Oracle Database 11gR2: Installing Grid Infrastructure - Page 2

Installing Oracle Grid Infrastructure

I know this probably seems like an immense amount of preparation, but based on my numerous attempts at installing the Grid Infrastructure in both 32- and 64-bit environments, I’ve found that it’s important to perform it properly and carefully; otherwise, I’m just going to have to return to my checklist to figure out what I missed before I can complete the installation. But once these setup steps are completed, it’s time to begin installation of the Grid Infrastructure through Oracle Universal Installer (OUI). OUI gets a welcome facelift in this release, and that’s evident from the first panel that’s displayed after invoking the runInstaller command script from the Grid Infrastructure staging directory as shown in Figure 1.1 below:

Note that I’ve chosen the option to install Grid Infrastructure for a standalone server; the installation for a clustered environment like Real Application Clusters is obviously quite different. The next panel allows me to select which languages will be supported for this installation (Figure 1.2):

And now the beauty of using ASMLIB is apparent: It’s really easy to see which virtual disks are which because I’m able to label the mount points any way I choose for simpler management and identification, as shown in Figure 1.3.:

Now that my initial ASM disk group configuration is complete, the next two panels allow me to specify a strong, secure password (Figure 1.4) as well as assign appropriate operating system groups (Figure 1.5):

Note that the location for my Grid Infrastructure is placed within the same general path that a traditional Oracle database home would be placed, as shown in Figure 1.6 below.

And here’s a neat new feature! As shown in Figure 1.7, once Oracle 11gR2 has automatically verified that all prerequisites have been met, it identifies whether any of the issues detected can be ignored (at my peril, of course!) or even repaired automatically by generating a fixit.sh script:

Since I know from prior installation attempts that the reported issues are not “show stoppers,” I simply selected the Ignore All option on the panel, and OUI then presents me with a summary of what it intends to accomplish during the installation. Note another neat feature: I can tell OUI to generate a response file just by clicking the Save Response File ... button.

As the installation continues, OUI returns a summary of its status, but note that I can opt to view a detailed summary of that installation at any time by clicking on the Details button:

At last, the expected prompt to run the root.sh script – always a good sign that the majority of the installation is complete.

Now that all configuration assistants have completed their work, OUI pats me on the back for a job well done.

Next Steps

In the next article in this series, I’ll demonstrate how to configure the new ASM Clustered File System (ACFS) to show how ACFS makes short work of applying patches to the binary files for any Oracle Home so configured.

References and Additional Reading

Before you proceed to experiment with any of these new features, I strongly suggest that you first look over the corresponding detailed Oracle documentation before trying them out for the first time. I’ve drawn upon the following Oracle Database 11g Release 2 documents for this article’s technical details:

E10881-03 Oracle Database 11gR2 New Features

E10592-04 Oracle Database 11gR2 SQL Language Reference

E10595-06 Oracle Database 11gR2 Administrator’s Guide

E10713-04 Oracle Database 11gR2 Concepts

E10820-03 Oracle Database 11gR2 Reference

E10500-04 Oracle Database 11gR2 Storage Administrator’s Guide

And these Oracle MetaLink documents are also extremely helpful in setting up Grid Infrastructure for the first time:

462618.1 Cannot Find Exact Kernel Version Match For ASMLib (Workaround using oracleasm_debug_link tool)

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