Oracle 10g RAC Overview

Oracle continues to redefine its high-availability solution by expanding the solid footprint achieved with Oracle 9i Real Application Clusters (RAC) and previously introduced with Oracle 6.2 Oracle Parallel Server (OPS). Oracle 10g RAC takes the 9i RAC technology to the next level by providing a complete clustering solution on all supported platforms. Oracle 10g RAC now offers its own portable clusterware and volume-management solutions with the introduction of Cluster Ready Services (CRS) and Automatic Storage Management (ASM), as detailed in Chapter 4, "Setting Up Automatic Storage Management." With the combination of CRS and ASM, there is no need to purchase any third-party cluster-management software for your RAC environment. Oracle 10g RAC also provides many enhancements for the Oracle database, such as improved installation process via the Oracle Universal Installer (OUI), improved cluster-migration support via the Database Upgrade Assistant (DBUA), improved rolling patch upgrade support with OPATCH, workload management via the 10g Service Management framework, and greater flexibility for adding and removing the number of nodes within a predefined cluster via the Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA). This chapter reviews the latest clustering features that have been introduced specifically for 10g Release 1 RAC, as well as previews what's to come with Oracle 10g Release 2.

10g RAC Standard Edition

Previously, you needed Oracle Enterprise Edition to install and configure Oracle RAC. Starting with Oracle 10g, however, any customer who has purchased the 10g Standard Edition, not Standard Edition One, is allowed to use the RAC option under the specific license limitations within the Standard Edition. If you use 10g Standard Edition RAC, the use of ASM is mandatory. All other third-party clusterware is prohibited. Also, 10g Standard Edition RAC users have a maximum of four CPUs within the entire cluster.