RE: Oracle 10g RAC on AIX 5.3
- From: "Crisler, Jon" <Jon.Crisler@xxxxxxx>
- To: <jheinrichdba@xxxxxxxxx>, <richard.goulet@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 17:08:39 -0500
I just finished an implementation of 10.2.0.3 RAC on AIX 5.3, having
done many Linux and Solaris versions before.
OCFS / OCFS2 is only available for Linux and Windows. For AIX, GPFS or
possibly Veritas Cluster File System would be the way to go (I am not
positive that VCS is available for AIX). However, both are costly- we
decided purely on cost to go with ASM.
For ASM , you have the database and (optional) flash recovery area on
the SAN (which is presented as raw devices to ASM), and the Oracle home
on local disks (one home each for every RAC node). You also present raw
devices for the OCR and Voting disk- they are small (200mb or less) but
due to storage system limitations you might have a minimum size
requirement for a device. Our storage systems have a 1gb minimum size
for each LUN, and I have heard of up to 8gb for other systems, but each
is different.
ASM is actually easier to implement than I thought- you don't need to
worry about sharing, mounting etc. You just have your storage guy or
Unix sysadmin present the devices to the host, make sure the permissions
are correct for the Oracle user, and that the devices map correctly (for
example, /dev/rhdisk1 MUST be /dev/rhdisk1 on each and every node).
This is actually a subset of the tasks that they would have gone through
for a filesystem anyhow. Having separate Oracle homes makes patching a
bit more flexible, since you can do rolling upgrades which cannot be
done with a shared Oracle home. Not every patch is eligible for rolling
upgrades, but the patchsets generally are.
Backups must be done with RMAN: if you are still doing old-style
hotbackups at the filesystem level, then be prepared to abandon that
method. But if you are using RMAN then everything is covered. Both
Exports and Datapump can be used but you need to write to a filesystem.
Your direct question was: So the question, do we need OCFS, or GPFS, or
neither, or both?? The answer is Neither, or GPFS / VCS, depending on
what you want to do. The only drawback is that storage presented to ASM
can only be used by ASM.
For AIX on RAC, there are a number of OS modules required, and most are
detailed in the Oracle AIX manuals, but some are not- they become
identified as prereqs for the other modules. The Cluster Verification
Utility should point out what is missing. For instance, even in a
non-HACMP setup, you still need a bunch of HACMP modules that are part
of the base OS but not frequently installed.
________________________________
From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jason Heinrich
Sent: Monday, December 10, 2007 2:48 PM
To: richard.goulet@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Oracle 10g RAC on AIX 5.3
Last I checked, Oracle does not provide OCFS for AIX, so if the client
needs a clustered file system, GPFS would be the way to go. Whether or
not they need it depends on what they want to do. You could install the
Oracle software on each node and use ASM for the database storage.
However, if you want a shared ORACLE_HOME or a shared non-ASM logging
location, you'll need the clustered file system.
On 12/10/07, Goulet, Dick <richard.goulet@xxxxxxxxxxxxx > wrote:
Guys & Gals,
I've done Oracle RAC install on Linux before, but noiw I'm
being asked to do so on AIX 5.3 and I seem to be getting mixed signals
from Oracle. The client originally wants to install AIX 5.3 with GPFS,
but now to save a buck has decided not to install GPFS, but to instead
use OCFS. On the other hand the Oracle docs are telling me that a
clustered file system is only needed for the Oracle binaries. So the
question, do we need OCFS, or GPFS, or neither, or both?? Anyone really
know??
--
Jason Heinrich
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