Coming up on RACing ahead with Oracle RAC on VMware series

We will continue to move on with the installation of Oracle 10g R2 RAC on RHEL4.2/Centos4.2. It should be up next week.

I will also try to patch up my ESX server and see if we can install RHEL4.2 and move on to the installaton on ESX server. Should that work then I will demonstrate a simple 4 node cluster on VMware's ESX Server.

I am also currently testing the ESX 3.0 beta product and hopefully I can use the cool features like 16G RAM and 4-way smp with Oracle RAC. Although it'd expedite matters if someone would have machines that I could use for this purpose. That would be great!

Quest Spotlight On RAC (SoRAC) Part 2 done!

I'm trying to stay ahead with the articles and I'm done wth this one. It'll be up on DBAsupport.com and DatabaseJournal.com on the 16th Feb 2006!

After that we will continue with the RHEL/Centos 4.2 on VMware GSX Server/VMware Server (beta) version. They both are the same. GSX server will be replaced with the free version of VMware Server.

Oracle RAC on VMware Q&A Part 2

I will also post regular questions that I get every now and then from users all over the world. here's an excerpt on one typical Q&A run.

Q1. I have VMware GSX Server 3.2.0. Can I use that?

Sure why not! Instead try VMware Server. its free. By the way have you also tried Microsoft's Virtual Server 2005 Release 2. It works the same way. I will (if we get that far with our talks) be working with Microsoft on this and we will try to generate awareness and even go ahead and train people (aspiring DBAs and seasoned Unix/Linux DBAs or any one who is enthusiastic about it for that matter) on the web regarding running Oracle on Windows OS. Microsoft has recently launched their Microsoft-Oracle site http://microsoft-oracle.com/

Q2. Will I able to install in Windows 2000 following the document?

Yes.

Q3. If so, which should I choose - W2K Professional, Server or Advanced Server?

Go with the Advanced Server

Q4. During DBCA installation, you asked me to choose a disk that was formatted with OCFS. As you said I had formatted 3 disks:
* OCR Primary, Voting Disk (B:)
* OCR Mirror, Voting Disk (J:)
* Voting Disk (K:)
For DBCA for Server Parameter Filename, I chose K: Is that OK?

That will be OK. ASM you mean, yes it must be on the shared disk.

Q5. Can you tell me what exactly happens in Step 56 of DBCA installation of your document?

Here if you go back to step 39, you see that I create a "service" as well, that way you register your RAC service (I will talk about it in detail in an article later) and monitor it with tools such as grid control , or spotlight on RAC by Quests Software.

Q6. What is the difference between VMware workstation GSX and ESX Server?

GSX Server runs on top of an OS like Windows or Linux where ESX Server runs on bare metal. ESX is deployed in productions and a lot of mission critical applications are capable of running on ESX. I also believe (very strongly and will surely test it out as well) with ESX 3.0 one will see the rise of even Oracle RAC on ESX in production environments.

Microsoft Windows 2003 and Oracle database 10g R2 with Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2!

I got a call from Microsoft and most probably we will be setting up a community with the sole purpose of

• Spreading awareness of Oracle 10g R2 RAC on Windows 2003
• Using Microsoft's Virtual Server 2005 R2
• Building a community around the Oracle RAC on Windows OS

Taking the experience and awareness level to a new high by

• Creating Labs
• Creating Workshops
• Even Webinars (why not?)

We are up for interesting times and I was personally pleased with the talks as Microsoft's OS is going to get more meat. I expect Windows platform to not just be a platform for SQL Server (although there is nothing wrong with it when deployed effectively) but be open for any database be it DB2, Oracle, MySQL, Firebird, anything.

Ok we know, with Windows used massively all around the world it's a no-brainer for any startup firm that it'll build a win32 or win64(?) application first. But it's not just download and install , it's also about running it and seeing it successfully being deployed in your production environment.

Windows can be a very robust platform and the whole idea to run mission critical applications and databases like Oracle RAC will spread massive awareness and even wake up the Unix/Linux DBAs to come forward and adopt the Oracle RAC on windows. (Watch my "Redhot IT Future" articles where I will dedicate a whole article on "versatilism" where we have to get out of the locked down, slashdotted, linux/unix only mindset and go out on the street and see what the "REAL" world looks like)

As what we (the gentleman I spoke to) agreed that it's all about getting the truth out on the street. That YES you can and should be running Oracle on Windows.

What I will be getting is :

• Access to MTC (Microsoft Technology Center)
• Access to massive 32/64 bit Servers
• SAN Storage
• Microsoft's Virtual Server 2005 R2
• Loads of fun!!! [Something we all will share :-)]

Stay tuned for these developments and I'm gonna make sure that we will do something really worthwhile on it.

Oracle VMware RAC Q&A!

Replying to Sampl's several emails I realized that I had pointed out at the architecture of 3 500mb disks and 3 asm disks (preferebly 10G all). But given the length of the article and not being able to post everything on it, I gave a general advice on what diss to use for OCFS and what for ASM. Still the print screens did not really come close to it.Sampl was using the article step by step and I saw (he pointed to me actually here step 8 onwards) that I hadn't done justice there. So here I'll post the prints for more clarity.This is a sample *.vmx file from my Windows 2003 RAC

config.version = "7"
virtualHW.version = "3"
scsi0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0.virtualDev = "lsilogic"
memsize = "828"
scsi0:0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0:0.fileName = "vm1.vmdk"
scsi0:0.deviceType = "plainDisk"
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
ide1:0.fileName = "auto detect"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"
floppy0.fileName = "C:\TEMP\vmscsi1-1.2.0.2.flp"
Ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
usb.present = "FALSE"
displayName = "vm1"
guestOS = "winNetEnterprise"
priority.grabbed = "normal"
priority.ungrabbed = "normal"
powerType.powerOff = "default"
powerType.powerOn = "default"
powerType.suspend = "default"
powerType.reset = "default"

Ethernet0.virtualDev = "vmxnet"
Ethernet1.present = "TRUE"
Ethernet1.connectionType = "bridged"
Ethernet1.virtualDev = "vmxnet"

ide1:0.startConnected = "TRUE"
floppy0.fileType = "file"
Ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
Ethernet1.addressType = "generated"
uuid.location = "56 4d e3 3b ab 45 e1 24-dc 75 db 3e 1a 26 17 70"
uuid.bios = "56 4d e3 3b ab 45 e1 24-dc 75 db 3e 1a 26 17 70"
ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:26:17:70"
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"
ethernet1.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:26:17:7a"
ethernet1.generatedAddressOffset = "10"
tools.syncTime = "TRUE"

disk.locking = "FALSE"
diskLib.dataCacheMaxSize = "0"
diskLib.dataCacheMaxReadAheadSize = "0"
diskLib.dataCacheMinReadAheadSize = "0"
diskLib.dataCachePageSize = "4096"
diskLib.maxUnsyncedWrites = "0"

scsi1.present = "TRUE"
scsi1.virtualDev = "lsilogic"
scsi1.sharedBus = "VIRTUAL"
scsi1:1.present = "TRUE"
scsi1:1.mode = "independent-persistent"
scsi1:1.fileName = "E:\shared\ocr.vmdk"
scsi1:1.deviceType = "plainDisk"

scsi1:2.present = "TRUE"
scsi1:2.mode = "independent-persistent"
scsi1:2.fileName = "E:\shared\votingdisk.vmdk"
scsi1:2.deviceType = "plainDisk"

scsi1:3.present = "TRUE"
scsi1:3.mode = "independent-persistent"
scsi1:3.fileName = "E:\shared\spfileasm.vmdk"
scsi1:3.deviceType = "plainDisk"

scsi1:4.present = "TRUE"
scsi1:4.mode = "independent-persistent"
scsi1:4.fileName = "E:\shared\asm1.vmdk"
scsi1:4.deviceType = "plainDisk"

scsi1:5.present = "TRUE"
scsi1:5.mode = "independent-persistent"
scsi1:5.fileName = "E:\shared\asm2.vmdk"
scsi1:5.deviceType = "plainDisk"

scsi1:6.present = "TRUE"
scsi1:6.mode = "independent-persistent"
scsi1:6.fileName = "C:\shared\asm3.vmdk"
scsi1:6.deviceType = "plainDisk"


scsi0:0.redo = ""
scsi1:1.redo = ""
scsi1:2.redo = ""
scsi1:3.redo = ""
scsi1:4.redo = ""
scsi1:5.redo = ""
scsi1:6.redo = ""



Ethernet0.connectionType = "hostonly"

And this is the configuration of my disks. Check out the prints here.

Six Disks all laid up as I mentioned in the architecture



Here this Q drive is being formatted with OCFS, and used for OCR and Votingdisk storage




Here you can clearly see that the OCR primary is grayed out so we pick the other 500mb vmdk disk and use it for OCR mirror (1 is enough for OCR mirror) and for placing another copy of Votingdisk



And here you can see that the third 5oomb disk (which we will primarily use for our ASMs spfile, we will put yet another copy of, the installer asks us for the third one)




So clearly as you can see above all the OCFS formatted 500mb disks are assigned with a Drive letter AND you can see the format type Data(CFS). The rest remains untouched. This we pick on as we go about installing our ASM instance and RAC instance using DBCA.




Another user had problems with clusterware not being able to see the disks. I suggest that you go follow these steps to install the disks and leave them as raw.

PS: Blogger is having some trouble with file uploads so I'm using my own gallery here. I'll try Flickr later for some prints on disk creation.

PS2: Looks like they moved to more powerful servers :-)

Oracle 10G R2 RAC on RHEL/Centos 4.2 Part 7 Published!

Go read it on DBAsupport.com.