Moving to Oracle RAC One Node

To remain competitive in a rapidly changing global economy, businesses are increasingly demanding higher levels of service availability and IT cost reductions through server and storage consolidations. Oracle RAC One Node is well suited to meet such challenges. This article covers how to implement Oracle RAC One Node on Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.

Oracle RAC One Node, a new option in Oracle Database 11g Release 2, is a single instance of Oracle RAC running on a node in a cluster. RAC One Node offers a form of virtualization where multiple databases can be consolidated on the same physical server, sharing a common pool of storage and server resources and thus reducing the physical IT footprints. It enhances protection from hardware or software failures and allows the ability to perform server maintenance and workload management by transparently relocating database instances to an available node. Oracle RAC One Node does not offer the same capabilities of Oracle RAC. However, when the need arises for scalability and high availability that Oracle RAC provides, an Oracle RAC One Node can easily be upgraded to a multi-node RAC (requires Oracle RAC license).

In this guide, we will demonstrate migrating our applications residing on an existing single database instance to Oracle RAC One Node and later converting the RAC One Node to a full RAC. We will also briefly explore some of the new RAC services in Oracle 11g Release 2.

Downloads for this guide:

  • Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.1.0) for Linux x86-64.
  • Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Grid Infrastructure (11.2.0.1.0) for Linux x86-64.

Note that as of this writing, Oracle RAC One Node is only available on Linux platform.

Overview

Our RAC One Node set up comprises of two Intel x86 servers running on Oracle Enterprise Linux 5. The Operating System has been installed and patched on both nodes and each has access to a shared storage and connectivity to the public and private network.

This guide is structured into the following steps:

1.  Preliminary Installation

2.  Install Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Grid Infrastructure software

3.  Install Oracle Database 11g Release 2 software

4.  Create ASM disk group for Fast Recovery Area

5.  Create Oracle Database 11g (appsdb)

6.  Initialize the Database to Oracle RAC One Node

7.  Migrate database applications to Oracle RAC One Node

8.  Oracle Database Migration with Omotion

9.  Create a second Oracle Database (racdb) on the spare node

10.  Initialize the second Database to Oracle RAC One Node

11.  Upgrade the second Database to Oracle RAC

An overview of our single database instance environment:

Host Name

OS Kernel

Memory

Processor

Service Name

Instance Name

Database Name

plaice

Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 (2.6.18-164.0.0.0.1.el5)

4GB

1 x Intel Xeon Dual Core, 2.0Ghz

finsdb

finsdb

finsdb

Software owner account and location:

OS User

Oracle Base

Oracle Home

oracle

/u01/app/oracle

/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1

File storage:

File System

Location

ext3

/u01/oradata/appsdb

IP Addresses:

Name

IP Address

plaice

192.168.1.180

An overview of the Oracle RAC One Node environment:

Host Name

OS Kernel

Memory

Processor

Service Name

Instance Name

Database Name

gurnard1

Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 (2.6.18-164.0.0.0.1.el5)

4GB

1 x Intel Xeon Quad Core, 2.0Ghz

appsdb

finsdb

appsdb_1

appsdb

gurnard2

Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 (2.6.18-164.0.0.0.1.el5)

4GB

1 x Intel Xeon Quad Core, 2.0Ghz

racdb

racdb_1

racdb

Software owner accounts and locations:

OS User

Oracle Base

Oracle Home

grid

/u01/app/grid

/u01/app/11.2.0/grid

oracle

/u01/app/oracle

/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1

File storage:

File

File System

Location

Redundancy

OCR and Voting Disk

ASM

+DATA

Normal

Database Files

ASM

+DATA

Normal

Online Redo Logs

ASM

+DATA, +FRA

Normal/External

Fast Recovery Area

ASM

+FRA

External

IP Addresses:

Name

IP Address

gurnard1

192.168.1.181

gurnard2

192.168.1.182

gurnard1-priv

10.10.10.181

gurnard2-priv

10.10.10.182

Grid Naming Service (GNS) VIP

192.168.1.208

And an overview of the Oracle RAC environment:

Host Name

OS Kernel

Memory

Processor

Service Name

Instance Name

Database Name

gurnard1

Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 (2.6.18-164.0.0.0.1.el5)

4GB

1 x Intel Xeon Quad Core, 2.0Ghz

racdb

racdb2

racdb

gurnard2

Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 (2.6.18-164.0.0.0.1.el5)

4GB

1 x Intel Xeon Quad Core, 2.0Ghz

racdb1

Software owner accounts and locations:

OS User

Oracle Base

Oracle Home

grid

/u01/app/grid

/u01/app/11.2.0/grid

oracle

/u01/app/oracle

/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1

File storage:

File

File System

Location

Redundancy

OCR and Voting Disk

ASM

+DATA

Normal

Database Files

ASM

+DATA

Normal

Online Redo Log

ASM

+DATA, +FRA

Normal/External

Fast Recovery Area

ASM

+FRA

External

IP Addresses:

Description

Name

IP Address

Public network address

gurnard1.vcconsult.com

192.168.1.181

Public network address

gurnard2.vcconsult.com

192.168.1.182

Private network address

gurnard1-priv.vcconsult.com

10.10.10.181

Private network address

gurnard2-priv.vcconsult.com

10.10.10.182

Grid Naming Service (GNS) VIP

gurnard.vcconsult.com

192.168.1.208

You’ll install the Oracle Grid Infrastructure and Oracle Database software on each node for high availability and redundancy.

Vincent Chan
Vincent Chan
Vincent Chan is a Senior Consultant at MSD Inc. He is an Oracle Certified Master DBA with more than ten years of experience architecting and implementing Oracle solutions for various clients.

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