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Pre-installation

This chapter describes the pre-installation and configuration tasks required for Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Guard. It contains the following sections:

• Installation Overview

• System Installation Requirements

• Setting the Environment

Installation Overview

To install Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Guard, perform the following tasks:

1. Check the prerequisites: Ensure that the system meets the hardware, software, memory, and disk space requirements for Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Guard.

   See Also: See "System Installation Requirements" for information about requirements.

2. Set up the UNIX environment: Ensure that the UNIX environment is set up correctly for Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Guard.

   See Also: See "Setting the Environment" for information about setting up the UNIX environment.

3. Set up the Oracle environment: Ensure that a two-node cluster has been created and configured.

   See Also: See "Setting the Environment" for information on setting up the Oracle environment.

4. Configure Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Guard: Use the provided setup utility (PFSSETUP) to configure Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Guard.

   See Also: See Chapter 2, "Configuration Tasks" for information about configuring Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Guard.

5. Perform post-installation tasks: Start Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Guard and ensure that it is correctly installed and configured.

   See Also: See Chapter 3, "Post-Installation Tasks" for information about post-installation tasks.

System Installation Requirements

Verify that the system meets the requirements described in the following sections before installing Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Guard:

• Restrictions

• Operating System Components

• Oracle Product Requirements

• Network Requirements

Restrictions

The following restrictions apply to Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Guard:

• Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Guard uses the physical host name, that is the output of the hostname command, interchangeably with cluster node names. Therefore, make sure that the cluster node name is the same as host name.

• Oracle9i Real Application Cluster Guard does not allow the host name (node name) to have any special characters such as hyphens, dashes, dots and so on. This also implies that the host name (node name) cannot have the domain name included in it. Make sure that the host name (node name) does not include any of the following characters:

  /\:*?<>|"%#+!@~&^()-_'[]{};=.,
  
  

• Oracle9i Real Application Cluster Guard is supported only on 2 cluster nodes.

• The Oracle9i Real Application Clusters database must be running in Primary/Secondary configuration.

  Note: For information on how to run Oracle9i Real Application Clusters in Primary/Secondary configuration, refer to Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Concepts.

Operating System Components

The operating system dependent layer provides the services required for proper operation of Oracle9i Real Application Clusters. Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Guard also requires these components, but might require different versions from the Oracle9i Real Application Clusters software. Table 1-1 shows the operating system software components required for Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Guard.

Table 1-1 Operating System Software Components

Table 1-2 lists the commands required to determine the operating system patches for each platform.

Table 1-2 Commands to Use to Determine Operating System Patches

Oracle Product Requirements

Table 1-3 lists the products that must be installed and running before you install Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Guard.

Table 1-3 Oracle Product Requirements for Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Guard

Network Requirements

You must pre-allocate two relocatable IP addresses, one for each Real Application Clusters Guard Pack, for use by client connections. These relocatable IP addresses are used as logical hosts, and Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Guard configures the availability of the relocatable IP address as required. For information on setting up relocatable IP addresses, refer to your system documentation.

Use the following parameters to specify the relocatable IP address in the Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Guard setup configuration file:

• PFS_IP_PACK_HOSTA

• PFS_IP_PACK_HOSTB

After you run the PFSSETUP utility, as described in Chapter 2, these relocatable IP addresses are associated with the public network adapter. If the Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Guard Pack is moved to another node, these relocatable IP addresses are also moved.

For Sun Cluster 3.0, specify the public network adapter using the PFS_NET_IF_A and PFS_NET_IF_B configuration parameters. The public network adapter must already be part of a Network Adapter Failover (NAFO) group. Before installing Real Application Clusters Guard, create a NAFO group to host the relocatable IP address for a Real Application Clusters Guard Pack. Refer to the Sun Cluster 3.0 Installation Guide for more information on NAFO groups.

Implementation

Please note the following:

• On Sun Solaris, each Real Application Clusters Guard Pack is implemented as a resource group. For information on resource groups, refer to the Sun Cluster 3.0 documentation.

• For HP 9000 Series HP-UX systems, each Real Application Clusters Guard Pack is implemented as a package. For more information on packages, refer to Configuring OPS Clusters with Service Guard OPS Edition.

• For Compaq tru64 systems, each Real Application Clusters Guard Pack is implemented as a Application Resource. For more information on Application Resources, refer to Cluster High Available Applications and Cluster Administration.

• For IBM AIX HACM systems, each Real Application Clusters Guard Pack is implemented as a Application Monitor, refer to the IBM RedBook Exploring HACMP 4.4:Enhancing the capabilities of Cluster Multi-Processing.

Setting the Environment

This section describes how to set up the environment. It contains the following sections:

• Set Up Tasks to Perform as the root User

• Set Up Tasks to Perform as the oracle User

Set Up Tasks to Perform as the root User

As the root user, configure the system for Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Guard by setting the enviroment options described in Table 1-4.

Table 1-4 UNIX Environment  

# <hostname> <username>
hosta oracle
hostb oracle

Set Up Tasks to Perform as the oracle User

Log in to the oracle account and perform the following tasks, if required:

1. Set environment variables.

   Table 1-5 lists required and optional environment variables to use for Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Guard.

   Table 1-5 Environment Variables  

   Environment Variable	Requirement	Description
   DB_NAME	Required	Specifies the value of the initialization parameter DB_NAME entered during the Oracle installation process or during database creation.
   ORACLE_BASE	Optional	Specifies the directory at the top of the Oracle software and administrative file structure. Not required, but recommended as part of an OFA-compliant configuration. Note: Do not set the ORACLE_BASE variable if you are not using an OFA-compliant configuration.
   ORACLE_HOME	Required	Specifies the directory containing the Oracle software for a particular release. Ensure that the ORACLE_HOME environment variable specifies a directory that does not already contain any Oracle software.
   ORACLE_SID	Required	Specifies the system identifier, or SID, for the Oracle Server instance. Because the SID is incorporated into many filenames, Oracle Corporation recommends restricting it to no more than four characters, to avoid filename problems on different systems. The SID for each instance in a Real Application Cluster database must be unique and should incorporate the name of the database it uses.
   ORACLE_SERVICE	Required	Specifies a unique identifier for the Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Guard environment. This value is used to identify each Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Guard environment. You can set this variable to the same value as the DB_NAME environment variable. Use the ORACLE_SERVICE environment variable to distinguish between Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Guard environments.
   ORA_NLS33	Optional	Specifies the location of the global technology character set data. Required if the *.nlb files are not in the default location, which is $ORACLE_HOME/ocommon/nls/admin/data.
   NLS_LANG	Optional	Required if you creating a database that uses a character set other than US7ASCII.
   PATH	Required	Specifies the search path for shell executables: For Sun Solaris, include the following directories: $ORACLE_HOME/bin, /usr/ccs/bin, /usr/bin, /etc, and /usr/local/bin if it exists For HP-UX, include the following directories: $ORACLE_HOME/bin, /usr/ccs/bin, /usr/bin, /etc, /usr/bin/X11, and /usr/local/bin if it exists For Tru64, include the following directories: $ORACLE_HOME/bin, /usr/bin, /etc, /usr/bin/X11, and /usr/local/bin, if it exists For AIX, include the following directories: $ORACLE_HOME/bin, /usr/bin, /etc, /usr/lbin, /usr/bin/X11, and /usr/local/bin, if it exists

   See Also: For more information on environment variables, refer to the Oracle9i Administrator's Reference for UNIX Systems.

2. Check for user equivalence of the oracle account by performing a remote login (rlogin) to each node in the cluster, including the local node. If you are prompted for a password, the oracle account does not have user equivalence. Ensure that you give the same attributes to all the nodes in the cluster.

3. Make sure that you have a two node Oracle9i Real Application Clusters database running and tuned with the Oracle products as listed in Table 1-3 installed. The alert log contains entries showing whether the Oracle9i Real Application Clusters software is running.

   Note: Make sure that the Real Applications Clusters database is running and performing as expected in a Primary/Secondary configuration. Make sure that the database is properly tuned for runtime performance as well as instance recovery. Refer to the Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Guard Concepts and Administration Guide for more information on possible configurations.