What's New in Real Application Clusters Administration and Deployment?

This section describes the new administration and deployment features for Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) for the following releases:

• Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2) New Features in RAC Administration and Deployment

• Oracle Database 10g Release 1 (10.1) New Features for RAC Administration

Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2) New Features in RAC Administration and Deployment

This section describes the Oracle Database 10g release 2 (10.2) features for RAC administration.

• Oracle Clusterware

  Oracle Clusterware, formerly known as Cluster Ready Services (CRS) is an integrated cluster management solution that enables you to link multiple servers so that they function as a single system or cluster. The Oracle Clusterware simplifies the infrastructure required for RAC because it is integrated with the Oracle Database. In addition, Oracle Clusterware is also available for use with single-instance databases and applications that you deploy on clusters.

  See Also:

  • Chapter 1, "Introduction to Oracle Clusterware and Oracle Real Application Clusters", Chapter 14, "Making Applications Highly Available Using Oracle Clusterware", and Appendix B, "High Availability Oracle Clusterware Command-Line Reference and C API" for more information about Oracle Clusterware, the Oracle Clusterware API, and the Oracle Clusterware API commands

  • Your platform-specific Oracle Clusterware and RAC installation guide for more information about installing Oracle Clusterware

  Note:

  You can install the Oracle Clusterware high availability Application Programming Interface (API) from the Oracle Database 10g release 10.2 client installation media.

• The Real Application Clusters Deployment Book Merged into the Administration Book and Oracle Clusterware designated as a separate component

  Information that was previously in the Oracle Real Application Clusters Deployment and Performance Guide and the Real Application Clusters Administrator's Guide is combined into one book. The title of this book is Oracle Database Oracle Clusterware and Oracle Real Application Clusters Administration and Deployment Guide. In addition, because you can now use Oracle Clusterware for single-instance Oracle databases within clustered environments, Oracle Clusterware is presented as a separate, portable Oracle component.

  See Also:

  Your platform-specific Oracle Clusterware and RAC installation guide for more information about installing Oracle Clusterware

• Oracle Clusterware High Availability Application Programming Interface Support

  You can now use the Oracle Clusterware high availability components to make your customized applications highly available. You can configure high availability features for applications that are inside or outside of the Oracle database environment. In addition, the functionality provided by some of the command-line interfaces is available through the application programming interfaces (API).

  See Also:

  Chapter 14, "Making Applications Highly Available Using Oracle Clusterware", and Appendix B, "High Availability Oracle Clusterware Command-Line Reference and C API" for more information about Oracle Clusterware, the Oracle Clusterware API, and Oracle Clusterware API commands

• Cluster Verification Utility

  The Cluster Verification Utility (CVU) verifies a wide range of cluster and RAC-specific components such as shared storage devices, networking configurations, system requirements, Oracle Clusterware, groups, and users. You can use CVU for pre- and post-installation checks of your cluster environment. You can also use CVU to verify your environment when performing administrative operations such as installation, storage management, node addition, and troubleshooting. The OUI runs CVU immediately after you successfully install Oracle Clusterware.

  See Also:

  "Using the Cluster Verification Utility" for more information about CVU

• Extending RAC Databases by Cloning Oracle Clusterware and Oracle Real Application Clusters nodes and instances

  The preferred method to extend RAC databases is to use Enterprise Manager Grid Control to clone nodes and instances as described in Oracle Universal Installer and OPatch User's Guide. Cloning enables you to copy base images of Oracle Clusterware and RAC software onto other nodes that have identical hardware and base software. You can also use cloning to create new clusters.

  See Also:

  Chapter 10, " Adding and Deleting Nodes and Instances on UNIX-Based Systems" and Chapter 11, " Adding and Deleting Nodes and Instances on Windows-Based Systems" for more information about adding or deleting nodes

• Oracle Load Balancing Advisory

  Applications using a RAC database need to balance the workload across the cluster. The Oracle Database 10g release 2 load balancing advisory assists in the balancing of application workloads across designated resources. The load balancing advisory monitors workload activity across the cluster for each instance on which a service is active. The advisory provides a percentage value to indicate how much of the workload should be sent to a particular instance. The advisory also provides a service quality flag to indicate how well an instance is responding to service requests. Oracle provides this feedback as an entry in the automatic workload repository and Oracle publishes a Fast Application Notification (FAN) event. To take advantage of the load balancing advisory, applications can use integrated clients or clients that use the Runtime Connection Load Balancing feature, or applications can directly subscribe to the FAN events.

• Oracle RAC Runtime Connection Load Balancing using JDBC and Oracle Data Provider for .NET (ODP.NET)

  Oracle supports Runtime Connection Load Balancing to balance work requests across all of the instances of a RAC database using service level information to select connections from a connection pool. The Oracle Database 10g client enables you to use Runtime Connection Load Balancing when using Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) or ODP.NET connection pools.Runtime Connection Load Balancing balances work requests across instances based on a service's real-time information. The connection cache manager uses RAC workload metrics and the load balancing policies to select the optimal instance to process a connection request. This results in efficient database resource usage with a balanced and dynamic distribution of the workload among RAC instances based on workload metrics and distribution policy.

  Note:

  ODP.NET and OCI do not process UP events.

  See Also:

  Chapter 6, "Introduction to Workload Management" for more information about services and the Oracle application development documentation set for more information about this feature

• Oracle Fast Connection Failover (FCF)

  You can use FCF with JDBC, OCI, and ODP.NET to recover sessions when UP or DOWN events are published from clients. In the case of a DOWN event, Oracle cleans up any sessions in the connection pool that go to the instance that stops. For UP events, Oracle creates new connections to the recently-started instance. Clients can use any of the three connection protocols to accept event information that Runtime Connection Load Balancing publishes to re-create sessions and initiate failover. In addition, your chosen connection protocol, JDBC, OCI, or ODP.NET, reacts to throughput information that Runtime Connection Load Balancing publishes to choose the most appropriate connection.

• Transparent Data Encryption and Real Application Clusters

  Transparent Data Encryption protects data that is stored in Oracle datafiles by preventing access to the data using means other than the normal database access mechanisms. This feature also provides secure storage and management of the encryption keys using a module that is external to the database. Thus, you can encrypt database column access and also more effectively manage encryption key access.

  Using Transparent Data Encryption in a RAC environment requires that all of the database instances have access to the same encryption keys. For this release, the only key storage mechanism that is supported is the Oracle Wallet. All of the RAC nodes must be able to access the wallet either through a shared disk or by way of a local copy. All other Transparent Data Encryption administration and usage requirements are the same as those for single-instance Oracle database deployments.

  See Also:

  "Data Security Considerations in Real Application Clusters" and Oracle Database Advanced Security Administrator's Guide for additional information about transparent data encryption

• RAC Configuration Assistant Enhancements

  The Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA), the Database Upgrade Assistant (DBUA) have been enhanced for this release as follows:

  • DBCA Enhancements for Standalone ASM Configuration

    When you create a RAC database that uses ASM, DBCA creates the database in the same Oracle home that the ASM instance uses. If you create the database using a different home than the Oracle home that has ASM and if the ASM version is 10.2, then DBCA automatically extends ASM from whichever Oracle home ASM is running in. However, if the ASM version is 10.1 and if ASM instances do not yet exist on all of the selected nodes, then DBCA displays an error, prompting you to either run the add node script or to upgrade ASM using the Database Upgrade Assistant (DBUA).

    See Also:

    "Automatic Storage Management in Real Application Clusters" for more information about ASM in RAC

  • DBCA Enhancements for Standalone ASM Disk Group Management

    You can use DBCA to create and manage an ASM instance and its diskgroups independent of the database creation process. You can use DBCA to create, add, and mount an ASM disk group on any node in the cluster database. If an ASM instance does not yet exist on a node, then DBCA automatically extends ASM.

    See Also:

    Oracle Database Administrator's Guide for more information about ASM

  • Database Configuration Assistant, General Enhancements

    When you use DBCA to create a database in version 10.1, you configure the database control agent and OMS on all of the hosts. For version 10.2, DBCA by default configures an agent on all of the hosts where the RAC database has an instance, but only configures OMS on the node where you invoked DBCA. However, you can always run EMCA to change this configuration and set up multiple database console OMS configurations on other hosts. If the central agent (also called the Grid Control agent) is configured on the cluster, you can optionally register the database to the central agent.

    See Also:

    Your platform-specific Oracle Clusterware and RAC installation guide for more information about DBCA

  • Database Upgrade Assistant Enhancements

    You can also upgrade ASM independently or upgrade both the database and ASM at the same time. During an upgrade, the Oracle Database Upgrade Assistant (DBUA) automatically locates the Oracle Database 10g release 1 (10.1) Listener, and migrates it to Oracle Database 10g release 2. The Listener migration process stops the Listener in the existing Oracle home and restarts the Listener from the new Oracle home. During migration, client applications may not be able to connect to any databases that are registered to the Listener that is being migrated.

    If you are upgrading a database from Oracle Database 10g release 1.0 to Oracle Database 10g release 2.0, then the Database Control configuration in the 10gR1 Oracle home is upgraded to Oracle Database 10g release 2.0 as well. If you are upgrading a pre-Oracle Database 10g release 1.0 database to Oracle Database 10g release 2.0, then a new release 2.0 Database Control configuration will be performed. If the Listener was migrated as part of an upgrade operation, then the Enterprise Manager configurations will be updated with new information.

    See Also:

    Oracle Database Upgrade Guide for more information about database upgrades

• ASM Storage Consolidation

  One ASM instance on a node can support both single-instance Oracle database instances and RAC instances running on that node.

  See Also:

  "Automatic Storage Management in Real Application Clusters" for more information about ASM in RAC

• Dynamic RMAN Channel Allocation for RAC Environments

  In previous releases, to use RMAN's parallelism in RAC, you had to manually allocate an RMAN channel for each instance. You can now use the syntax CONFIGURE DEVICE TYPE device PARALLELISM n in RAC in the same way as in single-instance Oracle database environments. Dynamic channel allocation is only applicable where each node can access all of the datafiles, archived logs, and so on, in a RAC environment.

  See Also:

  "Configuring Channels for RMAN in Real Application Clusters" for more information about dynamic RMAN channel allocation in RAC

• Archived Log Redo Thread Parameter Requirements

  You must use all three archived log redo thread identifier parameters, %r or %R, %s or %S, and %t or %T, when identifying archived redo log threads. This enables Oracle to create unique names for the archive logs across the incarnation.

  See Also:

  "Archived Redo Log File Conventions in RAC" for more information about changing the archived redo log thread

• Changing the Archiving Mode

  You no longer need to modify the CLUSTER_DATABASE parameter setting to change the archiving mode in RAC. You can change archive log mode as long as the database is mounted in the local instance and not open in any instances.

  See Also:

  "Changing the Archiving Mode in Real Application Clusters" for more information about changing the archiving mode in RAC

• Failover Improvements for Distributed Transaction Processing (DTP) in RAC

  Oracle DTP transaction environments should now use services to simplify management in a RAC environment. This feature automates the implementation of workarounds for using distributed transactions in RAC. This feature leverages the Oracle services framework so that failure detection, failover, and fail back are transparent to DBAs.

  In this release, DTP services automate the steps that are required to configure a RAC database to support distributed transactions in DTP environments. A DTP service will only be active on one instance in the cluster at a time. By creating multiple DTP services, with one or more DTP services enabled on each RAC instance, all tightly coupled branches of a global distributed transaction go to the same instance. In this way, you can leverage all of the instances of a RAC database to balance the distributed transaction load and thereby maximize application throughput.

  For current and future client implementations, such as those for JDBC, you do not need the invocation to the SYS.DBMS_SYSTEM.DIST_TXN_SYNC procedure because the OPS_FAILOVER flag is deprecated. Instead, the server manages the synchronization of in-doubt transaction information across the RAC instances for transaction recovery.

  See Also:

  "Services and Distributed Transaction Processing in RAC" for information about how to configure DTP services to support distributed transactions

• Multiple Oracle Clusterware Files

  When you install Oracle Clusterware, you can select the option of using multiple voting disks that reside on independent shared physical disks. This removes the requirement that the voting disk use redundant storage; now Oracle provides the redundancy and you do not need to use third party storage solutions to duplicate the voting disk. You can also select the option of mirroring your Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR). In addition, you can replace, repair, or remove an OCR if it fails, and you can perform these operation while the OCR is online. If you do not select the OCR mirroring option during the Oracle Clusterware installation, then you can mirror the OCR later.

  See Also:

  Chapter 3, " Administering Oracle Clusterware Components" and your platform-specific RAC installation guide for more information about multiplexing the voting disk and the OCR

• Fast-Start Failover and Data Guard Environments

  Fast-start failover, which is provided with the Oracle Data Guard broker, enables failovers to occur automatically when a RAC primary database becomes unavailable. This occurs without DBA intervention and with no loss of data. When fast-start failover is enabled, the broker determines if a failover is necessary and automatically initiates the failover to a pre-specified target RAC standby database instance. Fast-start failover will not occur in a RAC environment until all instances comprising a RAC primary database have failed. Moreover, after a failover completes, the broker can automatically reinstate the former primary database as a standby database in the new configuration.

  See Also:

  Oracle Data Guard Broker for more information about Data Guard

• Expanded Enterprise Manager Monitoring Features

  You can use expanded Enterprise Manager monitoring features to:

  • Monitor cluster interconnects to see all of the configured interfaces and interfaces that individual cluster database instances use. A single page provides information such as the transfer rates achieved on these interfaces, and whether the interface is private or public. You can see historical data for interconnects from drilldowns across the cluster or for a specific database.

  • Improve scalability when monitoring clusters with a higher number of nodes. For example, the Performance page displays the maximum, minimum, and average loads across the cluster hosts, not just average load of each node. This enables you to quickly assess whether the load is evenly distributed. You only need to drill down to detailed information if a problem appears at the higher level Performance page.

  • View backup reports for a group of databases.

  • Global Cache Block Access Latency drilldowns. You can View the Global Cache Block Access Latency summary chart to see the end-to-end elapsed time or latency for a block request. You can drill down from there to the Cluster Cache Coherency page to see the cluster cache coherency metrics for the entire cluster database. This enables you to identify processing trends and optimize performance for your RAC environment.

• Expanded Enterprise Manager Instance Addition

  You can use Enterprise Manager to add instances to a RAC database.

• Expanded Enterprise Manager Service Administration

  You can use expanded Enterprise Manager service features for either Database Control or Grid Control to perform the following services tasks:

  • CreateDeleteUpdateTest connections

• Server Control Utility (SRVCTL) Enhancements

  If you create additional Listeners with non-default names, in other words, with names other than the name listener_nodename where nodename is the name of the node on which the Listener resides, then you must start and stop these Listeners with SRVCTL commands.

  See Also:

  Appendix E, " Server Control Utility Reference" for more information about SRVCTL

• MAX_COMMIT_PROPAGATION_DELAY—The MAX_COMMIT_PROPAGATION_DELAY parameter is deprecated. By default, commits on one instance are immediately visible on all of the other instances.

  See Also:

  Oracle Database Reference for more information about parameters and deprecated parameters

• Deprecated Views

  Several views were deprecated in Oracle Database 10g release 1 (10.1). The information in these deprecated views is either obsolete or the information was incorporated into the GV$INSTANCE_CACHE_TRANSFER, V$INSTANCE_CACHE_TRANSFER, GV$SEGMENT_STATISTICS and V$SEGMENT_STATISTICS views. The deprecated views are:

  • GV$CLASS_CACHE_TRANSFER and V$CLASS_CACHE_TRANSFER

  • GV$CACHE_LOCK and V$CACHE_LOCK

  • GV$FALSE_PING and V$FALSE_PING

  • GV$FILE_CACHE_TRANSFER and V$FILE_CACHE_TRANSFER

  • GV$GC_ELEMENTS_WITH_COLLISIONS and V$GC_ELEMENTS_WITH_COLLISIONS

  • GV$TEMP_CACHE_TRANSFER and V$TEMP_CACHE_TRANSFER

  • GV$LOCK_ACTIVITY and V$LOCK_ACTIVITY

• Windows Firewall Usage on Windows Server 2003

  Depending on which Oracle products you install and how they are used, you may need to perform additional Windows post-installation configuration tasks so that the Firewall products are functional on Windows Server 2003.

  See Also:

  Windows Firewall Considerations for more information about Windows Firewall post-installation requirements

Oracle Database 10g Release 1 (10.1) New Features for RAC Administration

This section describes the Oracle Database 10g release 1 (10.1) features for RAC administration.

• High Availability, Workload Management, and Services

  Oracle Real Application Clusters introduces integrated clusterware known as Cluster Ready Services (CRS). You install CRS on all platforms on which you can run Oracle Real Application Clusters software. CRS manages cluster database functions including node membership, group services, global resource management, and high availability.

  See Also:

  Oracle Real Application Clusters Quick Installation Guide for Oracle Database Standard Edition for Microsoft Windows to install the Oracle Database 10g Standard Edition with RAC on Windows systems

  In Oracle Real Application Clusters, you can use services to define application workloads by creating a service for each application, group of applications, or for major components within complex applications. You can then define where and when the service runs and thus use services to control your workload.

  In both cluster and non-cluster environments, the Automatic Workload Repository (AWR) tracks performance metrics using services. You can also set thresholds on performance metrics to automatically generate alerts if these thresholds are exceeded.

  See Also:

  Oracle Database PL/SQL Packages and Types Reference for more information about the DBMS_SERVICE PL/SQL and DBMS_MONITOR packages and for more information about setting thresholds.

• Enhanced Cluster Management Implementation

  In earlier releases of the Oracle Database, cluster manager implementations on some platforms were referred to as "Cluster Manager". In Oracle Database 10g release (10.1), Cluster Ready Services (CRS) serves as the clusterware software, and Cluster Synchronization Services (CSS) is the cluster manager software for all platforms. The Oracle Cluster Synchronization Service Daemon (OCSSD) performs some of the clusterware functions on UNIX-based systems. On Windows-based systems, OracleCSService, OracleCRService, and OracleEVMService replace the Oracle Database OracleCMService9i.

  Oracle Enterprise Manager, the Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA), and the Server Control (SRVCTL) Utility provide tools to administer clusters, RAC databases, and services.

• Enterprise Manager Enhancements for RAC

  This release includes the new Web-based Enterprise Manager Database Control with which you can manage a RAC database, and Enterprise Manager Grid Control for administering multiple RAC databases. Administration of RAC databases is greatly simplified because of more simplified drill-down tasks and because Enterprise Manager displays cluster-wide performance information. This is available for both single-instance Oracle and RAC databases.

  Enterprise Manager has several summary pages that show cluster database performance information at a glance; you no longer have to log in to each cluster database or display instance-specific pages to obtain a global view of cluster database performance.

• Expanded Enterprise Manager Service Administration

  You can use expanded Enterprise Manager service features for either Enterprise Manager Database Control or Grid Control to perform the following services tasks:

  • EditEnableDisableStartStop

• Enhancements for Flash Recovery Area and Automatic Disk-Based Backup and RecoveryA flash recovery area is an Automatic Storage Management (ASM) disk group, a file system, or a directory that serves as a default storage area for recovery files. RAC supports the Automatic Disk-Based Backup and Recovery feature that simplifies managing disk space and backup and recovery files.

• Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA) Enhancements

• Use DBCA to perform instance addition and deletion as well as database deletion.

• Database Upgrade Assistant (DBUA) Enhancements

  Use DBUA to upgrade from an earlier RAC version to Oracle Database 10g with RAC. When you upgrade from a Primary/Secondary environment, DBUA creates one service and assigns it to one instance as a preferred instance, and to the other instance as its available instance.

• Server Control (SRVCTL) Enhancements

  Enhancements to SRVCTL support the management of services and Automatic Storage Management (ASM) instances within RAC.

• Enhanced Recovery Parallelism on Multiple CPU Systems

  The default for instance, crash, and media recovery is to operate in parallel mode on multiple-CPU systems.

• Revised Error Messages for High Availability and Management Tools in Real Application Clusters

• The high availability error messages have been enhanced for this release.

• Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR) Enhancements

  The OCR contains configuration details for the cluster database and for high availability resources such as services, Virtual Interconnect Protocol (VIP) addresses, and so on.

• GCS_SERVER_PROCESSES Parameter

  There is a new, static parameter to specify the number of server processes for an instance's Global Cache Service (GCS) for routing inter-instance traffic among RAC instances. The default number of GCS server processes is calculated based on system resources with a minimum of 2. You can set this parameter to different values on different instances.