Skip Headers
Oracle® Real Application Clusters Installation Guide
11g Release 1 (11.1) for Linux and UNIX

Part Number B28264-01
Go to Documentation Home
Home
Go to Book List
Book List
Go to Table of Contents
Contents
Go to Index
Index
Go to Master Index
Master Index
Go to Feedback page
Contact Us

Go to previous page
Previous
Go to next page
Next
View PDF

What's New in Oracle Real Application Clusters Installation?

This section describes Oracle Database 11g release 1 (11.1) features as they pertain to the installation and configuration of Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) The topics in this section are:

Changes in Installation Documentation

With Oracle Database 11g release 1, Oracle Clusterware can be installed or configured as an independent product, and additional documentation is provided on storage administration. For installation planning, note the following documentation:

Oracle Database 2 Day + Real Application Clusters Guide

This book provides an overview and examples of the procedures to install and configure a two-node Oracle Clusterware and Oracle RAC environment.

Oracle Clusterware Installation Guide

This platform-specific book provides procedures either to install Oracle Clusterware as a standalone product, or to install Oracle Clusterware with either Oracle Database, or Oracle RAC. It contains system configuration instructions that require system administrator privileges.

Oracle Real Application Clusters Installation Guide

This book (the guide that you are reading) provides procedures to install Oracle RAC after you have completed successfully an Oracle Clusterware installation. It contains database configuration instructions for database administrators.

Oracle Database Storage Administrator's Guide

This book provides information for database and storage administrators who administer and manage storage, or who configure and administer Automatic Storage Management (ASM).

Oracle Clusterware Administration and Deployment Guide

This is the administrator's reference for Oracle Clusterware. It contains information about administrative tasks, including those that involve changes to operating system configurations, and cloning Oracle Clusterware.

Oracle Real Application Clusters Administration and Deployment Guide

This is the administrator's reference for Oracle RAC. It contains information about administrative tasks. These tasks include database cloning, node addition and deletion, Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR) administration, use of SRVCTL and other database administration utilities, and tuning changes to operating system configurations.

Changes in the Install Options

The following are installation option changes for Oracle Database 11g:

New Components Available for Installation

The following are the new components available while installing Oracle Database 11g:

Enhancements and New Features for Installation

The following is a list of enhancements and new features for Oracle Database 11g release 1 (11.1):

Automatic Diagnostic Repository

The Automatic Diagnostic Repository is a feature added to Oracle Database 11g. The main objective of this feature is to reduce the time required to resolve bugs. Automatic Diagnostic Repository is the layer of the Diagnostic Framework implemented in Oracle Database 11g that stores diagnostic data and also provides service APIs to access data. The default directory that stores the diagnostic data is $ORACLE_BASE/diag.

The Automatic Diagnostic Repository implements the following:

For Oracle RAC installations, if you use a shared Oracle Database home, then the Automatic Data Repository must be located on a shared storage location available to all the nodes.

Oracle Clusterware continues to place diagnostic data in the directory CRS_home/log, where CRS_home is the Oracle Clusterware home.

Automatic Storage Management Fast Mirror Resync

ASM fast mirror resync quickly resynchronizes ASM disks within a disk group after transient disk path failures as long as the disk drive media is not corrupted. Any failures that render a failure group temporarily unavailable are considered transient failures. Disk path malfunctions, such as cable disconnections, host bus adapter or controller failures, or disk power supply interruptions, can cause transient failures. The duration of a fast mirror resync depends on the duration of the outage. The duration of a resynchronization is typically much shorter than the amount of time required to completely rebuild an entire ASM disk group.

See Also:

Oracle Database Storage Administrator's Guide

ASM and Oracle RAC Deinstallation and Other Configuration Assistant Enhancements

Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA), Database Upgrade Assistant (DBUA), and Oracle Net Configuration Assistant (NETCA) have been improved. These improvements include the following:

DBCA

DBUA

New SYSASM Privilege and OSASM operating system group for ASM Administration

This feature introduces a new SYSASM privilege that is specifically intended for performing ASM administration tasks. Using the SYSASM privilege instead of the SYSDBA privilege provides a clearer division of responsibility between ASM administration and database administration.

OSASM is a new operating system group that is used exclusively for ASM. Members of the OSASM group can connect as SYSASM using operating system authentication and have full access to ASM.

ASM Preferred Read Disk Groups

In previous releases, ASM used the disk with the primary copy of a mirrored extent as the preferred disk for data reads. With this release, using the new initialization file parameter asm_preferred_read_failure_groups, you can specify disks located near a specific cluster node as the preferred disks from which that node obtains mirrored data. This option is presented in Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA), and can be configured after installation. This change facilitates faster processing of data with widely distributed shared storage systems or with extended clusters (clusters whose nodes are geographically dispersed), and improves disaster recovery preparedness.

Automatic Storage Management Rolling Migration

Rolling migration for ASM enables you to upgrade or patch ASM instances on clustered ASM nodes without affecting database availability. Rolling migration provides greater availability and more graceful migration of ASM software from one release to the next. This feature applies to ASM configurations that run on Oracle Database 11g release 1 (11.1) and later. In other words, you must already have Oracle Database 11g release 1 (11.1) installed before you can perform rolling migrations.

Note:

You cannot change the owner of the Oracle ASM or Oracle Database home during an upgrade. You must use the same Oracle software owner that owns the existing Oracle ASM or Oracle Database home.

See Also:

Oracle Database Storage Administrator's Guide

Conversion of Single-Instance ASM to clustered ASM

Using either rconfig or Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control, you can convert an existing ASM instance from a single-instance storage manager to a cluster storage manager. You can convert ASM release 11.1 instances directly, and convert releases previous to 11.1 by upgrading the instance to 11.1, and then performing the conversion.

Data Mining Schema Creation Option

In Oracle Database 11g, the data mining schema is created when you run the SQL script catproc.sql as the SYS user. Therefore, the data mining option is removed from the Database Features screen of Database Configuration Assistant.

Oracle Disk Manager Network File System Management

Oracle Disk Manager (ODM) can manage network file systems (NFS) on its own, without using the operating system kernel NFS driver. This is referred to as Direct NFS. Direct NFS implements NFS version 3 protocol within the Oracle RDBMS kernel. This change enables monitoring of NFS status using the ODM interface. The Oracle RDBMS kernel driver tunes itself to obtain optimal use of available resources.

This feature provides the following:

Optimal Flexible Architecture (OFA) Simplified

With the development of Stripe and Mirror Everything architecture (SAME), and improved storage and throughput capacity for storage devices, the original OFA mission to enhance performance has shifted to its role of providing well-organized Oracle installations with separated software, configuration files and data. This separation enhances security, and simplifies upgrade, cloning, and other administrative tasks.

Oracle Database 11g release 1 (11.1) incorporates several changes to OFA to address this changed purpose.

As part of this change:

For Oracle RAC installations, Oracle requires that the flash recovery area and the data file location are on a location shared among all the nodes. The Oracle Universal Installer confirms that this is the case during installation.

This change does not affect the location of trace files for Oracle Clusterware.

See Also:

Oracle Database Administrator's Guide for detailed information about these changes, and Oracle Database Utilities for information about viewing alert log and list trace files with ADRCI

Oracle Configuration Manager for Improved Support

During custom installation, you are asked if you want to install Oracle Configuration Manager (OCM). OCM is an optional tool that enables you to associate your configuration information with your OracleMetaLink account. This can facilitate handling of service requests by ensuring that server system information is readily available.

Configuring the OCM tool requires that you have the following information from your service agreement:

In addition, you are prompted for server proxy information, if the host system does not have a direct connection to the Internet.

Support for Large Data Files

Large data file support is an automated feature that enables Oracle to support larger files on ASM more efficiently, and to increase the maximum file size.

See Also:

Oracle Database Storage Administrator's Guide

Switching a Database from Database Control to Grid Control Configuration

In previous releases, Database Configuration Assistant contains the functionality to configure databases while creating them either with Database Control or with Grid Control, or to reconfigure databases after creation. However, if you want to change the configuration from Database to Grid control, this requires significant work. With Oracle Database 11g, Database Configuration Assistant enables you to switch configuration of a database from Database Control to Grid Control by running the Oracle Enterprise Manager Configuration Plug-in.

Deprecated Components in Oracle Database 11g Release 1 (11.1)

The following components that were part of Oracle Database 10g release 2 (10.2) are not available for installation with Oracle Database 11g: