About VCS requirements for installing Oracle
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About VCS requirements for installing Oracle

Make sure you meet the following requirements to install Oracle in a VCS cluster:

Kernel parameter configuration

Each node on which you want to install Oracle must meet the following Oracle configuration requirements:

  • Disk partitions

  • Shared memory

  • Swap size

  • Semaphores

  • File handles

See Oracle documentation for the corresponding operating system for specific requirement details.

Linux package group

Veritas recommends you to select the Software Development package option when you install Linux. This option is required for relinking Oracle at install time and to take advantage of some Advanced Server features.

Location of the $ORACLE_HOME

Depending on your environment, you can place the Oracle home directory ($ORACLE_HOME) in one of the following ways:

  • Locally on each server's disk

  • On the shared storage.

If you want to use Oracle ASM, then you must place the Oracle home directory only on the local disks of each node.

Review the advantages of each approach to make a decision.

See Location of the $ORACLE_HOME.

Configurations with multiple Oracle instances (SIDs)

You can have multiple Oracle instances that are defined in a single cluster. In such cases, the parameter file for each instance must be accessible on all the nodes in the service group's SystemList attribute.

Note:

If you installed multiple versions of Oracle on the same system, make sure that the SIDs are unique.

Location of Oracle database tablespaces

If you plan to create the tablespaces using regular (ext3 or VxFS) files, the file systems that contain these files must be located on shared disks. Create the same file system mount points on each node.

If you use raw devices on shared disks for Oracle tablespaces, you must meet the following requirements:

  • The ownership must be Oracle dba user.

  • The permissions or access mode must be 660 on the raw devices that store the Oracle data.

For example, if you use Veritas Volume Manager, type:

    # vxedit -g diskgroup_name set group=dba \
    user=oracle mode=660 volume_name

Note:

The user oracle and the group dba must be local and not Network Information Service (NIS and NIS+) users

Transparent listener failover

You can enable Oracle Server clients to reconnect after a node switch without reconfiguring. For such reconnections you must include at least one IP resource in the service group for the Oracle resource. The hostname mapping the IP address of this resource must be used for the Host field in the file $TNS_ADMIN/listener.ora.

If you use the TCP/IP protocol for Oracle client/server communication, verify that the file /etc/services contains the service name of the Oracle Net Service. You must verify this file on each node that is defined in the service group's SystemList attribute.

Listener authentication in VCS environment

The Netlsnr agent supports OS authentication as well as password authentication for the listener process. If you use Oracle 10g or later, recommends you to configure OS authentication. If you want to configure a listener password, make sure that you configure the password correctly. A misconfigured password can cause the listener to fault.

See Encrypting Oracle database user and listener passwords.

Refer to the Oracle documentation for details on configuring the listener authentication.

Hot backup of Oracle database in VCS environment

The hot backup of Oracle database is enabled by default in VCS environment.

A node can fail during a hot backup of an Oracle database. During such failures, VCS can fail over to another node only if the following requirements are met:

If you do not meet VCS requirements, you must manually end the hot backup and then fail over Oracle to another node.

Note:

If a node fails during a hot backup of container database or pluggable database for Oracle 12C, you must set AutoEndBkup attribute of the corresponding CDB resource to 1. When the AutoEndBkup is set to 1 for the CDB, it also ends the backup of both CDB and PDB during Online.

See Failing over Oracle after a VCS node failure during hot backup.

Note:

If you set the AutoEndBkup attribute value to 0, then to avoid unexpected VCS behavior you must enable detail monitoring.

See Setting up detail monitoring for VCS agents for Oracle.

Storage devices for Oracle ASM configurations in VCS

You can choose one of the following storage devices for Oracle ASM:

  • ASM disks as raw disks

    If you use raw disks, then make sure that the disks have the persistent permissions that are specified for ASM $ORACLE_HOME.

  • ASM disks as Veritas Volume Manager volumes

    If you use VxVM volumes, then make sure that the disks have persistent permissions across reboots. The permissions must be the same as that of ASM $ORACLE_HOME.

    See Veritas Volume Manager documentation.

  • ASM disks as Cluster Volume Manager volumes

    If you use CVM volumes, then make sure that the disks have persistent permissions across reboots. The permissions must be the same as that of ASM $ORACLE_HOME.

    See Veritas Volume Manager documentation.

If you want to configure mirroring for ASM disks that use VxVM or CVM volumes, then you must configure VxVM mirroring and not configure ASM mirroring.

From Oracle 11g R2 or 12c, the ASMInst agent does not support pfile or spfile for ASM instances on the ASM disk groups. recommends that you copy this file from ASM disk group to the local file system.

More Information

Sample Oracle ASM configurations

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Before you install Oracle in a VCS environment Home Location of the $ORACLE_HOME