Oracle 10g SAN ..ASM required ? what about OS clustering Solaris ?

Hi guys,


I just finished all the Oracle admin workshops, the RAC course and the Sun Solaris clustering course and unfortunately next week I have to install an Oracle cluster with which I am free to choose whatever setup I'd like.

I have 2 Sun Servers and a Sun SAN available on both of them.

My questions come from these setup right now:

1) Should I use ASM ?
From what I read it's possible with RAC only raw devices or ASM...
2) for RAW devices is it sufficient to have only one made out of the SAN disk the OS sees ?
(does it also hold ORACLE_HOME? )
3) else should I use ASM with only 1 disk added, the one shared and viewed by both nodes which can mount the SAN ?
4) Why do many use Solaris OS clustering + RAC ?
Aren't the functions mutually exclusive ? (except the fact that Sun does it kernel based and Oracle user-space? )
5) Should I have both or only RAC in my small/medium setup ?

Sorry if the questions are too newbie..but I'm very confused right now...and the more I read with google the more confused I get.

If you have the time to clarify things in my head I'd be grateful.

Thanks,
Mihai

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mihaitanasescu

Hi guys,


I just finished all the Oracle admin workshops, the RAC course and the Sun Solaris clustering course and unfortunately next week I have to install an Oracle cluster with which I am free to choose whatever setup I'd like.

I have 2 Sun Servers and a Sun SAN available on both of them.

My questions come from these setup right now:

1) Should I use ASM ?
From what I read it's possible with RAC only raw devices or ASM...
2) for RAW devices is it sufficient to have only one made out of the SAN disk the OS sees ?
(does it also hold ORACLE_HOME? )
3) else should I use ASM with only 1 disk added, the one shared and viewed by both nodes which can mount the SAN ?
4) Why do many use Solaris OS clustering + RAC ?
Aren't the functions mutually exclusive ? (except the fact that Sun does it kernel based and Oracle user-space? )
5) Should I have both or only RAC in my small/medium setup ?

Sorry if the questions are too newbie..but I'm very confused right now...and the more I read with google the more confused I get.

If you have the time to clarify things in my head I'd be grateful.

Thanks,
Mihai

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1) If you want, its Oracles recommeded solution - but you can also use a cluster filesystem
2) have as many as you need - one per datafile is the usual, but if you are going with RAW, use ASM instead - adds a nice layer on top of it
3) see 2
4) there needs to be some clusterware, either Suns or Oracles so they know about each other - doesnt matter which it is
5) dont confuse RAC with the server clustering - they are independant, RAC relies on the clusterware installed beneath it - the only choice is whether to use oracles clusterware software, or someone elses

Hi davey,

Thanks for the answers..but I'd like to add some suplemental questions.

For point 1) from what I gather I could use:
ASM + SAN (and use the SAN drive as a filesystem instead of many raw devices..which are hard to maintain) and this would also handle the locking issues so that a cluster filesystem wouldn't be necessary..right ?

And a new question:
In my case which would you recommend..Oracle clusterware or Suns ?
I was thinking of Oracle in order to make debugging easier..like have only one product from ground level for doing everything and only looking there for any problems/errors.


Cheers,
Mihai