Hardware requirements
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Hardware requirements

Depending on the type of setup planned, make sure you meet the necessary hardware requirements.

For basic clusters

See Table: Hardware requirements for basic clusters.

For campus clusters

See Table: Hardware requirements for campus clusters.

Table: Hardware requirements for basic clusters

Item

Description

SF Oracle RAC systems

Two to sixteen systems with two or more CPUs at 1 GHz or higher for Solaris SPARC systems.

Two to sixteen systems with two or more CPUs at 2 GHz or higher for Solaris x64 systems.

DVD drive

A DVD drive on one of the nodes in the cluster.

Disks

SF Oracle RAC requires that all storage disks support SCSI-3 Persistent Reservations (PR).

Note:

The coordinator disk does not store data, so configure the disk as the smallest possible LUN on a disk array to avoid wasting space.

Disk space

You can evaluate your systems for available disk space by running the product installation program. Navigate to the product directory on the product disc and run the following command:

# ./installsfrac -precheck node_name

For details on the additional space that is required for Oracle, see the Oracle documentation.

RAM

Each SF Oracle RAC system requires at least 2 GB.

Symantec recommends additional amount of at least twice the Oracle SGA size.

Swap space

See the Oracle Metalink document: 169706.1

Network links

Two or more private links and one public link.

Links must be 100BaseT or gigabit Ethernet directly linking each node to the other node to form a private network that handles direct inter-system communication. These links must be of the same type; you cannot mix 100BaseT and gigabit.

Symantec recommends gigabit Ethernet using enterprise-class switches for the private links.

You can also configure aggregated interfaces.

Fiber Channel or SCSI host bus adapters

At least one additional SCSI or Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter per system for shared data disks.

Table: Hardware requirements for campus clusters lists the hardware requirements for campus clusters in addition to the basic cluster requirements.

Table: Hardware requirements for campus clusters

Item

Description

Storage

  • The storage switch (to which each host on a site connects) must have access to storage arrays at all the sites.

  • Volumes must be mirrored with storage allocated from at least two sites.

  • DWDM links are recommended between sites for storage links.

    DWDM works at the physical layer and requires multiplexer and de-multiplexer devices.

  • The storage and networks must have redundant-loop access between each node and each storage array to prevent the links from becoming a single point of failure.

Network

  • Oracle requires that all nodes use the IP addresses from the same subnet.

  • Symantec recommends two Network Interface Cards (NIC) per host for LLT heartbeats. Oracle Clusterware requires one private and one virtual IP for each host.

  • Symantec recommends a common cross-site physical infrastructure for storage and LLT private networks.

I/O fencing

I/O fencing requires placement of a third coordinator disk at a third site. The DWDM can be extended to the third site or the iSCSI LUN at the third site can be used as the third coordination point. Alternatively Coordination Point Server can be deployed at the third remote site as an arbitration point.

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