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Oracle® Grid Infrastructure Installation Guide
11g Release 2 (11.2) for Linux

Part Number E10812-03
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1 Typical Installation for Oracle Grid Infrastructure for a Cluster

This chapter describes the difference between a Typical and Advanced installation for Oracle grid infrastructure for a cluster, and describes the steps required to complete a Typical installation.

This chapter contains the following sections:

1.1 Typical and Advanced Installation

You are given two installation options for Oracle grid infrastructure installations:

1.2 Preinstallation Steps Completed Using Typical Installation

With Oracle Clusterware 11g release 2 (11.2), during installation Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) generates Fixup scripts (runfixup.sh) that you can run to complete required preinstallation steps.

The fixup script is generated during installation. You are prompted to run the script as root in a separate terminal session. When you run the script, it completes the following configuration tasks:

1.3 Preinstallation Steps Requiring Manual Tasks

Complete the following manual configuration tasks

1.3.1 Verify System Requirements

Enter the following commands to check available memory:

grep MemTotal /proc/meminfo
grep SwapTotal /proc/meminfo

The minimum required RAM is 1.5 GB for grid infrastructure for a cluster, or 2.5 GB for grid infrastructure for a cluster and Oracle RAC. The minimum required swap space is 1.5 GB. Oracle recommends that you set swap space to 1.5 times the amount of RAM for systems with 2 GB of RAM or less. For systems with 2 GB to 16 GB RAM, use swap space equal to RAM. For systems with more than 16 GB RAM, use 16 GB of RAM for swap space.

df -h

This command checks the available space on file systems. If you use standard redundancy for Oracle Clusterware files, which is three Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR) locations and three voting disk locations, then you should have at least 2 GB of file space available on shared storage volumes reserved for Oracle grid infrastructure files.

If you plan to install on Oracle ASM, then to ensure high availability of Oracle Clusterware files on Oracle ASM, you need to have at least 2 GB of disk space for Oracle Clusterware files in three separate failure groups, with at least three physical disks. Each disk must have at least 1 GB of capacity to ensure that there is sufficient space to create Oracle Clusterware files.

Ensure you have at least 4.5 GB of space for the grid infrastructure for a cluster home (Grid home) This includes Oracle Clusterware and Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM) files and log files.

df -h /tmp

Ensure that you have at least 1 GB of space in /tmp. If this space is not available, then increase the size, or delete unnecessary files in /tmp.

For more information, review the following section in Chapter 2:

"Checking the Hardware Requirements"

1.3.2 Check Network Requirements

Ensure that you have the following available:

1.3.2.1 Single Client Access Name (SCAN) for the Cluster

During Typical installation, you are prompted to confirm the default Single Client Access Name (SCAN), which is used to connect to databases within the cluster irrespective of which nodes they are running on. By default, the name used as the SCAN is also the name of the cluster. The default value for the SCAN is based on the local node name. If you change the SCAN from the default, then the name that you use must be globally unique throughout your enterprise.

In a Typical installation, the SCAN is also the name of the cluster. The SCAN and cluster name must be at least one character long and no more than 15 characters in length, must be alphanumeric, and may contain hyphens (-).

For example:

sales

If you require a SCAN that is longer than 15 characters, then select an Advanced installation.

Refer to the following section for the SCAN address requirements.

1.3.2.2 IP Address Requirements

Before starting the installation, you must have at least two interfaces configured on each node: One for the private IP address and one for the public IP address.

1.3.2.2.1 IP Address Requirements for Manual Configuration

The public and virtual IP addresses must be static addresses, configured before installation, and the virtual IP addresses for each node must not currently be in use. Oracle Clusterware manages private IP addresses in the private subnet on interfaces you identify as private during the installation interview.

Configure the following addresses:

  • A public IP address for each node

  • A virtual IP address for each node

  • A single client access name (SCAN) configured on the domain name server (DNS) for Round Robin resolution to three addresses (recommended) or at least one address.

The single client access name (SCAN) is a hostname used to provide service access for clients to the cluster. Because the SCAN is associated with the cluster as a whole, rather than to a particular node, the SCAN makes it possible to add or remove nodes from the cluster without needing to reconfigure clients. It also adds location independence for the databases, so that client configuration does not have to depend on which nodes are running a particular database. Clients can continue to access the cluster in the same way as with previous releases, but Oracle recommends that clients accessing the cluster use the SCAN.

Note:

If you manually configure addresses, then Oracle strongly recommends that you use DNS resolution for SCAN VIPs. If you use the hosts file to resolve SCANs, then you must provide a hosts file entry for each SCAN address.

See Also:

Appendix D, "Understanding Network Addresses"for more information about network addresses

1.3.2.3 Intended Use of Network Interfaces

During installation, you are asked to identify the planned use for each network interface that OUI detects on your cluster node. You must identify each interface as a public or private interface, and you must use the same private interfaces for both Oracle Clusterware and Oracle RAC. For interfaces that you plan to have used for other purposes--for example, an interface dedicated to a network file system--you must identify those instances as "do not use" interfaces, so that Oracle Clusterware ignores them.

You can bond separate interfaces to a common interface to provide redundancy, in case of a NIC failure, but Oracle recommends that you do not create separate interfaces for Oracle Clusterware and Oracle RAC. If you use more than one NIC for the private interconnect, then Oracle recommends that you use NIC bonding. Note that multiple private interfaces provide load balancing but not failover, unless bonded.

1.3.3 Check Operating System Packages

Refer to the tables listed in Section 2.8, "Identifying Software Requirements" for the list of required packages for your operating system, or use a system configuration script such as the Oracle Validated RPM, as described in Section 2.1, "Installing the Linux Operating System".

1.3.4 Create Groups and Users

Enter the following commands to create default groups and users:

One system privileges group for all operating system-authenticated administration privileges, including Oracle RAC (if installed):

# groupadd -g 1000 oinstall
# groupadd -g 1200 dba
# useradd -u 1100 -g oinstall -G dba oracle
# mkdir -p  /u01/app/11.2.0/grid
# mkdir -p /u01/app/oracle
# chown -R oracle:oinstall /u01
# chmod -R 775 /u01/

1.3.5 Check Storage

You must have space available on Automatic Storage Management for Oracle Clusterware files (voting disks and Oracle Cluster Registries), and for Oracle Database files, if you install standalone or Oracle Real Application Clusters Databases. Creating Oracle Clusterware files on block or raw devices is no longer supported for new installations.

Note:

When using Oracle Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM) for either the Oracle Clusterware files or Oracle Database files, Oracle creates one Oracle ASM instance on each node in the cluster, regardless of the number of databases.

1.3.6 Prepare Storage for Automatic Storage Management

Install the Linux ASMLIB RPMs to simplify storage administration. ASMLIB provides persistent paths and permissions for storage devices used with ASM, eliminating the need for updating udev or devlabel files with storage device paths and permissions.

If you cannot install the ASMLIB RPMs, or choose to configure your storage devices manually, then review the relevant sections in Chapter 3.

See Also:

Chapter 3, "Configuring Storage for Grid Infrastructure for a Cluster and Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC)" if you require detailed storage configuration information, or require more information about ASMLIB

ASMLib 2.0 is delivered as a set of three Linux packages:

  • oracleasmlib-2.0 - the ASM libraries

  • oracleasm-support-2.0 - utilities needed to administer ASMLib

  • oracleasm - a kernel module for the ASM library

Each Linux distribution has its own set of ASMLib 2.0 packages, and within each distribution, each kernel version has a corresponding oracleasm package.

1.3.6.1 Installing ASMLIB Packages Automatically with ULN

If you are registered with the Oracle Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN), then you can download and install ASMLIB packages for your system automatically. To install ASMLIB from ULN:

  1. Log in as root

  2. Run the following command:

    # up2date -i oracleasm-support oracleasmlib oracleasm-'uname -r'
    

    This command installs the support tools, the library, and the kernel driver for the Linux kernel version running on your system.

See Also:

Chapter 2, "Installing the Linux Operating System" for information about how to register for ULN

1.3.6.2 Installing ASMLIB Packages Manually

If you are not a member of ULN, or are using a Red Hat or SUSE Linux kernel, then complete the following procedures on each node that you intend to make a member of the cluster:

1.3.6.2.1 Determine the Correct Oracleasm Package

Determine which kernel you are using by logging in as root and running the following command:

uname -rm

For example:

# uname –rm
2.6.9-5.ELsmp i686

The example shows that this is a 2.6.9-5 kernel for an SMP (multiprocessor) server using Intel i686 CPUs.

1.3.6.2.2 Download and Install the Oracleasm Package

After you determine the kernel version for your system, complete the following task:

  1. Open a Web browser using the following URL:

    http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/linux/asmlib/index.html
    
  2. Select the link for your version of Linux.

  3. Download the oracleasmlib and oracleasm-support packages for your version of Linux.

  4. Download the oracleasm package corresponding to your kernel version.

  5. Log in as root and install the Oracle ASM packages.

1.3.6.2.3 Configure ASMLib

Log in as root, and enter the following command:

# oracleasm configure -i

Provide information as prompted for your system. the oracleasm command by default is in the path /usr/sbin. If you enter the command oracleasm configure without the -i flag, then you are shown the current configuration.

See Also:

Section 3.3.1.4.1, "Installing and Configuring the ASM Library Driver Software" for additional information about configuration

1.3.6.3 Mark ASM Candidate Disk Partitions

For OUI to recognize partitions as Oracle ASM disk candidates, you must log in as root and mark the disk partitions that Oracle ASM can use. To mark a disk for use by ASM, enter the following command syntax, where ASM_DISK_NAME is the name of the Oracle ASM disk group, and candidate_disk is the name of the disk device that you want to assign to that disk group:

oracleasm createdisk ASM_DISK_NAME candidate_disk

For example:

# oracleasm createdisk data1 /dev/sdf

1.3.7 Install Oracle Grid Infrastructure Software

  1. Start OUI from the root level of the installation media. For example:

    ./runInstaller
    
  2. Select Install and Configure Grid Infrastructure for a Cluster, then select Typical Installation. In the installation screens that follow, enter the configuration information as prompted.

    If you receive an installation verification error that cannot be fixed using a fixup script, then review Chapter 2, "Advanced Installation Oracle Grid Infrastructure for a Cluster Preinstallation Tasks" to find the section for configuring cluster nodes. After completing the fix, continue with the installation until it is complete.