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

[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

[davey23uk]

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

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

[mihaitanasescu]

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