
a service or instance failure is transparently handled with transaction status messages if
applicable.

What clients provide integration with FAN through FCF?

With Oracle Database 10g Release 1, JDBC clients (both thick and thin driver) are integrated with
FAN by providing FCF. With Oracle Database 10g Release 2, we have added ODP.NET and
OCI. Other applications can integrate with FAN by using the API to subscribe to the FAN events.
Note: If you are using a 3rd party application server, then you can only use FCF if you use the
Oracle driver and except for OCI, its connection pool. If you are using the connection pool of the
3rd Party Application Server, then you do not get FCF. Your customer can subscribe directly to
FAN events however that is a development project for the customer. See the white paper
Workload Management with Oracle RAC 10g on OTN

Can I use TAF and FAN/FCF?

With Oracle Database 10g Release 1, NO. With Oracle Database 10g Release 2, the answer is
YES for OCI and ODP.NET, it is recommended. For JDBC, you should not use TAF and FCF
even with the Thick JDBC driver.
How does the datasource properties initialLimit, minLimit, and
maxLimit affect Fast Connection Failover processing with JDBC?
The initialLimit property on the Implicit Connection Cache is effective only when the cache is first
created. For example, if the initialLimit is set to 10, you'll have 10 connections pre-created and
available when the conn cache is first created. Pls don't be confused between minLimit and
initialLimit. The current behavior is that after a DOWN event and the affected connections are
cleaned up, it is possible for the number of connections in the cache to be lower than minLimit.

An UP event is processed for both (a) new instance joins, as well as (b) down followed by an
instance UP. This has no relevance to initialLimit, or even minLimit. When a UP event comes into
our jdbc Implicit Connection Cache, we will create some new connections. Assuming you have
your listener load balancing set up properly, then those connections should go to the instance
that was just started. When your application does a get connection to the pool, it will be given an
idle connection, if you are running 10.2 and have the load balancing advisory turned on for the
service, we will allocate the session based on the defined goal to provide the best service level

MaxLimit, when set, defines the upper boundary limit for the connection cache. By default,
maxLimit is unbounded - your database sets the limit.

Do I need to install the ONS on all my mid-tier serves in order to

enable JDBC Fast Connection Failover (FCF)?
With 10g Release 1, the middle tier must have ONS running (started by same users as
application). ONS is not included on the Client CD however is is part of the Oracle Database 10g
cd.
With 10g Release 2 or later, they do not need to install the ons on the middle tier. The JDBC
driver allows the use of remote ONS (ie uses the ONS running in the RAC cluster) . Just use the
datasource parameter ods.setONSConfiguration("nodes=racnode1:4200,racnode2.:4200");

Will FAN/OCI work with Instant Client?

Yes, FAN/OCI will work with Instant Client. Both client and server must be Oracle Database 10g
Release 2.
What type of callbacks are supported with OCI when using
FAN/FCF?
There are two separate callbacks supported. The HA Events (FAN) callback is called when an
event occurs. When a down event occurs, for example, you can clean up a custom connection
pool. i.e. purge stale connections. When the failover occurs, the TAF callback is invoked. At
failover time you can customize the newly created database session. Both FAN and TAF are
client-side callbacks. FAN also has a separate server side callout that should not be confused
with the OCI client callback.

Does FCF for OCI react to FAN HA UP events?

OCI does not perform any implicit actions on an up event, however if a HA event callback is
present, it is invoked. You can take any required action at that time.

Can I use FAN/OCI with Pro*C?

Since Pro*C (sqllib) is built on top of OCI, it should support HA events. You need to precompile
the application with the option EVENTS=TRUE, make sure you link the application with a thread
library. The database connection must use a Service that has been enabled for AQ events. Use
dbms_service.modify_service to enable the service for events (aq_ha_notifications => true) or
use the EM Cluster Database Services page.

Do I have to link my OCI application with a thread library? Why?

YES, you must link the application to a threads library. This is required because the AQ
notifications occur asynchronously, over an implicitly spawned thread.

Can I use the 10.2 JDBC driver with 10.1 database for FCF?
Yes with the patch for Bug 5657975 for 10.2.0.3,the 10.2 JDBC driver will work with a 10.1
database. The fix will be part of the 10.2.0.4 patchset. If you do not have the patch then using
FCF, use the 10.2 JDBC driver with 10.2 database. If database is 10.1, use 10.1 JDBC driver.
Will FAN/FCF work with the default database service?
No. If you want the advanced features of RAC provided by FAN and FCF, then create a cluster
managed service for your application. Use the Clustered Managed Services Page in Enterprise
Manager DBControl to do this.

I am seeing the wait events 'ges remote message', 'gcs remote

message', and/or 'gcs for action'. What should I do about these?
These are idle wait events and can be safetly ignored. The 'ges remote message' might show up
in a 9.0.1 statspack report as one of the top wait events. To have this wait event not show up you
can add this event to the PERFSTAT.STATS$IDLE_EVENT table so that it is not listed in
Statspack reports.

What are the changes in memory requirements from moving from

single instance to RAC?
If you are keeping the workload requirements per instance the same, then about 10% more buffer
cache and 15% more shared pool is needed. The additional memory requirement is due to data
structures for coherency management. The values are heuristic and are mostly upper bounds.
Actual esource usage can be monitored by querying current and maximum columns for the gcs
resource/locks and ges resource/locks entries in V$RESOURCE_LIMIT.

But in general, please take into consideration that memory requirements per instance are
reduced when the same user population is distributed over multiple nodes. In this case:

Assuming the same user population N number of nodes M buffer cache for a single system then

(M / N) + ((M / N )*0.10) [ + extra memory to compensate for failed-over users ]

Thus for example with a M=2G & N=2 & no extra memory for failed-over users

=( 2G / 2 ) + (( 2G / 2 )) *0.10

=1G + 100M
What is the Load Balancing Advisory?
To assist in the balancing of application workload across designated resources, Oracle Database
10g Release 2 provides the Load Balancing Advisory. This Advisory monitors the current
workload activity across the cluster and for each instance where a service is active; it provides a
percentage value of how much of the total workload should be sent to this instance as well as
service quality flag. The feedback is provided as an entry in the Automatic Workload Repository
and a FAN event is published. The easiest way for an application to take advantage of the load
balancing advisory, is to enable Runtime Connection Load Balancing with an integrated client.

What is Runtime Connection Load Balancing?

Runtime connection load balancing enables the connection pool to route incoming work requests
to the available database connection that will provide it with the best service. This will provide the
best service times globally, and routing responds fast to changing conditions in the system.
Oracle has implemented runtime connection load balancing with ODP.NET and JDBC connection
pools. Runtime Connection Load Balancing is tightly integrated with the automatic workload
balancing features introduced with Oracle Database 10g I.E. Services, Automatic Workload
Repository, and the new Load Balancing Advisory.

How do I enable the load balancing advisory?

The load balancing advisory requires the use of services and Oracle Net connection load
balancing.
To enable it, on the server: set a goal (service_time or throughput, and set CLB_GOAL=SHORT )
on your service.
For client, you must be using the connection pool.
For JDBC, enable the datasource parameter FastConnectionFailoverEnabled.
For ODP.NET enable the datasource parameter Load Balancing=true.

What are my options for setting the Load Balancing Advisory

GOAL on a Service?
The load balancing advisory is enabled by setting the GOAL on your service either through
PL/SQL DBMS_SERVICE package or EM DBControl Clustered Database Services page. There
are 3 options for GOAL:
None Default setting, turn off advisory
THROUGHPUT Work requests are directed based on throughput. This should be used when
the work in a service completes at homogenous rates. An example is a trading system where
work requests are similar lengths.
SERVICE_TIME Work requests are directed based on response time. This should be used
when the work in a service completes at various rates. An example is as internet shopping
system where work requests are various lengths
Note: If using GOAL, you should set CLB_GOAL=SHORT

How do I measure the bandwidth utilization of my NIC or my

interconnect?
One simple/quick and not very recommended way is to look at output of "ifconfig eth0" and
compare values of "RX bytes" and "TX bytes" over time this will show _average_ usage per
period of time.

A more reliable, interactive way on Linux is to use the iptraf utility or the prebuilt rpms from
redhat or Novell (SuSE), another option on Linux is Netperf . On other Unix platforms: "snoop -S
-tr -s 64 -d hme0", AIX's topaz can show that as well.. Try to look for the peak (not average)
usage and see if that is acceptably fast.

Remember that NIC bandwidth is measured in Mbps or Gbps (which is BITS per second) and
output from above utilities can sometimes come in BYTES per second, so for comparison, do
proper conversion (divide bps value by 8 to get bytes/sec; or, multiple bytes value by 8 to get bps
value).

Additionally, you can't expect a network device to run at full capacity with 100% efficiency, due to
concurrency, collisions and retransmits that happens more frequently as the utilization gets
higher. If you are reaching high levels consider a faster interconnect or NIC bonding (multiple
NICs all servicing the same IP address).

Finally, above is measuring bandwidth utilization (how much), not latency (how fast) of the
interconnect, you may still be suffering from high latency connection (slow link) even though there
is plenty of bandwidth to spare. Most experts agree that low latency is by far more important than
a high bandwidth with respect to specifications of the private interconnect in RAC. Latency is best
measured by the actual user of the network link (RAC in this case), review statspack for stats on
latency. Also, in 10gR2 Grid Control you can view Global Cache Block Access Latency, you can
also drill down to the Cluster Cache Coherency page to see the cluster cache coherency metrics
for the entire cluster database.

Keep in mind that RAC is using the private interconnect like it was never used before, to
synchronize memory regions (SGAs) of multiple nodes (remember, since 9i, entire data blocks
are shipped accross the interconnect), if the network is utilized at 50% bandwidth, this means that
50% of the time it is busy and not available to potential users. In this case delays (due to
collisions and concurrency) will increase the latency even though the bandwidth might look
"reasonable", it's hiding the real issue.
Does Database blocksize or tablespace blocksize affect how the
data is passed across the interconnect?
Oracle ships database block buffers, i.e. blocks in a tablespace configured for 16K will result in a
16K data buffer shipped, blocks residing in a tablespace with base block size (8K) will be shipped
as base blocks and so on; the data buffers are broken down to packets of MTU sizes.

How can I validate the scalability of my shared storage? (Tightly

related to RAC / Application scalability)
Storage vendors tend to focus their sales pitch mainly on the storage unit's capacity in Terabytes
(1000 GB) or Petabytes (1000 TB), however for RAC scalability it's critical to also look at the
storage unit's ability to process I/O's per second (throughput) in a scalable fashion, specifically
from multiple sources (nodes). If that criteria is not met, RAC / Application scalability most
probably will suffer, as it partially depends on storage scalability as well as a solid and capable
interconnect (for network traffice between nodes).

Storage vendors may sometimes discourage such testing, boasting about their amazing front or
backend battery backed memory caches that "eliminate" all I/O bottlenecks. This is all great, and
you should take advantage of such caches as much as possible... however, there is no substitute
to a a real world test, you may uncover that the HBA (Host Buss Adapater) firmware or the driver
versions are outdated (before you claim poor RAC / Application scalability issues).

It is highly recommended to test this storage scalability early on so that expectations are set
accordingly. On Linux there is a freely available tool released on OTN called ORION (Oracle I/O
test tool) which simulates Oracle I/O.

On other Unix platforms (as well as Linux) one can use IOzone, if prebuilt binary not available
you should build from source, make sure to use version 3.271 or later and if testing raw/block
devices add the "-I" flag.

In a basic read test you will try to demonstrate that a certain IO throughput can be maintained as
nodes are added. Try to simulate your database io patterns as much as possible, i.e. blocksize,
number of simultaneous readers, rates, etc.

For example, on a 4 node cluster, from node 1 you measure 20MB/sec, then you start a read
stream on node 2 and see another 20MB/sec while the first node shows no decrease. You then
run another stream on node 3 and get another 20MB/sec, in the end you run 4 streams on 4
nodes, and get an aggregated 80MB/sec or close to that. This will prove that the shared storage
is scalable. Obviously if you see poor scalability in this phase, that will be carried over and be
observed or interperted as poor RAC / Application scalability.

In many cases RAC / Application scalability is at blame for no real reason, that is, the underlying
IO subsystem is not scalable.
How many nodes are supported in a RAC Database?
With 10g Release 2, we support 100 nodes in a cluster using Oracle Clusterware, and 100
instances in a RAC database. Currently DBCA has a bug where it will not go beyond 63
instances. There is also a documentation bug for the max-instances parameter. With 10g
Release 1 the Maximum is 63. In 9i it is platform specific due to the different clusterware support
by vendors. See the platform specific FAQ for 9i.

A customer is currently using RAC in a 2 node environment. How

should one review the ability to scale out to 4, 6, 8 or even more
nodes? What should the requirements of a scale out test?
Once a customer is using RAC on a two node cluster and want to see how far they can actually
scale it, the following are some handy tips to follow:
1. Ensure they are using a real enough workload that it does not have false bottlenecks.
2. Have tuned the application so it is reasonable scalable on their current RAC environment.
3. Make sure you are measuring a valid scalability measure. This should either be doing very
large batch jobs quicker (via parallelism) or being able to support a greater number of short
transactions in a shorter time.
4. Actual scalability will vary for each application and its bottlenecks. Thus the request to do the
above items. You would see similar scalability if scaling up on a SMP.
5. For failover, you should see what happens if you lose a node. If you have 2 nodes, you lose
half your power and really get into trouble or have lots of extra capacity.
6. Measuring that load balacing is working properly. Make sure you are using RCLB and a FAN
aware connection pool.
7. Your customer should also testing using DB Services.
8. Get familiar w/ EM GC to manage a cluster and help eliminate a lot of the complexity of many
of the nodes.
9. Why stop at 6 nodes? A maximum of 3 way messaging ensure RAC can scale much, much
further.

How do I change my Veritas SF RAC installation to use UDP

instead of LLT?
Using UDP with Veritas Clusterware seems to require an exception from Veritas so this may be
something you should check with them.

The files which you need to replace are

1.) libskgxn2.so
2.) libskgxp9.so
The ODM is in a different file call libodm9

After copying the files from the above mentioned files from the CD, you can relink oracle using
make -f ins_rdbms.mk rac_on ipc_udp ioracle
NOTE: Oracle RAC 11g will not support LLT for interconnect.

What do I do if I see GC CR BLOCK LOST in my top 5 Timed

Events in my AWR Report?
You should never see this or BLOCK RETRY events. This is most likely due to a fault in your
interconnect network. Work with your system administrator or/and network administrator to find
the fault. Check netstat -s

Ip:
84884742 total packets received
1201 fragments dropped after timeout
3384 packet reassembles failed

You do not want to see fragments dropped or packet reassemblies failed.

ifconfig a:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0B:DB:4B:A2:04

inet addr:130.35.25.110 Bcast:130.35.27.255 Mask:255.255.252.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:21721236 errors:135 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:95
TX packets:273120 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

You do not want to see high number of errors.

Will adding a new instance to my Oracle RAC database (new node

to the cluster) allow me to scale the workload?
YES! Oracle RAC allows you to dynamically scale out your workload by adding another node to
the cluster. You must remember that adding more work to the database means that in addition to
the CPU and Memory that the new node brings, you will have to ensure that your I/O subsystem
can support the additional I/O requirements. In an Oracle RAC environment, you need to look at
the total I/O across all instances in the cluster. For more information on testing your I/O capacity,
see FAQ 9393

I found in 10.2 that the EM "Convert to Cluster Database" wizard

would always fall over on the last step where it runs emca and
needs to log into the new cluster database as dbsnmp to create the
cluster database targets etc. I changed the password for the
dbsnmp account to be dbsnmp (same as username) and it worked
OK. Is this a known issue?
The conversion to cluster happens successfully but the EM monitoring credentials for the
converted database are not properly set due to this bug. This is resolved in next patchset. In the
interim, user can set the monitoring password from the "monitoring configuration" screen for the
RAC DB from GC console and proceed.
This issue has been fixed in 10.2.0.3 database and to get the complete functionality you will need
10.2.0.2 Grid Control patch also, as the fix is spread between the two pieces of software. For now
you can proceed with setting password for dbsnmp user same as that of sys user.

What storage option should I use for RAC 10g on Linux? ASM /
OCFS / Raw Devices / Block Devices / Ext3 ?
The recommended way to manage large amounts of storage in a RAC environment is ASM
(Automatic Storage Management) really need/want a clustered filesystem, then Oracle offers
OCFS (Oracle Clustered File System); for 2.4 kernel (RHEL3/SLES8) use OCFS Version 1 and
for 2.6 kernel (RHEL4/SLES9) use OCFS2. All these options are free to use and completely
supported, ASM is bundled in the RDBMS software, and OCFS as well as ASMLib are freely
downloadable from Oracle's OSS (Open Source Software) website.

EXT3 is out of the question, since it's data structures are not cluster aware, that is, if you mount
an ext3 filesystem from multiple nodes, it will quickly get corrupted.

Another option of course is NFS and iSCSI both are outside the scope of this FAQ but included
for completeness.

If for any reason the above options (ASM/OCFS) are not good enough and you insist on using
'raw devices' or 'block devices' here are the details on the two (This information is still very useful
to know in the context of ASM and OCFS).

On Unix/Linux there are two types of devices:

block devices (/dev/sde9) are **BUFFERED** devices!! unless you explicitly open them in
O_DIRECT you will get buffered (linux buffer cache) IO.

character devices (/dev/raw/raw9) are *UN-BUFFERRED** devices!! no matter how you open
them, you always get unbufferred IO, hence no need to specify O_DIRECT on the file open call.

Above is not a typo, block devices on Unix do buffered IO by default (cached in linux buffer
cache), this means that RAC can not operate on it (unless opened with O_DIRECT), since the
IO's will not be immediately visible to other nodes.

You may check if a device is block or character device by the first letter printed with the "ls -l"
command:
crw-rw---- 1 root disk 162, 1 Jan 23 19:53 /dev/raw/raw1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 112 Jan 23 14:51 /dev/sdh

Above, "c" stands for character device, and "b" for block devices.

Starting with Oracle 10.1 an RDBMS fix added the O_DIRECT flag to the open call (O_DIRECT
flag tells the Linux kernel to bypass the Linux buffer cache and write directly to disk), in the case
of a block device, that ment that a create datafile on '/dev/sde9' would succeed (need to set
filesystemio_options=directio in init.ora).. This enhancement was well received, and shortly after
bug 4309443 was fixed (by adding the O_DIRECT flag on the OCR file open call) meaning that
starting with 10.2 (there are several 10.1 backports available) the Oracle OCR file could also
access block devices directly. For the voting disk to be opened with O_DIRECT you need fix for
bug 4466428 (5021707 is a duplicate). This means that both voting disks and OCR files could live
on block devices. However, due to OUI bug 5005148, there is still a need to configure raw
devices for the voting or OCR files during installation of RAC, not such a big deal, since it's just 5
files in most cases. It is not possible to ask for a backport of this bug since it means a full re-
release of 10g, one alternative if raw devices are not a good option is to use 11g Clusterware
(with 10g RAC database).

By using block devices you no longer have to live with the limitations of 255 raw devices per
node. You can access as many block devices as the system can support. Also block devices
carry persistent permissions across reboots, while with raw devices one would have to customize
that after installation otherwise the Clusterware stack or database would fail to startup due to
permission issues.

ASM or ASMlib can be given the raw devices (/dev/raw/raw2) as was done in the initial
deployment of 10g Release 1, or the more recommended way: ASM/ASMLib should be given the
block devices directly (eg. /dev/sde9).

Since RAW devices are being phased out of Linux in the long term, it is recommended everyone
should switch to using the block devices (meaning, pass these block devices to ASM or OCFS/2
or Oracle Clusterware)

How do I stop the GSD?

If you are on 9.0 on Unix you would issue:

$ ps -ef | grep jre

$ kill -9 <gsd process>

Stop the OracleGSDService on Windows.

Note: Make sure that this is the process in use by GSD

If you are on 9.2 you would issue:

$ gsdctl stop
What is the purpose of the gsd service in Oracle 9i RAC?
GSD is only needed for configuration/management of cluster database. Once database has been
configured and up, it can be safely stopped provided you don't run any 'srvctl or dbca or dbua'
tools. In 9iRAC, the GSD doesn't write anywhere unless tracing was turned on, in which case
traces go to stdout.
Once the database has been configured and started and you don't use 'srvctl or EM' to manage
or 'dbca to extend/remove' or 'dbua to upgrade' this database, GSD can be stopped.

How should I deal with space management? Do I need to set free

lists and free list groups?
Manually setting free list groups is a complexity that is no longer required.

We recommend using Automatic Segment Space Management rather than trying to manage
space manually. Unless you are migrating from an earlier database version with OPS and have
already built and tuned the necessary structures, Automatic Segment Space Management is the
preferred approach.

Automatic Segment Space Management is NOT the default, you need to set it.

For more information see:

<> Automatic Space Segment Management in RAC Environments

I was installing RAC and my Oracle files did not get copied to the
remote node(s). What went wrong?
First make sure the cluster is running and is available on all nodes. You should be able to see all
nodes when running an 'lsnodes -v' command.

If lsnodes shows that all members of the cluster are available, then you may have an rcp/rsh
problem on Unix or shares have not been configured on Windows.

You can test rcp/rsh on Unix by issuing the following from each node:

[node1]/tmp> touch test.tst

[node1]/tmp> rcp test.tst node2:/tmp

[node2]/tmp> touch test.tst

[node2]/tmp> rcp test.tst node1:/tmp
On Windows, ensure that each node has administrative access to all these directories within the
Windows environment by running the following at the command prompt:

NET USE \\host_name\C$

Clustercheck.exe also checks for this.

More information can be found in the Step-by-Step RAC notes available on Metalink. To find
these search Metalink for 'Step-by-Step Installation of RAC'.

What are the implications of using srvctl disable for an instance in

my RAC cluster? I want to have it available to start if I need it but at
this time to not want to run this extra instance for this database.
During node reboot, any disabled resources will not be started by the Clusterware, therefore this
instance will not be restarted. It is recommended that you leave the vip, ons,gsd enabled in that
node. For example, VIP address for this node is present in address list of database services, so a
client connecting to these services will still reach some other database instance providing that
service via listener redirection. Just be aware that by disabling an Instance on a node, all that
means is that the instance itself is not starting. However, if the database was originally created
with 3 instances, that means there are 3 threads of redo. So, while the instance itself is disabled,
the redo thread is still enabled, and will occasionally cause log switches. The archived logs for
this 'disabled' instance would still be needed in any potential database recovery scenario. So, if
you are going to disable the instance through srvctl, you may also want to consider disabling the
redo thread for that instance.

srvctl disable instance -d orcl -i orcl2

SQL> alter database disable public thread 2;

Do the reverse to enable the instance.

SQL> alter database enable public thread 2;

srvctl enable instance -d orcl -i orcl2

What is the Cluster Verification Utiltiy (cluvfy)?

The Cluster Verification Utility (CVU) is a validation tool that you can use to check all the
important components that need to be verified at different stages of deployment in a RAC
environment. The wide domain of deployment of CVU ranges from initial hardware setup through
fully operational cluster for RAC deployment and covers all the intermediate stages of installation
and configuration of various components. Cluvfy does not take any corrective action following the
failure of a verification task, does not enter into areas of performance tuning or monitoring, does
not perform any cluster or RAC operation, and does not attempt to verify the internals of cluster
database or cluster elements.

What versions of the database can I use the cluster verification

utility (cluvfy) with?
The cluster verification utility is release with Oracle Database 10g Release 2 but can also be used
with Oracle Database 10g Release 1.

Does RAC work with NTP (Network Time Protocol)?

YES! NTP and RAC are compatible, as a matter of fact, it is recommended to setup NTP in a
RAC cluster, for Oracle 8i/9i and 10g.

From the Documentation:

Oracle Database Oracle Clusterware and Oracle Real Application
Clusters Installation Guide 10g Release 2 (10.2) for Linux B14203-05
page 2-21:
"Node Time Requirements
Before starting the installation, ensure that each member node of the
cluster is set as closely as possible to the same date and time. Oracle
strongly recommends using the Network Time Protocol feature of most
operating systems for this purpose, with all nodes using the same
reference Network Time Protocol server."

Each machine has a different clock frequency and as a result a slightly different time drift. NTP
computes this time drift every about 15 minutes, and stores this information in a "drift" file, it then
adjusts the system clock based on this known drift as well as compares it to a given time-server
the sys-admins sets up. This is the recommended approach.

Keep the following points in mind:

• Minor changes in time (in the seconds range) are harmless for RAC and the Oracle
clusterware. If you intend on making large time changes it is best to shutdown the instances and
the entire Clusterware stack on that node to avoid a false eviction, especially if you are using the
10g low-brownout patches, which allow really low misscount settings.

• Backup/recovery aspect of large time changes are documented in note 77370.1, basically you
can't use RECOVER DATABASE UNTIL TIME to reach the second recovery point, It is possible
to overcome with RECOVER DATABASE UNTIL CANCEL or UNTIL CHANGE. If you are doing
complete recovery (most of the times) then this is not an issue since the Oracle recovery code
uses SCN (System Change Numbers) to advance in the redo/archive logs. The SCN numbers
never go back in time (unless a reset-logs operation is performed), there is always an association
of an SCN to a human readable timestamp (which may change forward or backwards), hence the
issue with recovery until point in time vs. until SCN/Cancel.

• If DBMS_SCHEDULER is in usage it will be affected by time changes, as it's using actual clock
rather than SCN.

• On platforms with OPROCD get fix for bug 5015469 "OPROCD REBOOTS NODE WHEN
TIME IS SET BACK BY XNTPD"

Apart from these issues, the Oracle server is immuned to time changes, i.e. will not affect
transaction/read consistency operations.

On Linux the "-x" flag can be added to the ntpd daemon to prevent the clock from going
backwards.

How do I determine whether or not an OneOff patch is "rolling

upgradeable"?
After you have downloaded a patch, you can go into the directory where you unpacked the patch:

> pwd
/ora/install/4933522
Then use the following OPatch command:
> opatch query -is_rolling
...
Query ...
Please enter the patch location:
/ora/install/4933522
---------- Query starts ------------------
Patch ID: 4933522
....
Rolling Patch: True.
---------- Query ends -------------------

If using plsql native code, the plsql_native_library_dir needs to be

defined. In RAC environement, must the directory be in the shared
storage?
In RAC configuration, this parameter must be set in each instance. The instances are not
required to have a shared file system. On each instance the plsql_native_library_dir can be set to
point to an instance local directory. Alternately, if the RAC configuration supports a shared
(cluster) file system, you can use a common directory (on the shared file system) for all instances.
You can also check out the PL/SQL Native Compilation FAQ on OTN:
www.oracle.com/technology/tech/pl_sql/htdocs/ncomp_faq.html

I have 2 clusters named "crs" (the default), how do I get Grid

Control to recognize them as targets?
There are 2 options:
a) if the grid control agent install (which is a separate install) has already been done and has
picked up the name of the cluster as it was configured as CRS, one can go to the EM console as
is, and for the second, manually delete and rediscover the target. When you rediscover the target,
give whatever display name you like

b) Prior to performing the Grid control agent install, just set CLUSTER_NAME environment
variable and run the install. This variable need to be set only for that install session. No need to
set it every time agent starts.

If I am using Vendor Clusterware such as Veritas, IBM, Sun or HP,

do I still need Oracle Clusterware to run Oracle RAC 10g?
Yes. When ceritifed, you can use Vendor clusterware however you must still install and use
Oracle Clusterware for RAC. Best Practice is to leave Oracle Clusterware to manage RAC. For
details see Metalink <> and for Veritas SFRAC see <>.

Srvctl cannot start instance, I get the following error PRKP-1001

CRS-0215, however sqlplus can start it on both nodes? What is the
problem?
This could be many things but a popular issue is when you have a separate ASM Home and the
listener is running out of this home (it was the first home installed). Srvctl needs a TNS_ADMIN
alias to the network/admin directory in this home instead of using the default
ORACLE_HOME/network/admin for the database you are trying to start. For srvctl to work you
must

srvctl setenv nodeapps -n node -T TNS_ADMIN=full path

on each node in the cluster.

You cannot rely on a TNS_ADMIN environment variable.
See <>

When I look at ALL_SERVICES view in my database I see services I

did not create, what are they for?
You will always see a default database service that is the same name as your database. This
service is available on all instances in the cluster. You will also see two services used by the
database SYS$BACKGROUND (for background processes) and SYS$USERS (users who
connect via BEQ or without using a service_name). You may also see services that end with XDB
which are created for the XML DB feature and you will not be able to manage these services.

How many nodes can be had in an HP-

UX/Solaris/AIX/Windows/Linux cluster?
The number of nodes supported is not limited by Oracle, but more
generally by the clustering software/hardware in question.

When using solely Oracle Clusterware: 63 nodes (9i or 10gR1)

With 10g Release 2, the maximum nodes is 100

When using a third party clusterware:

Sun: 8

HP UX: 16

HP Tru64: 8

IBM AIX:

* 8 nodes for Physical Shared (CLVM) SSA disk

* 16 nodes for Physical Shared (CLVM) non-SSA disk

* 128 nodes for Virtual Shared Disk (VSD)

* 128 nodes for GPFS

* Subject to storage subsystem limitations

Veritas: 8-16 nodes (check w/ Veritas)

Is it possible to run RAC on logical partitions (i.e. LPARs) or virtual

separate servers.
Yes, it is possible. The E10K and other high end servers can be partitioned into domains of
smaller sizes, each domain with its own CPU(s) and operating system. Each domain is effectively
a virtual server. RAC can be run on cluster comprises of domains. The benefits of using this is
similar to a regular cluster, any domain failure will have little effect on other domains. Besides, the
management of the cluster may be easier since there is only one physical server. Note however,
since one E10K is still just one server. There are single points of failures. Any failures, such as
back plane failure, that crumble the entire server will shutdown the virtual cluster. That is the
tradeoff users have to make in how best to build a cluster database.

How do I check RAC certification?

See the following Metalink note:

<> Please note that certifications for Real Application Clusters are performed against the
Operating System and Clusterware versions. The corresponding system hardware is offered by
System vendors and specialized Technology vendors. Some system vendors offer pre-installed,
pre-configured RAC clusters. These are included below under the corresponding OS platform
selection within the certification matrix.

Can the Oracle Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA) be used

to create a database with Veritas DBE / AC 3.5?
DBCA can be used to create databases on raw devices in 9i RAC Release 1 and 9i Release 2.
Standard database creation scripts using SQL commands will work with file system and raw.

DBCA cannot be used to create databases on file systems on Oracle 9i Release 1. The user can
choose to set up a database on raw devices, and have DBCA output a script. The script can then
be modified to use cluster file systems instead.

With Oracle 9i RAC Release 2 (Oracle 9.2), DBCA can be used to create databases on a cluster
filesystem. If the ORACLE_HOME is stored on the cluster filesystem, the tool will work directly. If
ORACLE_HOME is on local drives on each system, and the customer wishes to place database
files onto a cluster file system, they must invoke DBCA as follows: dbca -datafileDestination
/oradata where /oradata is on the CFS filesystem. See 9iR2 README and bug 2300874 for more
info.

What is Oracle's position with respect to supporting RAC on

Polyserve CFS?
Please check the certification matrix available through Metalink for your specific release.

Is crossover cable supported as an interconnect with RAC on any

platform ?

NO. CROSS OVER CABLES ARE NOT SUPPORTED.

The requirement is to use a switch:

Detailed Reasons:
1) cross-cabling limits the expansion of RAC to two nodes
2) cross-cabling is unstable:
a) Some NIC cards do not work properly with it. They are not able
to negotiate the DTE/DCE clocking, and will thus not function. These
NICS were made cheaper by assuming that the switch was going to have
the clock. Unfortunately there is no way to know which NICs do not
have that clock.
b) Media sense behaviour on various OS's (most notably Windows) will
bring a NIC down when a cable is disconnected.
Either of these issues can lead to cluster instability and lead to ORA-
29740 errors (node evictions).

Due to the benefits and stability provided by a switch, and their

afforability ($200 for a simple 16 port GigE switch), and the expense
and time related to dealing with issues when one does not exist, this
is the only supported configuration.
Please see certify.us.oracle.com as well.
From a purely technology point of view Oracle does not care if the
customer uses cross over cable or router or switches to deliver a
message. However, we know from experience that a lot of adapters
misbehave when used in a crossover configuration and cause a lot of
problems for RAC. Hence we have stated on certify that we do not
support crossover cables to avoid false bugs and finger pointing
amongst the various parties: Oracle, Hardware vendors, Os vendors
etc...

Is Veritas Storage Foundation supported with RAC?

Veritas Storage Foundation 4.0 is certified on AIX, Solaris and HPUX for 9i RAC and Oracle RAC
10g. Veritas is production also on Linux, but it is not certified by Oracle. If customers choose
Veritas on Linux with Oracle 9i, Oracle will support the Oracle products in the stack.
Veritas Storage Foundation is currently not certified with 10g Release 2 on any platform. Check
Certify for the latest information.

Is RAC on VMWare supported?

No. We do not support RAC on VMWare. Aside from the support restrictions for the database on
VMWare outlined in Metalink <>, there are technical restrictions that prevent the certification of
RAC in a VMWare environment.

Is 3rd Party Clusterware supported on Linux such as Veritas or

Redhat?
No, Oracle RAC 10g does not support 3rd Party clusterware on Linux. This means that if a cluster
file system requires a 3rd party clusterware, the cluster file system is not supported.

Can you have multiple RAC $ORACLE_HOME's on Linux?

No, there should be only one Oracle Cluster Manager (ORACM) running on each node. All RAC
databases should run out of the $ORACLE_HOME that ORACM is installed in.

After installing patchset 9013 and patch_2313680 on Linux, the

startup was very slow

Please carefully read the following new information about configuring Oracle Cluster
Management on Linux, provided as part of the patch README:

Three parameters affect the startup time:

soft_margin (defined at watchdog module load)

-m (watchdogd startup option)

WatchdogMarginWait (defined in nmcfg.ora).

WatchdogMarginWait is calculated using the formula:

WatchdogMarginWait = soft_margin(msec) + -m + 5000(msec).

[5000(msec) is hardcoded]

Note that the soft_margin is measured in seconds, -m and WatchMarginWait are measured in
milliseconds.

Based on benchmarking, it is recommended to set soft_margin between 10 and 20 seconds. Use

the same value for -m (converted to milliseconds) as used for soft_margin. Here is an example:

soft_margin=10 -m=10000 WatchdogMarginWait = 10000+10000+5000=25000

If CPU utilizatn in your system is high and you experience unexpected node reboots, check the
wdd.log file. If there are any 'ping came too late' messages, increase the value of the above
parameters.

Is there a CFS Available for Linux?

Yes, OCFS (Oracle Cluster Filesystem) is now available for Linux. The following Metalink note
has information for obtaining the latest version of OCFS:

<> - How to find the current OCFS version for Linux

Can RAC 10g and 9i RAC be installed and run on the same
physical Linux cluster?
Yes - However Oracle Clusterware (CRS) will not support a 9i RAC database so you will have to
leave the current configuration in place. You can install Oracle Clusterware and RAC 10g into the
same cluster. On Windows and Linux, you must run the 9i Cluster Manager for the 9i Database
and the Oracle Clusterware for the 10g Database. When you install Oracle Clusterware, your 9i
srvconfig file will be converted to the OCR. Both 9i RAC and 10g will use the OCR. Do not restart
the 9i gsd after you have installed Oracle Clusterware. Remember to check certify for details of
what vendor clusterware can be run with Oracle Clusterware.

Is the hangcheck timer still needed with Oracle RAC 10g and 11g?
YES! The hangcheck-timer module monitors the Linux kernel for extended operating system
hangs that could affect the reliability of the RAC node ( I/O fencing) and cause database
corruption. To verify the hangcheck-timer module is running on every node:

as root user:
/sbin/lsmod | grep hangcheck

If the hangcheck-timer module is not listed enter the following command

as the root user:

9i: /sbin/insmod hangcheck-timer hangcheck_tick=30 hangcheck_margin=180

hangcheck_reboot=1

10g & 11g: /sbin/insmod hangcheck-timer hangcheck_tick=1

hangcheck_margin=10 hangcheck_reboot=1

To ensure the module is loaded every time the system reboots, verify that the local system
startup file (/etc/rc.d/rc.local) contains the command above.

For additional information please review the Oracle RAC Install and Configuration Guide (5-41)
and note:726833.1.
How to configure bonding on Suse SLES8.
Please see note:291958.1

How to configure bonding on Suse SLES9.

Please see note:291962.1

Oracle Clusterware fails to start after a reboot due to permissions

on raw devices reverting to default values, How to fix?
After a successful installation of Oracle Clusterware a simple reboot and the Clusterware fails to
start. This is because the permissions on the raw devices for the OCR and voting disks e.g.
/dev/raw/raw{x} revert to their default values (root:disk) and are inaccessible to Oracle. This
change of behavor started with the 2.6 kernel; in RHEL4, OEL4, RHEL5, OEL5, SLES9 and
SLES10. In RHEL3 the raw devices maintained their permissions across reboots so this symptom
was not seen.

The way to fix this is on RHEL4, OEL4 and SLES9 is to create /etc/udev/permission.d/40-
udev.permissions (you must choose a number that's lower than 50). You can do this by copying
/etc/udev/permission.d/50-udev.permissions, and removing the lines that are not needed (50-
udev.permissions gets replaced with upgrades so you do not want to edit it directly, also a typo in
the 50-udev.permissions can render the system non-usable). Example permissions file:
# raw devices
raw/raw[1-2]:root:oinstall:0640
raw/raw[3-5]:oracle:oinstall:0660

Note that this applied to all raw device files, here just the voting and OCR devices were specified.

On RHEL5, OEL5 and SLES10 a different file is used /etc/udev/rules.d/99-raw.rules, notice that
now the number must be (any number) higher than 50. Also the syntax of the rules is different
than the permissions file, here's an example:

KERNEL=="raw[1-2]*", GROUP="oinstall", MODE="640"

KERNEL=="raw[3-5]*", OWNER="oracle", GROUP="oinstall", MODE="660"
This is explained in details in Note: 414897.1.

A customer installed 10g R2 on Linux RH4 Update 2, 2.6.9-

22.ELsmp #1 SMP x86_64 GNU/Linux, and got the error Error in
invoking target 'all_no_orcl'. Customer ignored the error and the
install succeeded without any other errors and oracle pparently
worked fine. What should they do?
Because of compatibility with their storage array (EMC DMX with
Powerpath 4.5) they must use update 2. Oracle install guide states
that RH4 64 bits update 1 "or higher" should be used for 10g R2.
The binutils patch binutils-2.15.92.0.2-13.0.0.0.2.x86_64.rpm is needed to relink without error.
Red hat is aware of the bug and has a test version and they will have it fixed for update3 however
it is taking them time. so using the binutils rpm you mentioned you should be all good to go. if the
customer wants they can update that package again after install. at least we were able to provide
a fix directly to get folks going.

Is OCFS2 certified with RAC 10g?

Yes. See Certify to find out which platforms are currently certified.

Customer did not load the hangcheck-timer before installing RAC,

Can the customer just load the hangcheck-timer ?
YES. hangcheck timer is a kernel module that is shipped with the Linux kernel, all you have to do
is load it as follows:

9i: /sbin/insmod hangcheck-timer hangcheck_tick=30 hangcheck_margin=180

hangcheck_reboot=1

10g & 11g: /sbin/insmod hangcheck-timer hangcheck_tick=1

hangcheck_margin=10 hangcheck_reboot=1

No need to reboot the nodes.

For more details see note:726833.1

My customer is about to install 10202 clusterwere on new Linux
machinges. He is getting "No ORACM running" error when run
rootpre.sh and exited? Should he worry about this message?
It is an informational message. Generally for such scripts, you can issue echo $? to ensure
that it returns a zero value. The message is basically saying, it did not find an oracm. If Customer
were installing 10g on an existing 9i cluster (which will have oracm) then this message would
have been serious. But since customer is installing this on a fresh new box, They can continue
the install.

How do I configure my RAC Cluster to use the RDS Infiniband?

The configuration takes place below Oracle. You need to talk to your Infiniband vendor. Check
certify for what is currently available as this will change as vendors adopt the technology. The
database must be at least 10.2.0.3. If you want to switch a database running with IP over IB, you
will need to relink Oracle.
$ cd $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/lib $ make -f ins_rdbms.mk ipc_rds ioracle

You can check your interconnect through the alert log at startup. Check for the string cluster
interconnect IPC version:Oracle RDS/IP (generic) in the alert.log file.

Are Red Hat GFS and GULM certified for DLM?

Both are part of Red Hat RHEL 5. For Oracle Database 10g Release 2 on Linux x86 and Linux
x86-64, it is certified on OEL5 and RHEL5 as per certify. GFS is not certified yet , certification in
progress by RedHat. OCFS2 is certified and it's the preferred choice for Oracle. ASM is
recommended storage for the database. Since GFS is part of the RHEL5 distribution and Oracle
fully supports RHEL under the Unbreakable Linux Progam, Oracle will support GFS as part of
RHEL5 for customers buying the Unbreakable Linux Support. This only applies to RHEL5 and not
to RHEL4 where GFS is distributed with an additional fee

How to reorder or rename logical network interface (NIC) names in

Linux
Although this is rarely needed, since most hardware will detect the cards in the correct order on
all nodes, if you still need to change/control the ordering, see external website, here is more help
on writing UDEV rules.

How do I configure raw devices in order to install 10g Clusterware

on RHEL5 or OEL5?
The raw devices OS support scripts like /etc/sysconfig/rawdevices are not shipped on RHEL5 or
OEL5, this is because raw devices are being deprecated on Linux. This means that in order to
install 10g Clusterware you'd have to manually bind the raw devices to the block devices for the
OCR and voting disks so that the 10g installer will proceed without error.

Refer to Note 465001.1 for exact details on how to do the above.

11g Clusterware doesn't require this configuration since the installer can handle block devices
directly.

Does Sun Solaris have a multipathing solution ?

Sun Solaris includes an inherent Multipathing tool: MPXIO - this is part of Solaris. You need to
have the SanFoundation Kit installed (newest version). Please, be aware that the machines are
installed following the EIS-standard. This is a quality assurance standard introduced by Sun that
mainly takes care that you always have the newest patches.
MPXIO is free of charge and comes with Solaris 8,9,10. BTW, if you have a Sun LVM, it would
use this feature indirectly. Therefore, Sun confirmed that MPXIO will work with RAWs.

Does Oracle Support RAC with Solaris 10 Containers (aka Zones)?

No. RAC is currently not supported with Solaris 10 Local Containers. You can use a Global
container but remember 1 global container per system or per domain. So, in case your hardware
is capable of being split up in domains, you may have more than 1 global container on the whole
system (hardware), that is per domain.

In local containers, you cannot manipulate hardware in any way, shape or form. You can't plumb
and unplumb network interfaces .... nothing ... even as the local container root user. You can only
do this in the global container. We rely on the uadmin command to quickly bring down a node if
an urgent condition is detected. As I recall, you can't do this from the local container either. CRS
has to maintain the ability to manipulate hardware and this just is not going to happen in a local
container.
The answer is the same if you are using Vendor Clusterware such as Veritas SF RAC or Sun
Cluster.

Can I configure IPMP in Actie/Active to increase bandwidth of my

interconnect?
For IPMP For active/active configurations please follow the sun doc instructions
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/816-4554/6maoq027i?a=view IPMP active/active is known to
load balance on transmit but serialize on a single interface for receive. So you are likely not to get
the throughput you might have expected. Unless you experience explicit bandwidth limitations
that require active/active, it is a recommended best practice to configure for maximum availability,
as described in webiv note 283107.1.
Please note too that debugging active/active interfaces at the network layer is cumbersome and
time consuming. In an active/active configuration and the switch side link fails, you are likely to
lose both interconnect connections, whereas active/standby, you would failover.

Is HMP supported with Oracle RAC 10g on all HP platforms ?

HP has desupported HMP with RAC 10g. See http://docs.hp.com/en/B6257-
90056/ch01s01.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

Can I configure HP's Autoport aggregation for NIC Bonding after

the install? (i.e. not present beforehand)
You are able to add NIC bonding after the installation although this is more complicated than the
other way round.
There are several notes on webiv regarding this.
Note.271121.1 Ext/Pub How to change VIP and VIP/Hostname in 10g
Note.276434.1 Ext/Pub Modifying the VIP of a Cluster Node
Regarding the private interconnect, please use oifcfg delif / setif to modify this.
For customers on Linux, there is more information on NIC bonding, please read Configure
Redundant Network Cards / Switches for Oracle Database 10g Release 1 Real Application
Cluster on Linux
Does the Oracle Cluster File System (OCFS) support network
access through NFS or Windows Network Shares?
No, in the current release the Oracle Cluster File System (OCFS) is not
supported for use by network access approaches like NFS or Windows
Network Shares.

My customer wants to understand what type of disk caching they

can use with their Windows RAC Cluster, the install guide tells
them to disable disk caching?
If the write cache identified is local to the node then that is bad for RAC. If the cache is visible to
all nodes as a 'single cache', typically in the storage array, and is also 'battery backed' then that is
OK.

Can I run my 9i RAC and RAC 10g on the same Windows cluster?
Yes but the 9i RAC database must have the 9i Cluster Manager and you must run Oracle
Clusterware for the Oracle Database 10g. 9i Cluster Manager can coexsist with Oracle
Clusterware 10g.
Be sure to use the same 'cluster name' in the appropriate OUI field for both 9i and 10g when you
install both together in the same cluster.
The OracleCMService9i service will remain intact during the Oracle Clusterware 10g install, as a
9i RAC database would require that the 9i OracleCMService9i, it should be left running. The
information for the 9i database will get migrated to the OCR during the Oracle Clusterware
installation. Then, for future database management, you would use the 9i srvctl to manage the 9i
database, and the 10g srvctl to manage any new 10g databases. Both srvctl commands will use
the OCR.

When I try to login to the +ASM2 on node2 with asmcmd (after

setting ORACLE_HOME and ORACLE_SID correctly) I get: ORA-
01031: insufficient privileges (DBD ERROR: OCI SessionBegin).
When I try to login to +ASM2 using sqlplus (connect / as sysdba) I
get the same ORA-01031: insufficient privileges. When I try to login
to +ASM2 using sqlplus (connect sys/passwd as sysdba) I get
connected successfully.
This sounds like the ORA_DBA group on Node2 is empty, or else does not have the correct
username in it. Double-check what user account you are using to logon to Node2 as ( a 'set'
command will show you the USERNAME and USERDOMAIN values) and then make sure that
this account is part of ORA_DBA.
The other issue to check is that SQLNET.AUTHENTICATION_SERVICES=(NTS) is set in the
SQLNET.ORA

My customer has a failsafe cluster installed, what are the benefits

of moving their system to RAC?
Fail Safe development is continuing. Most work on the product will be around accomodating
changes in the supported resources (new releases of RDBMS, AS, etc.) and the underlying
Microsoft Cluster Services and Windows operating system.
A failsafe protected instance is an Active/Passive instance so, as such, does not benefit that
much at all from adding more nodes to a cluster. Microsoft have a limit of nodes in a MSCS
cluster. (typically 8 nodes - but it does vary). RAC is active active so you get dual benefits of
increased scalability and availability every time you add a node to a cluster. We have a limit of
100 nodes in a RAC cluster (we don't use MSCS). Your customer should really consider more
than 2 nodes. (because of aggregate computer power on node failure). If the choice is 2 of 4 CPU
nodes or 4 of 2CPU node then I would go for 2 CPU nodes. Customers are using both Windows
Itanium RAC and Windows X64 RAC. Windows X64 seems more popular.
Keep in mind, though, that for Fail Safe, if the server is 64-Bit, regardless of flavor, Fail Safe
Manager must be installed on a 32-Bit client, which will complicate things just a bit. There is no
such restriction for RAC, as all management for RAC can be done via Grid Control or Database
Control.
For EE RAC you can implement an 'extended cluster' where there is a distance between the
nodes in the cluster (usually less than 20 KM).

The OracleCRService does not start with my windows RAC

implementation, what do I do?
If OracleCRService doesn't start that's quite a different issue than say OracleCSService not
starting - because due to dependencies, this is the last of the three Oracle Clusterware services
that we expect to start. This could be caused by a few different things. It could be caused by a
change from to auto-negotiate instead of 100/full on the interconnect. Once set back to 100/full on
all NICs as well as the network switch associated with the interconnect the problem is resolved.
This could also be: - inability to access the shared disk housing your OCR - permissions issue
OR - which introduced OPMD to begin with - which for reference sake was logged against 9.2.0.8
... and is still relevant today in 10.2.0.3 times. For OPMD, see Metalink <>
How do I verify that Host Bus Adapter Node Local Caching has
been disabled for the disks I will be using in my RAC cluster?
Disabling write caching is a standard practice while using the volume managers/file systems are
shared. Go to My computer -> Manage->Storage->Disk Management->Disk-Properties->Policies-
> and uncheck the "Enable Write Caching on Disk". This will disable the write caching.
3rd party HBA's may have their own management tools to modify these settings. Just remember
that centralized, shared cache is generally OK. It's the node local cache that you need to turn off.
How exactly you do this will vary from HBA vendor to HBA vendor.

When running Oracle RAC on Windows 2003, what is the

recommended OS level?
It is strongly recommended to be at SP2 on Windows 2003. For details see the following Metalink
Notes:
<> - Unexplained Database Slowdown Seen on Windows 2003 Service Pack 1
<> - New Partitions in Windows 2003 RAC Environments Not Visible on Remote Nodes
For details on Windows Bundle patches see:
<> - 10.2.0.x Oracle Database and Networking Patches for Microsoft Platforms

Do I need HACMP/GPFS to store my OCR/Voting file on a shared

device.

The prerequisites doc for AIX clearly says:

"If you are not using HACMP, you must use a GPFS file system to store the
Oracle CRS files" ==> this is a documentation bug and this will be fixed with
10.1.0.3
-----
On AIX it is important to put the reserve_lock=no/reserve_policy =no_reserve
in order to allow AIX to access the devices from more than one node
simultaneously.
Use the /dev/rhdisk devices (character special) for the crs and voting disk and
change the attribute with the command

chdev -l hdiskn -a reserve_lock=no

(for ESS, EMC, HDS, CLARiiON, and MPIO-capable devices you have to do an
chdev -l hdiskn -a reserve_policy=no_reserve)

Is HACMP needed for RAC on AIX 5.2 using GPFS file system?
The newest version of GPFS can be used without HACMP, if it is available for AIX 5.2 then you
do not need HACMP.

Is VIO supported with RAC on IBM AIX?

VIO is supported on IBM AIX. Please check ** Certify Unix RAC Technology Matrix ** for the
details.

Can I run Oracle RAC 10g on my IBM Mainframe Sysplex

environment (z/OS)?
YES! There is no separate documentation for RAC on z/OS. What you would call "clusterware" is
built in to the OS and the native file systems are global. IBM z/OS documentation explains how to
set up a Sysplex Cluster; once the customer has done that it is trivial to set up a RAC database.
The few steps involved are covered in in Chapter 14 of the Oracle for z/OS System Admin Guide,
which you can read here. There is also an Install Guide for Oracle on z/OS ( here) but I don't
think there are any RAC-specific steps in the installation. By the way, RAC on z/OS does not use
Oracle's clusterware (CSS/CRS/OCR).

Are Oracle Applications certified with RAC?

For Siebel, PeopleSoft see http://realworld.us.oracle.com/isv/siebel.htm Oracle 9i RAC (9.2) and
Oracle RAC 10g (10.1) are certified with Oracle Applications EBusiness Suute. See Note:
285267.1 for details.
Can I use Oracle Clusterware for failover of the Sue and VIP
services when running SAP in a RAC environment?
Oracle has created sapctl to do this and it is available for certain platforms. SAPCTL will be
available for download on SAP Services Marketplace on AIX and Linux. For Solaris, it will not be
available in 2007, use Veritas or Sun Cluster.

How do I gather all relevant Oracle and OS log/trace files in a RAC

cluster to provide to Support?
Use RAC-DDT (RAC Diagnostic Data Tool), User Guide is in <>. Quote from the User Guide:

RACDDT is a data collection tool designed and configured specifically

for gathering diagnostic data related to Oracle's Real Application
Cluster (RAC) technology. RACDDT is a set of scripts and configuration
files that is run on one or more nodes of a RAC cluster. The main
script is written in Perl, while a number of proxy scripts are written
using Korn shell. RACDDT will run on all supported Unix and Linux
platforms, but is not supported on any Windows platforms.

Newer versions of RDA (Remote Diagnostic Agent) have the RAC-DDT functionality, so going
forward RDA is the tool of choice. The RDA User Guide is in <>

What are the cdmp directories in the background_dump_dest used

for?
These directories are produced by the diagnosibility daemon process (DIAG). DIAG is a database
process which as one of its tasks, performs cash dumping. The DIAG process dumps out tracing
to file when it discovers the death of an essential process (foreground or background) in the local
instance. A dump directory named something like cdmp_ is created in the bdump or
background_dump_dest directory, and all the trace dump files DIAG creates are placed in this
directory.

Is the Oracle E-Business Suite (Oracle Applications) certified

against RAC?
Yes. (There is no seperate certification required for RAC.) ""
How to configure concurrent manager in a RAC environment?
Large clients commonly put the concurrent manager on a separate server now (in the middle tier)
to reduce the load on the database server. The concurrent manager programs can be tied to a
specific middle tier (e.g., you can have CMs running on more than one middle tier box). It is
advisable to use specilize CM. CM middle tiers are set up to point to the appropriate database
instance based on product module being used.

Should functional partitioning be used with Oracle Applications?

We do not recommend functional partitioning unless throughput on your server architecture
demands it. Cache fusion has been optimized to scale well with non-partitioned workload.

If your processing requirements are extreme and your testing proves you must partition your
workload in order to reduce internode communications, you can use Profile Options to designate
that sessions for certain applications Responsibilities are created on a specific middle tier server.
That middle tier server would then be configured to connect to a specific database instance.

To determine the correct partitioning for your installation you would need to consider several
factors like number of concurrent users, batch users, modules used, workload characteristics etc.

Which e-Business version is prefereable?

Versions 11.5.5 onwards are certified with Oracle9i and hence with Oracle9i RAC. However we
recommend the latest available version.

Can I use Automatic Undo Management with Oracle Applications?

Yes. In a RAC environment we highly recommend it.
Can I use TAF with e-Business in a RAC environment?
TAF itself does not work with e-Business suite due to Forms/TAF limitations, but you can
configure the tns failover clause. On instance failure, when the user logs back into the system,
their session will be directed to a surviving instance, and the user will be taken to the navigator
tab. Their committed work will be available; any uncommitted work must be re-started.

We also recommend you configure the forms error URL to identify a fallback middle tier server for
Forms processes, if no router is available to accomplish switching across servers.

Is Server Side Load Balancing supported/recommended/proven

technology in Oracle EBusiness Suite?
Yes, Customers are using it successfully today. It is recommended to set up both Client and
Server side load balancing. Note that the pieces coming from 8.0.6 home (forms and ccm),
connections are directed to RAC instance based on the sequence its listed in the TNS entry
description list and may not get load balanced optimally. For Oracle RAC 10.2 or higher do not
set PREFER_LEAST_LOADED_NODE = OFF in your listener.ora, please set the CLB_GOAL on
the service.

Can I use OCFS with SE RAC?

It is not supported to use OCFS with Standard Edition RAC. All database files must use ASM
(redo logs, recovery area, datafiles, control files etc). You can not place binaries on OCFS as part
of the SE RAC terms. We recommend that the binaries and trace files (non-ASM supported files)
to be replicated on all nodes. This is done automatically by install.

What is the optimal migration path to be used while migrating the

E-Business suite to RAC?
Following is the recommended and most optimal path to migrate you E-Business suite to RAC
environment:

1. Migrate the existing application to new hardware. (If applicable).

2. Use Clustered File System for all data base files or migrate all database files to raw devices.
(Use dd for Unix or ocopy for NT)
3. Install/upgrade to the latest available e-Business suite.

4. Upgrade database to Oracle9i (Refer document 216550.1 on Metalink)

5. In step 4, install RAC option while installing Oracle9i and use Installer to perform install for all
the nodes.

6. Clone Oracle Application code tree.

Reference Documents:
Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i with 9i RAC: Installation and Configuration : Metalink <>
E-Business Suite 11i on RAC : Configuring Database Load balancing & Failover: Metalink <>
Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and Database - FAQ : Metalink# <>

What are the maximum number of nodes under OCFS on Linux ?

Oracle 9iRAC on Linux, using OCFS for datafiles, can scale to a maximum of 32 nodes.
According to the ** OCFS2 User Guide User Guide, OCFS 2 can support up to 255 nodes.

Where can I find documentation on OCFS ?

For Main Page >>> http://oss.oracle.com/projects/ocfs/ For User Manual >>>
http://oss.oracle.com/projects/ocfs/documentation/ For OCFS Files >>>
http://oss.oracle.com/projects/ocfs/files/supported/

What files can I put on Linux OCFS?

For optimal performance, you should only put the following files on Linux OCFS:

- Datafiles
- Control Files
- Redo Logs
- Archive Logs
- SPFILE

Oracle Clusterware files OCR and Voting Disk can be put on OCFS2 however Best Practice is to
put them on raw or block devices.
Is Sun QFS supported with RAC? What about Sun GFS?
From certify, check there for the latest details.

Sun Cluster - Sun StorEdge QFS (9.2.0.5 and higher,10g and 10gR2):
No restrictions on placement of files on QFS
Sun StorEdge QFS is supported for Oracle binary executables, database data files, database
data files, archive logs, Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR), Oracle Cluster ReadyServices voting disk
and recovery area can be placed on QFS.
Solaris Volume Manager for Sun Cluster can be used for host-based mirroring
Supports up to 8 nodes

Is Red Hat GFS(Global File System) is certified by Oracle for use

with Real Application Clusters?
Sistina Cluster Filesystem is not part of the standard RedHat kernel and therefore is not certified
by Oracle but falls under a kernel extension. This however, does not mean that Oracle RAC is not
certified with it. As a fact, Oracle RAC does not certify against a filesystem per se, but certifies
against an operating system. If, as is the case with Sistina filesystem, the filesystem is certified
with the operating system, this only means that the Oracle does not provide direct support and fix
the filesystem in case of an error. Customer will have to contact the filesystem provider for
support.

Is Linux OCFS2 (OCFS version 2) supported with RAC?

Yes See Certify for details on which platforms are supported.

What is the maximum number of nodes I can have in my cluster if I

am using OCFS2?
Theroetically you can have up to 255 however it has been tested with up to 16 nodes.
What are the Best Practices for using a clustered file system with
Oracle RAC?
Can I use it for OCR, Voting Disk, Binaries as well as database
files?
Oracle Best Practice for usingCluster File Systems (CFS) with Oracle RAC 10g
* Oracle Clusterware binaries should not be placed on a CFS as this reduces cluster functionality
while CFS is recovering, and also limits the ability to perform rolling upgrades of Oracle
Clusterware.
* Oracle Clusterware voting disks and the Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR) should not be placed on
a CFS as the I/O freeze during CFS reconfiguration can lead to node eviction, or cluster
management activities to fail (I.E start, stop, or check of a resource).
* Oracle Database 10g binaries are supported on CFS for Oracle RAC 10g and for Oracle
Database. The system should be configured to support multiple ORACLE_HOME s in order to
maintain the ability to perform a rolling patch application.
* Oracle Database 10g database files (e.g. datafiles, trace files, and archive log files) are
supported on CFS.
Check Certify for certified cluster file systems.

Rolling Upgrades with Cluster File Systems in General

It is not recommended to use a cluster file system (CFS) for the Oracle Clusterware binaries.
Oracle Clusterware supports in-place rolling upgrades. Using a shared Oracle Clusterware home
results in a global outage during patch application and upgrades. A workaround is available to
clone the Oracle Clusterware home for each upgrade. This is not common practice.
If a patch is marked for rolling upgrade, then it can be applied to a RAC database in a rolling
fashion. Oracle supports rolling upgrades for the Oracle Database Automated Storage
Management (ASM) after you have upgraded to Oracle Database 11g. When using a CFS for the
database and ASM Oracle homes, the CFS should be configured to use of context dependent
links (CDSLs) or equivalent and these should configured to work in conjunction with rolling
upgrades and downgrades. This includes updating the database and ASM homes in the OCR to
point to the current home.
This is included in Metalink Note 444134.1

Can I run a 10.1.0.x database with Oracle Clusterware 10.2 ?

Yes. Oracle Clusterware 10.2 will support both 10.1 and 10.2 databases (and ASM too!). A
detailed matrix is available in <>

In the course of failure testing in an extended RAC environment we

find entries in the cssd logfile which indicate actions like
'diskShortTimeout set to (value)' and 'diskLongTimeout set to
(value)'.
Can anyone please explain the meaning of these two timeouts in
addition to disktimeout?
Having a short and long disktimeout, and no longer just one disktimeout, is due to patch for bug
4748797 (included in 10.2.0.2). The long disktimeout is 200 sec by default unless set differently
via 'crsctl set css disktimeout', and applies to time outside a reconfiguration. The short
disktimeout is in effect during a reconfiguration and is misscount-3s. The point is that we can
tolerate a long disktimeout when all nodes are just running fine, but have to revert back to a short
disktimeout if there's a reconfiguration.

Customer is hitting bug 4462367 with an error message saying low

open file descriptor, how do I work around this until the fix is
released with the Oracle Clusterware Bundle for 10.2.0.3 or 10.2.0.4
is released?
The fix for "low open file descriptor" problem is to increase the ulimit for Oracle Clusterware.
Please be careful when you make this type of change and make a backup copy of the
init.crsd before you start! To do this, you can modify the init.crsd as follows, while you wait for
the patch: 1. Stop Oracle Clusterware on the node (crsctl stop crs)
2. copy the /etc/init.d/init.crsd
3. Modify the file changing:
# Allow the daemon to drop a diagnostic core file/
ulimit -c unlimited
ulimit -n unlimited

to
# Allow the daemon to drop a diagnostic core file/
ulimit -c unlimited
ulimit -n 65536

4. restart Oracle Clusterware in the node (crsctl start crs)

How to move the OCR location ?

- stop the CRS stack on all nodes using "init.crs stop" - Edit /var/opt/oracle/ocr.loc on all nodes
and set up ocrconfig_loc=new OCR device - Restore from one of the automatic physical backups
using ocrconfig -restore. - Run ocrcheck to verify. - reboot to restart the CRS stack. - additional
information can be found at http://st-
doc.us.oracle.com/10/101/rac.101/b10765/storage.htm#i1016535
Is it supported to rerun root.sh from the Oracle Clusterware
installation ?
Rerunning root.sh after the initial successful install of the Oracle Clusterware is expressly
discouraged and unsupported. We strongly recommend not doing it.

In case where root.sh is failing to execute for the on an initial install (or a new node joining an
existing cluster), it is OK to re-run root.sh after the cause of the failure is corrected (permissions,
paths, etc.). In this case, please run rootdelete.sh to undo the local effects of root.sh before re-
running root.sh.

Can I change the public hostname in my Oracle Database 10g

Cluster using Oracle Clusterware?
Hostname changes are not supported in Oracle Clusterware (CRS), unless you want to perform a
deletenode followed by a new addnode operation.
The hostname is used to store among other things the flag files and Oracle Clusterware stack will
not start if hostname is changed.

Is it supported to allow 3rd Party Clusterware to manage Oracle

resources (instances, listeners, etc) and turn off Oracle
Clusterware management of these?
In 10g we do not support using 3rd Party Clusterware for failover and restart of Oracle resources.
Oracle Clusterware resources should not be disabled.

What is the High Availability API?

An application-programming interface to allow processes to be put under the High Availability
infrastructure that is part of the Oracle Clusterware distributed with Oracle Database 10g. A user
written script defines how Oracle Clusterware should start, stop and relocate the process when
the cluster node status changes. This extends the high availability services of the cluster to any
application running in the cluster. Oracle Database 10g Real Application Clusters (RAC)
databases and associated Oracle processes (E.G. listener) are automatically managed by the
clusterware.
Is it possible to use ASM for the OCR and voting disk?
No, the OCR and voting disk must be on raw or CFS (cluster filesystem).

Can I set up failover of the VIP to another card in the same

machine or what do I do if I have different network interfaces on
different nodes in my cluster (I.E. eth0 on node1,2 and eth1 on
node 3,4)?
With srvctl, you can modify the nodeapp for the VIP to list the NICs it can use. Then VIP will try to
start on eth0 interface and if it fails, try eth1 interface.
./srvctl modify nodeapps -n -A //eth0\|eth1
Note how the interfaces are a list separated by the | symbol and how you need to quote this
with a \ character or the Unix shell will interpret the character as a pipe . So on a node
called ukdh364 with a VIP address of ukdh364vip and we want a netmask (say) of 255.255.255.0
then we have:
./srvctl modify nodeapps -n ukdh364 -A ukdh364vip/255.255.255.0/eth0\|eth1
To check which interfaces are configured as public or private use oifcfg getif
example output:
eth0 138.2.238.0 global public
eth1 138.2.240.0 global public
eth2 138.2.236.0 global cluster_interconnect
An ifconfig on your machine will show what the hardware names for the interface cards installed.

My customer has noticed tons of log files generated under

$CRS_HOME/log//client, is there any way automated way we can
setup through Oralce Clusterware to prevent/minimize/remove
those aggressively generated files?
Check Note.5187351.8 You can either apply the patchset if it is available for your platform or
have a cron job that removes these files until the patch is available.

What do I do, I have a corrupt OCR and no valid backup?

** Note:399482.1 describes how to recreate your OCR/Voting Disk which you have accidently
deleted and cannot recover from backups

During Oracle Clusterware installation, I am asked to define a

private node name, and then on the next screen asked to define
which interfaces should be used as private and public interfaces.
What information is required to answer these questions?
The private names on the first screen determine which private interconnect will be used by CSS.
Provide exactly one name that maps to a private IP address, or just the IP address itself. If a
logical name is used, then the IP address this maps to can be changed subsequently, but if you
IP address is specified CSS will always use that IP address. CSS cannot use multiple private
interconnects for its communication hence only one name or IP address can be specified.

The private interconnect enforcement page determines which private interconnect will be used by
the RAC instances.
It's equivalent to setting the CLUSTER_INTERCONNECTS init.ora parameter, but is more
convenient because it is a cluster-wide setting that does not have to be adjusted every time you
add nodes or instances. RAC will use all of the interconnects listed as private in this screen, and
they all have to be up, just as their IP addresses have to be when specified in the init.ora
paramter. RAC does not fail over between cluster interconnects; if one is down then the instances
using them won't start.

Can I change the name of my cluster after I have created it when I

am using Oracle Clusterware?
No, you must properly deinstall Oracle Clusterware and then re-install. To properly de-install
Oracle Clusterware, you MUST follow the directions in the Installation Guide Chapter 10. This will
ensure the ocr gets cleaned out.

What should the permissions be set to for the voting disk and ocr
when doing a RAC Install?
The Oracle Real Application Clusters install guide is correct. It describes the PRE INSTALL
ownership/permission requirements for ocr and voting disk. This step is needed to make sure that
the CRS install succeeds. Please don't use those values to determine what the
ownership/permmission should be POST INSTALL. The root script will change the
ownership/permission of ocr and voting disk as part of install. The POST INSTALL permissions
will end up being : OCR - root:oinstall - 640 Voting Disk - oracle:oinstall - 644

Which processes access the OCR ?

Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR) is used to store the cluster configuration information among other
things. OCR needs to be accessible from all nodes in the cluster. If OCR became inaccessible
the CSS daemon would soon fail, and take down the node. PMON never needs to write to OCR.
To confirm if OCR is accessible, try ocrcheck from your ORACLE_HOME and
ORA_CRS_HOME.

How do I restore OCR from a backup? On Windows, can I use

ocopy?
The only recommended way to restore an OCR from a backup is "ocrconfig -restore ". The ocopy
command will not be able to perform the restore action for OCR.

Does the hostname have to match the public name or can it be

anything else?
When there is no vendor clusterware, only Oracle Clusterware, then the public node name must
match the host name. When vendor clusterware is present, it determines the public node names,
and the installer doesn't present an opportunity to change them. So, when you have a choice,
always choose the hostname.

Is it a requirement to have the public interface linked to ETH0 or

does it only need to be on a ETH lower than the private interface?:
- public on ETH1 - private on ETH2
There is no requirement for interface name ordering. You could have - public on ETH2 - private
on ETH0 Just make sure you choose the correct public interface in VIPCA, and in the installer's
interconnect classification screen.
How to Restore a Lost Voting Disk used by Oracle Clusterware 10g
Please read Note:279793.1 and for OCR Note:268937.1

As long as you can confirm via the CSS daemon logfile that it thinks the voting disk is bad, you
can restore the voting disk from backup while the cluster is online. This is the backup that you
took with dd (by the manual's request) after the most recent addnode, deletenode, or install
operation. If by accident you restore a voting disk that the CSS daemon thinks is NOT bad, then
the entire cluster will probably go down.
crsctl add css votedisk - adds a new voting disk
crsctl delete css votedisk - removes a voting disk
Note: the cluster has to be down. You can also restore the backup via dd when the cluster is
down.

With Oracle Clusterware 10g, how do you backup the OCR?

There is an automatic backup mechanism for OCR. The default location
is : $ORA_CRS_HOME\cdata\"clustername"\

To display backups : ocrconfig -showbackup

To restore a bnfig -restore
The automatic backup mechanism keeps upto about a week old copy. So, if
you want to retain a backup copy more than that, then you should copy
that "backup" file to some other name.

Unfortunately there are a couple of bugs regarding backup file

manipulation, and changing default backup dir on Windows. These will be
fixed in 10.1.0.4. OCR backup on Windows are absent. Only file in the
backup directory is
temp.ocr which would be the last backup. You can restore this most
recent backup by using the command ocr -restore temp.ocr

If you want to take a logical copy of OCR at any time use : ocrconfig -
export , and use -import option to restore the contents back.

How do I protect the OCR and Voting in case of media failure?

In Oracle Database 10g Release 1 the OCR and Voting device are not mirrored within
Oracle,hence both must be mirrored via a storage vendor method, like RAID 1.
Starting with Oracle Database 10g Release 2 Oracle Clusterware will multiplex the OCR and
Voting Disk (two for the OCR and three for the Voting).
Please read Note:279793.1 and Note:268937.1 regarding backup and restore a lost Voting/OCR
and FAQ 10734 regarding OCR backup.

How do I use multiple network interfaces to provide High

Availability and/or Load Balancing for my interconnect with Oracle
Clusterware?
This needs to be done externally to Oracle Clusterware usually by some OS provided nic bonding
which gives Oracle Clusterware a single ip address for the interconnect but provide failover (High
Availability) and/or load balancing across multiple nic cards. These solutions are provided
externally to Oracle at a much lower level than the Oracle Clusterware, hence Oracle supports
using them, the solutions are OS dependent and therefore the best source of information is from
your OS Vendor. However, there are several articles in Metalink on how to do this. For example
for Sun Solaris search for IPMP (IP network MultiPathing).

Note: Customer should pay close attention to the bonding setup/configuration/features and
ensure their objectives are met, since some solutions provide only failover and some only
loadbalancing still others claim to provide both. As always, it's always important to test your setup
to ensure it does what it was designed to do.

For Linux, read the doc on rac.us :

Configure Redundant Network Cards / Switches for Oracle Database 10g Release 1 Real
Application Cluster on Linux

When bonding with Network Interfaces that connect to separate switches (for redundancy) you
must test if the NIC's are configured for active/active mode. The most reliable configuration for
this architecture is to configure the NIC's for Active/Passive.

How do I put my application under the control of Oracle

Clusterware to achieve higher availability?
First write a control agent. It must accept 3 different parameters: start-The control agent should
start the application, check-The control agent should check the application, stop-The Control
agent should start the application. Secondly you must create a profile for your application using
crs_profile. Thirdly you must register your application as a resource with Oracle Clusterware
(crs_register). See the RAC Admin and Deployment Guide for details.
Can I use Oracle Clusterware to provide cold failover of my single
instance Oracle Databases?
Oracle does not provide the necessary wrappers to fail over single-instance databases using
Oracle Clusterware. It's possible for customers to use Oracle Clusterware to wrap arbitrary
applications, it'd be possible for them to wrap single-instance databases this way. A sample can
be found in the DEMOs that are distributed with Oracle Database 11g.

Does Oracle Clusterware support application vips?

Yes, with Oracle Database 10g Release 2, Oracle Clusterware now supports an "application" vip.
This is to support putting applications under the control of Oracle Clusterware using the new high
availability API and allow the user to use the same URL or connection string regardless of which
node in the cluster the application is running on. The application vip is a new resource defined to
Oracle Clusterware and is a functional vip. It is defined as a dependent resource to the
application. There can be many vips defined, typically one per user application under the control
of Oracle Clusterware. You must first create a profile (crs_profile), then register it with Oracle
Clusterware (crs_register). The usrvip script must run as root.

Why is the home for Oracle Clusterware not recommended to be

subdirectory of the Oracle base directory?
If anyone other than root has write permissions to the parent directories of the CRS home, then
they can give themselves root escalations. This is a security issue. The CRS home itself is a mix
of root and non-root permissions, as appropriate to the security requirements. Please follow the
install docs about who is your primary group and what other groups you need to create and be a
member of.

How is the voting disk used by Oracle Clusterware?

The voting disk is accessed exclusively by CSS (one of the Oracle Clusterware daemons). This is
totally different from a database file. The database looks at the database files and interacts with
the CSS daemon (at a significantly higher level conceptually than any notion of "voting disk").

"Non-synchronized access" (i.e. database corruption) is prevented by ensuring that the remote
node is down before reassigning its locks. The voting disk, network, and the control file are used
to determine when a remote node is down, in different, parallel, indepdendent ways that allow
each to provide additional protection compared to the other. The algorithms used for each of
these three things are quite different.
As far as voting disks are concerned, a node must be able to access strictly more than half of the
voting disks at any time. So if you want to be able to tolerate a failure of n voting disks, you must
have at least 2n+1 configured. (n=1 means 3 voting disks). You can configure up to 32 voting
disks, providing protection against 15 simultaneous disk failures, however it's unlikely that any
customer would have enough disk systems with statistically independent failure characteristics
that such a configuration is meaningful. At any rate, configuring multiple voting disks increases
the system's tolerance of disk failures (i.e. increases reliability).

Configuring a smaller number of voting disks on some kind of RAID system can allow a customer
to use some other means of reliability than the CSS's multiple voting disk mechanisms. However
there seem to be quite a few RAID systems that decide that 30-60 second (or 45 minutes in the
case of veritas) IO latencies are acceptable. However we have to wait for at least the longest IO
latency before we can declare a node dead and allow the database to reassign database blocks.
So while using an independent RAID system for the voting disk may appear appealing,
sometimes there are failover latency consequenecs.

What happens if I lose my voting disk(s)?

If you lose 1/2 or more of all of your voting disks, then nodes get evicted from the cluster, or
nodes kick themselves out of the cluster. It doesn't threaten database corruption. For this reason
we recommend that customers use 3 or more voting disks in Oracle RAC 10g Release 2 (always
in an odd number). Restoring corrupted voting disks is easy since there isn't any significant
persistent data stored in the voting disk. See the RAC Admin and Deployment Guide for
information on backup and restore of voting disks.

How can I register the listener with Oracle Clusterware in RAC 10g
Release 2?
NetCA is the only tool that configures listener and you should be always using it. It will register
the listener with Oracle Clusterware. There are no other supported alternatives.

Can the Network Interface Card (NIC) device names be different on

the nodes in a cluster, for both public and private?
All public NICs must have the same name on all nodes in the cluster (ER 5439875 filed to remove
this requirement).

Similarly, all private NICs must also have the same names on all nodes (ER 6785792 filed to
remove this requirement).
Do not mix NICs with different interface types (infiniband, ethernet, hyperfabric, etc.) for the same
subnet/network.

What are the IP requirements for the private interconnect?

The install guide will tell you the following requirements private IP address must satisfy the
following requirements:
1. Must be separate from the public network
2. Must be accessible on the same network interface on each node
3. Must have a unique address on each node
4. Must be specified in the /etc/hosts file on each node
The Best Pratices recommendation is to use the TCP/IP standard for non-routeable networks.
Reserved address ranges for private (non-routed) use (see TCP/IP RFC 1918):
* 10.0.0.0 -> 10.255.255.255
* 172.16.0.0 -> 172.31.255.255
* 192.168.0.0 -> 192.168.255.255
Cluvfy will give you an error if you do not have your private interconnect in the ranges above.
You should not ignore this error. If you are using an IP address in the range used for the public
network for the private network interfaces, you are pretty much messing up the IP addressing,
and possibly the routing tables, for the rest of the corporation. IP addresses are a sparse
commodity, use them wisely. If you use them on a non-routable network, there is nothing to
prevent someone else to go and use them in the normal corporate network, and then when those
RAC nodes find out that there is another path to that address range (through RIP), they just might
start sending traffic to those other IP addresses instead of the interconnect. This is just a bad
idea.

When ct run the command 'onsctl start' receives the message

"Unable to open libhasgen10.so". Any idea why the message
"unable to open libhasgen10.so" ?
Most likely you are trying to start ONS from ORACLE_HOME instead of CRS_HOME. Please try
to start it from ORA_CRS_HOME.

Does Oracle Clusterware have to be the same or higher release

than all instances running on the cluster?
Yes - Oracle Clusterware must be the same or a higher release with regards to the RDBMS or
ASM Homes.
Please refer to Note#337737.1
Can I use Oracle Clusterware to monitor my EM Agent?
Check out Chapter 3 of the EM advanced configuration guide, specifically the section on active
passive configuration of agents. You should be able to model those to your requirements. There
is nothing special about the commands, but you do need to follow the startup/shutdown sequence
to avoid any discontinuity of monitoring. The agent does start a watchdog that monitors the health
of the actual monitoring process. This is done automatically at agent start. Therefore you could
use Oracle Clusterware but you should not need to.

What is the voting disk used for?

A voting disk is a backup communications mechanism that allows CSS daemons to negotiate
which subcluster will survive. These voting disks keep a status of who is currently alive and
counts votes in case of a cluster reconfiguration. It works as follows:
a) Ensures that you cannot join the cluster if you cannot access the voting disk(s)
b) Leave the cluster if you cannot communicate with it (to ensure we do not have abberant nodes)
c) Should multiple subclusters form, it will only allow one to continue. It prefers a greater number
of nodes, and secondly the node with the lowest incarnation number.
d) Is kept redundant by Oracle in 10gR2 (you need to access a majority of existing voting disks)
Thus always at most only one subcluster will continue and a split brain will be avoided.

Why does Oracle Clusterware use an additional 'heartbeat' via the

voting disk, when other cluster software products do not?
Oracle uses this implementation because Oracle clusters always have access to a shared disk
environment. This is different from classical clustering which assumes shared nothing
architectures, and changes the decision of what strategies are optimal when compared to other
environments. Oracle also supports a wide variety of storage types, instead of limiting it to a
specific storage type (like SCSI), allowing the customer quite a lot of flexibility in configuration.

Why does Oracle still use the voting disks when other cluster
sofware is present?
Voting disks are still used when 3rd party vendor clusterware is present, because vendor
clusterware is not able to monitor/detect all failures that matter to Oracle Clusterware and the
database. For example one known case is when the vendor clusterware is set to have its
heartbeat go over a different network than RAC traffic. Continuing to use the voting disks allows
CSS to resolve situations which would otherwise end up in cluster hangs.

How much I/O activity should the voting disk have?

Approximately 2 read + 1 write per second per node.

How do I identify the voting file location ?

Run the following command from /bin
"crsctl query css votedisk"

I made a mistake when I created the VIP during the install of Oracle
Clusterware, can I change the VIP?
Yes The details of how to do this are described in <>

What are the licensing rules for Oracle Clusterware? Can I run it
without RAC?
Check the Oracle Database Licensing Information 11g Release 1 (11.1) Part Number B28287-
01 Look in the Special Use section under Oracle Database Editions.

I have a 2-node RAC running. I notice that it is always node2 that is

evicted when I test private network failure scenario by
disconnecting the private network cable. Doesn't matter whether it
is node1's or node2's private network cable that is disconnected, it
is always the node2 that is evicted. What happens in a 3-nodes
RAC cluster if node1's cable is disconnected?
The node with the lower node number will survive(The first node to join the cluster). In case of 3
nodes, 2 nodes will survive and the one you pulled the cable will go away. 4 nodes - the sub
cluster with the lower node number will survive.

Can I configure a firewall (iptables) on the cluster interconnect?

Disable all firewalls on the cluster interconnect. See note: 554781.1 for details.

Can I use ASM to mirror Oracle data in an extended RAC

environment?
This support is for 10gR2 onwards and has the following limitations:
1. As in any extended RAC environments, the additional latency induced by distance will affect
I/O and cache fusion performance. This effect will vary by distance and the customer is
responsible for ensuring that the impact attained in their environment is acceptable for their
application.
2. OCR must be mirrored across both sites using Oracle provided mechanisms.
3. Voting Disk redundancy must exists across both sites, and at a 3rd site to act as an arbitrage.
This third site may be via a WAN.
4. Storage at each site much be setup as seperate failure groups and use ASM mirroring, to
ensure at least one copy of the data at each site.
5. Customer must have a seperate and dedicated test cluster also in an extended configuration
setup using the same software and hardware components (can be fewer or smaller nodes).
6. Customer must be aware that in 10gR2 ASM does not provide partial resilvering. Should a loss
of connectivity between the sites occur, one of the failure groups will be marked invalid. When the
site rejoins the cluster, the failure groups will need to be manually dropped and added.

How should voting disks be implemented in an extended cluster

environment? Can I use standard NFS for the third site voting
disk?
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/clustering/pdf/thirdvoteonnfs.pdf Standard
NFS is only supported for the tie-breaking voting disk in an extended cluster environment. See
platform and mount option restrictions at:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/clustering/pdf/thirdvoteonnfs.pdf Otherwise
just as with database files, we only support voting files on certified NAS devices, with the
appropriate mount options. Pls refer to Metalink Note 359515.1 for a full description of the
required mount options. For a complete list of supported NAS vendors refer to OTN at:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/availability/htdocs/vendors_nfs.html

Can I use ASM as mechanism to mirror the data in an Extended

RAC cluster?
Yes, but it cannot replicate everything that needs replication.
ASM works well to replicate any object you can put in ASM. But you cannot put the OCR or
Voting Disk in ASM.
In 10gR1 they can either be mirrored using a different mechanism (which could then be used
instead of ASM) or the OCR needs to be restored from backup and the Voting Disk can be
recreated.
In the future we are looking at providing Oracle redundancy for both.

Can a customer use SE RAC to implement an "Extended RAC

Cluster" ?
YES. Effective with 11g Rel.1 the former restriction to have all nodes co-located in one room
when using SE RAC has been lifted. Customers can now use SE RAC clusters in extended
envioronments. However, other SE RAC restrictions still apply (e.g. compulsary usage of ASM,
no third party cluster nor volume manager must be installed). Please, refer to the licensing
documentation for more information.

What are the network requirements for an extended RAC cluster?

Necessary Connections
Interconnect, SAN, and IP Networking need to be kept on separate channels, each with required
redundancy. Redundant connections must not share the same Dark Fiber (if used), switch, path,
or even building entrances. Keep in mind that cables can be cut.
The SAN and Interconnect connections need to be on dedicated point-to-point connections. No
WAN or Shared connection allowed. Traditional cables are limited to about 10 km if you are to
avoid using repeaters. Dark Fiber networks allow the communication to occur without repeaters.
Since latency is limited, Dark Fiber networks allow for a greater distance in separation between
the nodes. The disadvantage of Dark Fiber networks are they can cost hundreds of thousands of
dollars, so generally they are only an option if they already exist between the two sites.
If direct connections are used (for short distances) this is generally done by just stringing long
cables from a switch. If a DWDM or CWDM is used then then these are directly connected via a
dedicated switch on either side.
Note of caution: Do not do RAC Interconnect over a WAN. This is a the same as doing it over the
public network which is not supported and other uses of the network (i.e. large FTPs) can cause
performance degradations or even node evictions.
For SAN networks make sure you are using SAN buffer credits if the distance is over 10km.
At the moment in Oracle 10g, if Oracle Clusterware is being used, we also require that a single
subnet be setup for the public connections so we can fail over VIPs from one side to another.

What is CVU? What are its objectives and features?

CVU brings ease to RAC users by verifying all the important components that need to be verified
at different stages in a RAC environment. The wide domain of deployment of CVU ranges from
initial hardware setup through fully operational cluster for RAC deployment and covers all the
intermediate stages of installation and configuration of various components. The command line
tool is cluvfy. Cluvfy is a non-intrusive utility and will not adversely affect the system or operations
stack.

What is a stage?
CVU supports the notion of Stage verification. It identifies all the important stages in RAC
deployment and provides each stage with its own entry and exit criteria. The entry criteria for a
stage define a specific set of verification tasks to be performed before initiating that stage. This
pre-check saves the user from entering into a stage unless its pre-requisite conditions are met.
The exit criteria for a stage define another specific set of verification tasks to be performed after
completion of the stage. The post-check ensures that the activities for that stage have been
completed successfully. It identifies any stage specific problem before it propagates to
subsequent stages; thus making it difficult to find its root cause. An example of a stage is "pre-
check of database installation", which checks whether the system meets the criteria for RAC
install.

What is a component?
CVU supports the notion of Component verification. The verifications in this category are not
associated with any specific stage. The user can verify the correctness of a specific cluster
component. A component can range from a basic one, like free disk space to a complex one like
CRS Stack. The integrity check for CRS stack will transparently span over verification of multiple
sub-components associated with CRS stack. This encapsulation of a set of tasks within specific
component verification should be of a great ease to the user.
What is nodelist?
Nodelist is a comma separated list of hostnames without domain. Cluvfy will ignore any domain
while processing the nodelist. If duplicate entities after removing the domain exist, cluvfy will
eliminate the duplicate names while processing. Wherever supported, you can use '-n all' to
check on all the cluster nodes. Check this for more information on nodelist and shortcuts.

Do I have to be root to use CVU?

No. CVU is intended for database and system administrators. CVU assumes the current user as
oracle user.

What about discovery? Does CVU discover installed cponents?

At present, CVU discovery is limited to these components. CVU discovers available network
interfaces if you do not specify any interface or IP address in its command line. For storage
related verification, CVU discovers all the supported storage types if you do not specify a
particular storage. CVU discovers CRS HOME if one is available.

How do I report a(or tons of) bug?

Please refer to the known issue/README files before filing a bug. If the issue is not covered in
those documents, file a bug against product# 5, component: OPSM and sub-component:
CLUVFY. Please provide the relevant log file while filing a bug.

What are the requirements for CVU?

CVU requires: 1._ An area with at least 30MB for containing software bits on the invocation node.
2._ Java 1.4.1 location on the invocation node. 3._ A work directory with at least 25MB on all the
nodes. CVU will attempt to copy the necessary bits as required to this location. Make sure, the
location exists on all nodes and it has write permission for CVU user. This dir is set through the
CV_DESTLOC environment variable. If this variable does not exist, CVU will use "/tmp" as the
work dir. 4._ On RedHat Linux 3.0, an optional package 'cvuqdisk' is required on all the nodes.
This assists CVU in finding scsi disks and helps CVU to perform storage checks on disks. Please
refer to What is 'cvuqdisk' rpm? for detail. Note that, this package should be installed only on
RedHat Linux 3.0 distribution.

How do I install 'cvuqdisk' package?

Here are the steps to install cvuqdisk package. 1._ Become root user 2._ Copy the rpm (
cvuqdisk-1.0.1-1.i386.rpm, current version is 1.0.1 ) to a local directory. You can find the rpm in
Oracle's OTN site. 3._ Set the environment variable to a group, who should own this binary.
Typically it is the "dba" group. export CVUQDISK_GRP=dba 4._ Erase any existing package rpm
-e cvuqdisk 5._ Install the rpm rpm -iv cvuqdisk-1.0.1-1.i386.rpm

How do I know about cluvfy commands? The usage text of cluvfy

does not show individual commands.
Cluvfy has context sensitive help built into it. Cluvfy shows the most appropriate usage text based
on the cluvfy command line arguments. If you type 'cluvfy' on the command prompt, cluvfy
displays the high level generic usage text, which talks about valid stage and component syntax. If
you type 'cluvfy comp -list', cluvfy will show valid components with brief description on each of
them. If you type 'cluvfy comp -help', cluvfy will show detail syntax for each of the valid
components. Similarly, 'cluvfy stage -list' and 'cluvfy stage -help' will list valid stages and their
syntax respectively. If you type an invalid command, cluvfy will show the appropriate usage for
that particular command. For example, if you type 'cluvfy stage -pre dbinst', cluvfy will show the
syntax for pre-check of dbinst stage.

What are the default values for the command line arguments?
Here are the default values and behavior for different stage and component commands:

For component nodecon:

If no -i or -a arguments is provided, then cluvfy will get into the discovery mode.
For component nodereach:
If no -srcnode is provided, then the local(node of invocation) will be used as the source node.

For components cfs, ocr, crs, space, clumgr:

If no -n argument is provided, then the local node will be used.

For components sys and admprv:

If no -n argument is provided, then the local node will be used.
If no -osdba argument is provided, then 'dba' will be used. If no -orainv argument is provided, then
'oinstall' will be used.

For component peer:

If no -osdba argument is provided, then 'dba' will be used.
If no -orainv argument is provided, then 'oinstall' will be used.

For stage -post hwos:

If no -s argument is provided, then cluvfy will get into the discovery mode.

For stage -pre clusvc:

If no -c argument is provided, then cluvfy will skip OCR related checks.
If no -q argument is provided, then cluvfy will skip voting disk related checks.
If no -osdba argument is provided, then 'dba' will be used.
If no -orainv argument is provided, then 'oinstall' will be used.

For stage -pre dbinst:

If -cfs_oh flag is not specified, then cluvfy will assume Oracle home is not on a shared file system.
If no -osdba argument is provided, then 'dba' will be used.
If no -orainv argument is provided, then 'oinstall' will be used.

Do I have to type the nodelist every time for the CVU commands?
Is there any shortcut?
You do not have to type the nodelist every time for the CVU commands. Typing the nodelist for a
large cluster is painful and error prone. Here are few short cuts. To provide all the nodes of the
cluster, type '-n all'. Cluvfy will attempt to get the nodelist in the following order: 1. If a vendor
clusterware is available, it will pick all the configured nodes from the vendor clusterware using
lsnodes utility. 2. If CRS is installed, it will pick all the configured nodes from Oracle clusterware
using olsnodes utility. 3. In none of the above, it will look for the CV_NODE_ALL environmental
variable. If this variable is not defined, it will complain. To provide a partial list(some of the nodes
of the cluster) of nodes, you can set an environmental variable and use it in the CVU command.
For example: setenv MYNODES node1,node3,node5 cluvfy comp nodecon -n $MYNODES
How do I get detail output of a check?
Cluvfy supports a verbose feature. By default, cluvfy reports in non-verbose mode and just
reports the summary of a test. To get detailed output of a check, use the flag '-verbose' in the
command line. This will produce detail output of individual checks and where applicable will show
per-node result in a tabular fashion.

How do I check network or node connectivity related issues?

Use component verifications commands like 'nodereach' or 'nodecon' for this purpose. For detail
syntax of these commands, type cluvfy comp -help on the command prompt. If the 'cluvfy comp
nodecon' command is invoked without -i, cluvfy will attempt to discover all the available interfaces
and the corresponding IP address & subnet. Then cluvfy will try to verify the node connectivity per
subnet. You can run this command in verbose mode to find out the mappings between the
interfaces, IP addresses and subnets. You can check the connectivity among the nodes by
specifying the interface name(s) through -i argument.

Can I check if the storage is shared among the nodes?

Yes, you can use 'comp ssa' command to check the sharedness of the storage. Please refer to
the known issues section for the type of storage supported by cluvfy.

How do I check whether OCFS is properly configured?

You can use the component command 'cfs' to check this. Provide the OCFS file system you want
to check through the -f argument. Note that, the sharedness check for the file sytem is supported
for OCFS version 1.0.14 or higher.

How do I check the Oracle Clusterware stack and other sub-

components of it?
Cluvfy provides commands to check a particular sub-component of the CRS stack as well as the
whole CRS stack. You can use the 'comp ocr' command to check the integrity of OCR. Similarly,
you can use 'comp crs' and 'comp clumgr' commands to check integrity of crs and
clustermanager sub-components. To check the entire CRS stack, run the stage command 'clucvy
stage -post crsinst'.

How do I check user accounts and administrative permissions

related issues?
Use admprv component verification command. Refer to the usage text for detail instruction and
type of supported operations. To check whether the privilege is sufficient for user equivalence,
use '-o user_equiv' argument. Similarly, the '-o crs_inst' will verify whether the user has the
correct permissions for installing CRS. The '-o db_inst' will check for permissions required for
installing RAC and '-o db_config' will check for permissions required for creating a RAC database
or modifying a RAC database configuration.

How do I check minimal system requirements on the nodes?

The component verification command sys is meant for that. To check the system requirement for
RAC, use '-p database' argument. To check the system requirement for CRS, use '-p crs'
argument.

Is there a way to compare nodes?

You can use the peer comparison feature of cluvfy for this purpose. The command 'comp peer'
will list the values of different nodes for several pre-selected properties. You can use the peer
command with -refnode argument to compare those properties of other nodes against the
reference node.

Why the peer comparison with -refnode says passed when the
group or user does not exist?
Peer comparison with the -refnode feature acts like a baseline feature. It compares the system
properties of other nodes against the reference node. If the value does not match( not equal to
reference node value ), then it flags that as a deviation from the reference node. If a group or user
does not exist on reference node as well as on the other node, it will report this as 'matched'
since there is no deviation from the reference node. Similarly, it will report as 'mismatched' for a
node with higher total memory than the reference node for the above reason.

Is there a way to verify that the Oracle Clusterware is working

properly before proceeding with RAC install?
Yes. You can use the post-check command for cluster services setup(-post clusvc) to verify CRS
status. A more appropriate test would be to use the pre-check command for database
installation(-pre dbinst). This will check whether the current state of the system is suitable for
RAC install.

At what point cluvfy is usable? Can I use cluvfy before installing

Oracle Clusterware?
You can run cluvfy at any time, even before CRS installation. In fact, cluvfy is designed to assist
the user as soon as the hardware and OS is up. If you invoke a command which requires CRS or
RAC on local node, cluvfy will report an error if those required products are not yet installed.

How do I turn on tracing?

Set the environmental variable SRVM_TRACE to true. For example, in tcsh "setenv
SRVM_TRACE true" will turn on tracing.

Where can I find the CVU trace files?

CVU log files can be found under $CV_HOME/cv/log directory. The log files are automatically
rotated and the latest log file has the name cvutrace.log.0. It is a good idea to clean up unwanted
log files or archive them to reclaim disk place. Note that, no trace files will be generated if tracing
has not been turned on.
Why cluvfy reports "unknown" on a particular node?
Cluvfy reports unknown when it can not conclude for sure if the check passed or failed. A
common cause of this type of reporting is a non-existent location set for the CV_DESTLOC
variable. Please make sure the directory pointed by this variable exists on all nodes and is
writable by the user.

What are the known issues with this release?

1._ Shared storage accessibility(ssa) check reports Current release of cluvfy has the following
limitations on Linux regarding shared storage accessibility check. a. Currently NAS storage ( r/w,
no attribute caching), OCFS( version 1.0.14 or higher ) and scsi disks(if cvuqdisk package is
installed) are supported. Note that, 'cvuqdisk' package should be installed only on RedHat Linux
3.0 distribution. Discovery of scsi disks for RedHat Linux 2.1 is not supported. b. For sharedness
check on NAS, cluvfy requires the user to have write permission on the specified path. If the
cluvfy user does not have write permission, cluvfy reports the path as not-shared. 2._ What
database version is supported by CVU? Current CVU release supports only 10g RAC and CRS
and is not backward compatible. In other words, CVU can not check or verify pre-10g products.
3._ What Linux distributions are supported? This release supports only RedHat 3.0 Update 2 and
RedHat 2.1AS distributions. Note that, the CVU distribution for RedHat 3.0 Update 2 and RedHat
2.1AS are different; they are not binary compatible. In other words, CVU bits for RedHat 3.0 and
RedHat 2.1 are not the same. 4._ The component check for node application (cluvfy comp
nodeapp ...) command reports node app creation error if the local CRS stack is down. This is a
known issue and will be addressed shortly. 5._ CVU does not recongnize the disk bindings ( e.g.
/dev/raw/raw1 ) as valid storage paths or identifiers. Please use the underlying disk( e.g.
/dev/sdm etc ) for the storage path or identifiers. 6._ Current version of CVU for RedHat 2.1
complains about the missing cvuqdisk package. This will be corrected in the future release. User
should ignore this error. Note that, 'cvuqdisk' package should be installed only on RedHat Linux
3.0 distribution. Discovery of scsi disks for RedHat Linux 2.1 is not supported.

What is 'cvuqdisk' rpm? Why should I install this rpm?

CVU requires root privilege to gather information about the scsi disks during discovery. A small
binary uses the setuid mechanism to query disk information as root. Note that this process is
purely a read-only process with no adverse impact on the system. To make this secured, this
binary is packaged in the cvuqdisk rpm and need root privilege to install on a machine. If this
package is installed on all the nodes, CVU will be able to perform discovery and shared storage
accessibility checks for scsi disks. Otherwise, it complains about the missing package 'cvuqdisk'.
Note that, this package should be installed only on RedHat Linux 3.0 distribution. Discovery of
scsi disks for RedHat Linux 2.1 is not supported.
When I run 10.2 CLUVFY on a system where RAC 10g Release 1 is
running I get following output:

Package existence check failed for "SUNWscucm:3.1".

Package existence check failed for "SUNWudlmr:3.1".
Package existence check failed for "SUNWudlm:3.1".
Package existence check failed for
"ORCLudlm:Dev_Release_06/11/04,_64bit_3.3.4.8_reentrant".
Package existence check failed for "SUNWscr:3.1".
Package existence check failed for "SUNWscu:3.1".
Checking this Solaris system I don't see those packages installed.
Can I continue my install?
Note that cluvfy checks all possible prerequisites and tells you whether your system passes the
check or not. You can then cross reference with the install guide to see if the checks that failed
are required for your type of installation. It the above case, if you are not planning on using Sun
Cluster, then you can continue the install. The checks that failed are the checks for Sun Cluster
required packages and are not neede d on your cluster. As long as everything else checks out
successfully, you can continue.

&.