10g RAC Installation and Migration Enhancements


Oracle 10g offers several exciting enhancements for RAC installation and migration. First, as mentioned earlier in this chapter, 10g introduces Cluster Ready Services (CRS). Because CRS provides the needed clusterware for the 10g RAC environment, you must install CRS before installing the RAC database. After you have verified that the CRS stack has been successfully installed and is operational on each node, you are ready for the RDBMS install.

Local Versus Shared Install

As you noticed while installing the CRS_HOME, you also have the option to install the RDBMS or ORACLE_HOME in a shared or local environment. Again, installing in a shared environment is very much like installing in a single environment. When installing in a shared environment, all ORACLE_HOME and ORACLE_BASE files can be accessed from any node within the cluster. For more information about managing RAC in a shared environment, please reference the section "Third-Party Cluster Management Support" later in this chapter.

Installing in a local environment is also the same as with your previous CRS install, but the files will be pushed to each remote node via the new 10g OUI. If installing locally, all ORACLE_BASE alert, trace, and diagnostic files will be generated locally on each node. Therefore, you will also need to reference the location of ORACLE_BASE for future reference. Local installs are actually preferred over shared installs, mainly to support the new rolling patch upgrades now available with 10g (actually, they've been available since 9.2.0.2). For more detail about rolling patch support, please reference the "Limited Rolling Upgrade with OPATCH" section later in this chapter.

Installing the 10g ORACLE_HOME

As pointed out in Chapter 2, "Installing Oracle Database 10g," the new installation method for Oracle 10g is much faster than ever before. The fact that the installation media are now distributed on one CD-ROM is an added bonus. Gone are the days of having to swap and/or stage disks in order to install the RDBMS. It's worth noting, however, that many items that were previously part of the database installation media have been relocated to another CD-ROM known as the "companion CD." Please check with your install documentation to determine whether you need anything from the companion CD after you install the RDBMS media.

During the RAC install process, the 10g OUI will actually use SSH (Secure Shell) or RSH (Remote Shell) to perform tests on the nodes of your cluster. Be sure you have one of these utilities correctly configured (that is, without promoting for a password) before starting any installation.


The overall installation process for 10g RAC has been improved to provide a single-install image. This single-install image has been added to improve the experience of installing a RAC database as well as to support any future node additions if you choose to add any future nodes to your environment. With previous RAC installs, DBAs had the option of installing the RDBMS on all available nodes in a single operation, but because only one installation could be run at a time, all cluster nodes had to be consistent with the location of the ORACLE_HOME and installed products, and the installer could not detect any violations with the install process. The Oracle 10g OUI now ensures that the RAC installation proceeds after several prerequisite node checks. If any of your nodes are not correctly configured, the installation process will fail and display the necessary error message for correction.

Adding a Node to or Removing a Node from an Existing ORACLE_HOME

Another new feature with the 10g OUI is the ability to add a new node to an existing Oracle binary install. In this case, you have either added a new node to your RAC environment or you previously installed the product in a subset selection of nodes within the cluster. In any case, the 10g OUI will be able to successfully clone an existing product installation to the new node.

To perform the clone process, you must begin the installation process on a node where the ORACLE_HOME is currently located. When the Welcome screen appears, you have the choice to install from a stage location or install from an existing Oracle Home. In this case, you will need to select to install from an existing Oracle Home and provide the correct name for the Oracle Home (source) for the cloning process. When you click the Next button, you will see the Add Node page. Here you can select the nodes (target) that you wish to add the previously selected Oracle Home. When you click the Next button, the 10g OUI will perform the same checks as before. Again, these checks are needed to ensure that the node will be a successful addition into the cluster installation. If any errors exist, the installation process will fail, and you will see the specific error message for you to correct. After clicking Next, you will see an informational page of selected nodes from which you can clone the source Oracle Home. From this page, if you see a node that is no longer part of the installation cluster, it will have a Not Available message. Before proceeding with this installation, you must remove or correct the inventory information for the missing node. If this is not corrected or if the node is not removed, the installation process will fail when you try to update the inventory on the selected nodes. To remove any unwanted nodes from your environment, use the Inventory Dialog page discussed in a moment.

After you have a successful node list from the selected node page, your installation will continue in the same way as your previous install did.


To remove or detach a node from an existing Oracle Home, you must use the Inventory Dialog page. To access this page, click the Installed Products link on one of the early install screens or click Detach Nodes on the Selected Node Informational page as described previously. The Inventory Dialog page displays a list of nodes, and a list of products installed on each node. To remove a node, select the target node from the list, and then click Remove Nodes at the bottom of the page. Detaching a node using the Inventory Dialog page does not remove the entire ORACLE_HOME contents from the target node, but simply relinks the target node without the RAC option. Actually, you could still use the ORACLE_HOME in a single-node environment; in order to completely remove the ORACLE_HOME contents, however, you will need to access the Deinstall Products page from the Welcome page.

Migrating from a Previous Release

The 10g Database Upgrade Assistant (DBUA) has been updated to provide support for migrating previous versions of RAC databases to a 10g RAC environment. Specifically, 10g DBUA can now upgrade Oracle 8 and Oracle 8i Oracle Parallel Server (OPS) databases to 10g RAC, as well as support Oracle 9i RACto10g RAC. Upon successful completion of the 10g DBUA migration, all necessary CRS resources are created and started. DBAU actually ensures that the required CRS nodeapps (GSD, VIP, ONS, and listeners) exist on each node within the cluster. Overall, DBUA has the same functionality as it did in Oracle 9i; you will, however, notice additional wizard pages specifically designed for detecting errors for cluster migrations.



    Oracle Database 10g Insider Solutions
    SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 Administrators Handbook
    ISBN: 672327910
    EAN: 2147483647
    Year: 2006
    Pages: 214

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