Next on RAC administration: Clusterware Administration, OCRDUMP, OCRCHECK

I will however cover more on OCRDUMP and OCRCHECK in later articles. I am building my 4 node RAC on ESX 2.5.3. Besides that I'm also doing a 3 node RAC on Solaris 10 on ESX 3.0. Anyways so much on the progress, this one will be up on the 7th September. Don't miss it on the DBAsupport and DatabaseJournal.

GridApp gives away free Oracle RAC licenses with D2500 box!

RAC is slowly being seen and adopted into the SMB market as well. GridApp knows that and therefore is giving away free RAC licenses with its appliance. It can be a lot lot more cheaper but don't worry I'm not thinking of a startup venture. YET!

Read more here...

Next on "Oracle RAC administration" series: Administering Clusterware

This one is up on the 17th August. Check it out on the DBAsupport.com and DatabaseJournal.com. Stay tuned...

Oracle RAC extended: Nodes separated geographically!

Well it is , again, not something new. All you need is a fast connection (be it Dark fiber, where Google is working on) or plain fast Internet! Heck look at them, they've got a 100mbs Internet!

More later...

Oracle 10gR2 RACing on VMware Part15: Aug 9th 2006

Check it out on http://www.dbasupport.com and http://www.databasejournal.com today!

Installation Solaris 10 U1 on ESX 3.0 is a breeze!

Really, it is! I've installed three Sol 10 VMs and now I will go ahead and do the Oracle 10gR2 preperation.

I'll be posting some peeps print screens soon as well. The rest should follow in our ongoing "RACing ahead with Oracle on VMware" series.

Stay tuned...

Oracle 10gR2 RAC : Solaris 10 U1 on ESX 3.0

I've started working towards installing the OS and then we will continue with our quest on RAC on ESX 3.0.

Want to know more about the installation/other details:

• VMware's new online doco
• SUN's webpage on Sunfire X4200 Server with ESX 2.5.x/3.0
  
• Juergen Winkelmann has done a fine job documenting it all
  

So stay tuned!

Next Oracle RACing article up on the 20th July!

Here we will continue the database installation and go ahead with the Listener configuration as well.

On another note I got a note from an Oracle user who worked pretty darn hard to compile a book (pdf format) from the evergrowing RACing series. It was already 200 pages thick!!! Imagine and we still need to do Solaris 10 RAC work and also the AIX and HP-UX. And then we have the administration series as well.

RACing ahead part 13: Installing 10gR2 clusterware on Linux!

Here we will go ahead and install 10gR2 on Redhat 4.2 kernel. This will be up on the 6th July.

Oracle RAC administration series

If you haven't noticed I've started with the Oracle RAC administration series. We will delve into lots of admin stuff and lot more work that revolves around it.

check out the first article here.

Next article coming up on the 15th June!

RACing ahead with Oracle on VMware - Part 12 (ASM) up on 20th May 2006!

We will continue our Oracle RAC on VMware series with understanding what ASM is (briefly) and going ahead and installing and configuring ASMlib.

Read it on the 20th May 2006 on DBAsupport and DatabaseJournal.

PS: I will also start doing/starting RAC administration series (which will be rather long) and will be very helpful to DBAs (me included) and Database enthusiasts to manage our Oracle RAC farm. Performance too will be taken into account. So lots of exciting material coming up in the coming months...

RAC Clusterware configuration problems

Khanh Vu Viet wrote:

Dear you,
I've read your articles about install RAC on VMWare. I've already
setup this demo. But the problem happened with these problem:
- Output generated from configuration assistant "Oracle Cluster
Ready Services Configuration Assistant":
Successfully accumulated necessary OCR keys.
Using ports: CSS=49895 CRS=49896 EVMC=49898 and EVMR=49897.
node :
node 1: rac1 10.0.0.1 rac1
node 2: rac2 10.0.0.2 rac2
Creating OCR keys for user 'administrator', privgrp ''..
Operation successful.
Now formatting voting device: F:\cdata\rac\votedsk
Successful in setting block0 for voting disk.
Format complete.
Step 1: checking status of CRS cluster
Step 2: configuring OCR repository
Step 3: configuring safe mode for CRS stack
Step 4: Starting up CRS stack on all nodes
rac1 service OracleCSService in improper PENDING state, err(997)
rac2 service OracleCSService in improper PENDING state, err(997)

Configuration assistant "Oracle Cluster Ready Services Configuration
Assistant" failed

- I've manually started these services in the command prompt but it
can not started.

Please checked it again and help me to solve this problem.

Thanks and regards


My Answer:

Kanhn,

How does your hosts file look like? Is the public interface on top of the list, if not, put it there. Private interface should be under it. More or less like this...



Secondly:

Are your disks automounted (like I suggested on my articles)? If not, automount them with DISKPART.

Then attempt to start the CRS services.

Oracle RAC VIP nodes configuration

I got several emails and instead of answering all the problems privately to each of them, I decided to address the issues here on the blog.
WHY?
So we can share our problems with others.

Oscar Javier Flores Gutierrez asked:

Please Tarry, tell me , I do it of the correct way OR?

How I must to configure my VIP address?

Please Just help me with this couse is the only mistake that i have, this error:

ERROR:
No se ha encontrado un juego de interfaces adecuado para VIP.

Resultado: Fallo de comprobaci¾n de conectividad de nodos.

or english somthing like this.. "No found a Set of Interface to VIP",

PD:

Just help me on how you configure your Ips, how,?

My Answer:

Javier looking at your hosts file, I see that you have set the IPs as follows:

143.46.43.100 vmware01w2k3 in DNS
143.46.43.101 vmware01w2k3

143.46.43.104 vmware01w2k3-vip in host file
143.46.43.105 vmware01w2k3-vip

10.0.0.5 vmware01w2k3-priv in DNS and host file
10.0.0.6 vmware01w2k3-priv


NOTE: VIPs can be in the hosts file (not necessary though) but they must be registered in your DNS and doing a ping machinename-vip should (before the installation) give you machine not found error (I'm using simple language) and later on (after RAC installation) it will ping successfully.

So, register both your pubic as well as VIP addresses in your DNS server and keep the private (10.x.x.x, 192.x.x.x,172.x.x.x type of ip ranges are private ranges) NICs (which you will be using for high speed interconnect and RAC's cache fusion technology) in your hosts file.

Oracle RAC and OpenSSH: Configuring SSH&SCP

Article published as of yesterday. Check it out at DBAsupport and DatabaseJournal

I will write in detail about OpenSSH soon. Its a really cool thing to know about security and secure your applications like Oracle with it. And then I'll link it to the above articles.

"Oracle 10g RAC on VMware"Training in the Netherlands

Yes! Its time to push it on to the next level. I was already gunning to do something with it and and I am currently in talks with some training centers who have expressed their desire for offering "Oracle 10g RAC trainings" in the Netherlands.

Deal is simple. We will taget the whole of Netherlands but not limit our scope to Netherlands alone.

Me and the interested parties are very excited. We will be doing the same:

• Oracle 10g RAC on Linux with VMware GSX Server or ESX Server
• Oracle 10g RAC on Unix (Solaris)*
  
• Oracle 10g RAC on Windows 2003 with VMware GSX or ESX Server

The great deal is that the students will learn about two greatest technologies working in tandem. Oracle RAC and VMware's Virtualization software.

*I know VMware/Oracle still need to provide support for the Solaris 10. But we will try to cook something on VMware.

Oracle RAC on Windows Technical Hands-On Workshop

The Adoption labs in Redmond is putting up this workshop to train Oracle newbies and DBAs alike to use Windows 2003 server as the OS to run Oracle. Check out the details...

Overview

This class is designed for the DBA, system designer or system architect who is familiar with the Oracle database. The student will build on that knowledge in order to become proficient with the integration of Oracle’s real application clusters (RAC) under Microsoft (MS) Windows Server on a storage area network (SAN).



Presenters

Larry Pedigo, Performance Tuning Corporation

Anu Chawla, Microsoft Corporation

Frank Mcbath



BIO of Larry

Senior Performance Consultant with extensive training experience. Serves as instructor for a number of Oracle database related software courses, and has been responsible for development of a Corporate Training program. As a Senior Performance Tuning Consultant, Larry performs consulting engagements for Performance Tuning Corporation, specializing in Oracle Real Application Clusters. He has authored several White Papers for PTC, and holds professional certifications for both Oracle Administration and Informix Administration. Larry has taught several training courses for PTC, and is responsible for expanding PTC’s training program





Bio of Anu

Anu works as a Technical Specialist at Microsoft for the past three years in the Premier ISV Group. He is a former Oracle DBA (Oracle Certified Professional) and has been enterprise DBA at SBC Communications in Chicago. For the past three years he has been focused on technical readiness and evangelism with Premier ISV’s like Siebel and Oracle.




Frank Mcbath

FRANK McBATH is an SQL Server specialist in Microsoft's Premier ISV group specializing in architecting and implementing large database installations. Before joining Microsoft, McBath worked for several Fortune 100 firms and consulting houses.





Course Objectives

More than sixty percent of SANs deployed today will use one of the major relational database management systems to run applications and present increasing amounts of valuable information to end users. The Optimizing Oracle RAC on Windows course combines in-depth technical training on SAN fundamentals with Oracle database and clustering concepts, to provide the student with a comprehensive ability to plan, configure and deploy Oracle RAC in a NAS or SAN environment. After completing this class, the student will have all the basics to maximize their Oracle database and SAN investment and increase their enterprise IT value. Optimizing Oracle RAC on Windows training is designed for the system designer, system architect and database administrator. This class will cover not only the architecture and function of the storage subsystem, but how it interacts with Oracle database and how it should be configured in a database environment.

Topics covered in this course include

* Introduction to Storage, NAS & SAN Architecture

* In-depth I/O and RAID overview

* Oracle Database Architecture

* Oracle I/O usage

* Planning and deploying Oracle in a SAN or NAS environment

* Oracle on Windows — NAS & SAN performance topics

Curriculum Summary

This is an outline of the five (3) day class agenda:

* Overview of Oracle on Windows

* Physical and Virtual Memory

* 32-bit vs. 64-bit Windows and Oracle

* Overview of Oracle RAC

* Introduction to Storage, NAS & SANs

* I/O & RAID Subsystems

* MS Windows Server Overview

* MS Windows Server Architecture

* MS Windows Server Networking

* MS Windows Server Tools and Registry

* File Systems and Disk Administration

* Tuning MS Windows Server for Oracle

* Oracle Database Overview

* Oracle & Storage

* Oracle I/O Topics

* Oracle Performance Issues

* Configuring the Storage Subsystem for Optimal Performance

Prerequisites

The student must be familiar with Oracle 8 or Oracle 9i database. No prior experience with a SAN is required.

Lab Work

This course includes hands-on labs where the student can become familiar with the SAN hardware in an Oracle database environment.

Who will benefit from this course?

The Oracle DBA or database architect/designer that is responsible for configuring, monitoring and tuning the Oracle database will benefit from the knowledge that he or she will receive from this course. DBAs will be able to optimally integrate and configure their SAN for optimal Oracle database performance.

Check it out at their site.

Italian SysCon site publishes my Quest's Press Release

I try to keep a track on some critical technologies(including my own profile) through Google Alert. The alert does a reasonable job at it. And this one republished it yesterday there.

Nice to see some decent mention once in a while.

Oracle Secure Enterprise Search 10g Downloads!

Oracle has been talking about the search version for quite some time. And given that SAP will have that kind (structured and unstructured data) of search functionality in it's NetWeaver, Oracle wanted to be first there.

Anyways read it here and download the Linux version here.

Visioncore's ESX Replicator

Playing the news delivery boy here. "Real-Time Replication for ESX Server" is pretty neat. Is it really true and possible? Check out the interview here.

Check out VisionCore Website yourself.

Next Audio blog about "Virtualization : VMware and beyond"

Well I meant the podcast site that I just launched a few days back. I am also planning to

• Do a classroom blackboard kind of sessions (I know, I'll have to dress right and shave and make my (GSE) Garage Server Environment look more professional..ahem...cleaner)
  
• Do some demonstrative work with the technologies I like and am attracted to. Well it could be hacking a playstation, VMware, Google, Oracle, Building Linux Cluster the Google way, Virtualization in Java, Apache Clustering, well anything.
  

I will talk briefly about certain technologies I'm pretty much nuts about. Yep, it's VMware's Products like ESX Server, VMware's free Virtual Server etc and then running mission critical applications like Oracle RAC on top of it.

I think advocating and evagelising about technologies (VMware) that

• are rock solid
• are bonding with all hardware and software vendors forming alliances that will make the very partners wiser
• make solid difference to your budget
• make you proud to have taken the right decision by deploying and not let it (decision making) succumb to your bounded awareness

I've never got tired of talking about Oracle databases and VMware and Google steal my heart much the same way.

So stay tuned, fellas :-)