Phases of Installation and Configuration

The basic installation and configuration process for an SFRAC cluster involves five phases. In addition to these phases, refer to this guide for details on upgrading a cluster with SFRAC 3.5 to SFRAC 4.1.

Phase One: Preparing and Configuring Hardware

Prior to installing Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC, set up the basic hardware. Details about supported hardware are on the VERITAS support web site: http://support.veritas.com.

Each cluster requires:

  Two or four nodes connected to the public network that are up and running the B.11.23.0409 HP-UX Base OS Auxiliary version of the HP operating system.

  Two or more 100BaseT or Gigabit Ethernet links directly linking each node to the other node to form a private network that handles direct system-to-system communication. VERITAS recommends switches for the private network links. These links must be of the same type; you cannot mix 100BaseT and Gigabit.

  Each node can access shared storage through a switch. This storage must support SCSI-3 persistent reservations.

Phase Two: Installing SFRAC and Configuring its Components

Installing SFRAC 4.1 and Configuring Components describes the procedures to install Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC. Verify system requirements for installation described in Requirements for Installing Components. Installing Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC involves:

  Running the installer utility or installsfrac and installsfrac -configure scripts to install and configure VCS, Volume Manager enabled for clusters (CVM), and VERITAS File System enabled for clusters (CFS). Included with this installation are other Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC modules and the VCS enterprise agent for Oracle. The script is interactive.

  Setting up I/O fencing. This includes:

• Running the vxfentsthdw script to verify shared storage can support I/O fencing.
• Setting up coordinator disks for the I/O fencing feature into a disk group.
• Editing the configuration file to set the UseFence=SCSI3 attribute.
• Shutting down and restarting the node.

Phase Three: Installing Oracle9i

After installing and configuring components of Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC, install Oracle9i Release 2. Refer to Installing Oracle9i Software for instructions on installing this software.

Phase Four: Creating the Database

Numerous procedures exist for creating a database. This guide describes how to create a starter database on raw volumes within a VxVM disk group or on a VERITAS cluster file system using the Oracle dbca utility. These procedures are provided in case database creation tools are not available. Refer to Creating a Starter Database.

Phase Five: Setting up VCS to Manage RAC Resources

Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC provides the capability to completely automate the RAC environment. This capability ranges from enabling automatic control of the entire database environment to having VCS mount cluster file systems or enable CVM and CFS daemons. The user or DBA is free to choose the level of control and automation.

VCS uses the main.cf configuration file (see Sample Configuration Files) to manage resources in the cluster. The SFRAC installation process creates a basic VCS configuration file. After installing Oracle and creating the database, you can modify the main.cf file on one of the cluster nodes to reflect the new resources and their configuration. The examples in Configuring VCS Service Groups for Oracle9i describe:

  Editing the CVM service group to define the location of the Oracle binaries, listener process for Oracle9i, and resources.

  Creating an Oracle service group to define the database and required resources.