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Oracle Grid Infrastructure Concepts

Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Objectives
After completing this lesson, you should be able to:
Explain the principles and purposes of clusters
Describe Cluster hardware best practices
Describe the Oracle Clusterware architecture
Describe how Grid Plug and Play affects Clusterware

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Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Oracle Grid Infrastructure

ASM and Oracle Clusterware are installed into a single home
directory called the Grid Infrastructure home.

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Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

What Is a Cluster?

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A group of independent, but interconnected, computers that

act as a single system
Usually deployed to
increase availability and
performance or
to balance a dynamically
changing workload

Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

What Is Clusterware?
Software that provides various interfaces and services for a
cluster. Typically, this includes capabilities that:
Allow the cluster to be managed as a whole
Protect the integrity of the cluster
Maintain a registry of resources across the cluster
Deal with changes to the cluster
Provide a common view of resources

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Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Oracle Clusterware
Oracle Clusterware is:
A key part of Oracle Grid Infrastructure
Integrated with Oracle
Automatic Storage
Management (ASM)
The basis for ASM Cluster
File System (ACFS)
A foundation for Oracle
Real Application Clusters
(RAC)
A generalized cluster
infrastructure for all kinds
of applications
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Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Oracle Clusterware Architecture and Services

Shared disk cluster architecture supporting application load

balancing and failover
Services include:

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Cluster management
Node monitoring
Event services
Time synchronization
Network management
High availability
Cluster Interconnect Link
Aggregation (HAIP)

Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Goals for Oracle Clusterware

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Easy installation
Easy management
Continuing tight integration with Oracle RAC
ASM enhancements with
benefits for all applications
No additional clusterware
required

Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Oracle Clusterware Networking

Each node must have at least two network adapters.

Each public network adapter must support TCP/IP.
The interconnect adapter must support:
User Datagram Protocol (UDP) or Reliable Data Socket (RDS)
for UNIX and Linux for database communication
TCP for Windows platforms for database communication

All platforms use Grid Interprocess Communication (GIPc).

Public network

NIC1
NIC2
NIC1
NIC2
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NIC1
NIC2

Interconnect: Private network

Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Grid Naming Service

GNS is an integral component of Grid Plug and Play.

The only static IP address required for the cluster is the GNS
virtual IP address.
The cluster subdomain is defined as a delegated domain.

[root@my-dns-server ~]# cat /etc/named.conf

// Default initial "Caching Only" name server configuration
...
# Delegate to gns on cluster01
cluster01.example.com #cluster sub-domain# NS cluster01-gns.example.com
# Let the world know to go to the GNS vip
cluster01-gns.example.com 192.0.2.155 #cluster GNS Address

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A request to resolve cluster01-scan.cluster01.example.com

would be forwarded to the GNS on 192.0.2.155.
Each node in the cluster runs a multicast DNS (mDNS)
process.
Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Single-Client Access Name

The single-client access name (SCAN) is the address used

by clients connecting to the cluster.
The SCAN is a fully qualified host name located in the GNS
subdomain registered to three IP addresses.

# dig @192.0.2.155 cluster01-scan.cluster01.example.com

...
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;cluster01-scan.cluster01.example.com. IN A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
cluster01-scan.cluster01.example.com. 120 IN A 192.0.2.244
cluster01-scan.cluster01.example.com. 120 IN A 192.0.2.246
cluster01-scan.cluster01.example.com. 120 IN A 192.0.2.245
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
cluster01.example.com. 10800
IN
A
192.0.2.155
;; SERVER: 192.0.2.155#53(192.0.2.155)

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The SCAN provides a stable, highly available name for

clients to use, independent of the nodes that make up the
cluster.
Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Grid Plug and Play

In previous releases, adding or removing servers in a

cluster required extensive manual preparation.
In Oracle Database 11g Release 2, GPnP allows each
node to perform the following tasks dynamically:
Negotiating appropriate network identities for itself
Acquiring additional information from a configuration profile
Configuring or reconfiguring itself using profile data, making
host names and addresses resolvable on the network

To add a node, simply connect the server to the cluster

and allow the cluster to configure the node.

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Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

GPnP Domain

The GPnP domain is a collection of nodes belonging to a

single cluster served by the GPnP service:
Cluster name: cluster01
Network domain: example.com
GPnP domain: cluster01.example.com

Each node participating in a GPnP domain has the

following characteristics:
At least one routable interface with connectivity outside of
the GPnP domain for the public interface
A unique identifier that is unique within the GPnP domain
A personality affected by the GPnP profile, physical
characteristics, and software image of the node

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Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

GPnP Components
Software image
A software image is a read-only collection of software to be
run on nodes of the same type.
At a minimum, the image must contain:

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An operating system
The GPnP software
A security certificate from the provisioning authority
Other software required to configure the node when it
starts up

Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

GPnP Profile
The profile.xml file:
$ cat GRID_HOME/gpnp/profiles/peer/profile.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><gpnp:GPnP-Profile Version="1.0"
xmlns="http://www.grid-pnp.org/2005/11/gpnp-profile" ...
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.grid-pnp.org/2005/11/gpnp-profile gpnp-profile.xsd"
ProfileSequence="4" ClusterUId="2deb88730e0b5f1bffc9682556bd548e" ClusterName="cluster01"
PALocation=""><gpnp:Network-Profile><gpnp:HostNetwork id="gen" HostName="*"><gpnp:Network
id="net1" IP="192.0.2.0" Adapter="eth0" Use="public"/><gpnp:Network id="net2"
IP="192.168.1.0" Adapter="eth1"
Use="cluster_interconnect"/></gpnp:HostNetwork></gpnp:Network-Profile><orcl:CSS-Profile
id="css" DiscoveryString="+asm" LeaseDuration="400"/><orcl:ASM-Profile id="asm"
DiscoveryString="/dev/sd*" SPFile="+data/spfile.ora"/><ds:Signature
<ds:SignedInfo>
<ds:CanonicalizationMethod Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2001/10/xml-exc-c14n#"/>
<ds:SignatureMethod Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#rsa-sha1"/>
<ds:Reference URI="">
<ds:Transforms>
<ds:Transform Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#enveloped-signature"/>
<ds:Transform Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2001/10/xml-exc-c14n#">
<InclusiveNamespaces xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/10/xml-exc-c14n#"
PrefixList="gpnp orcl xsi"/>
...
<ds:DigestMethod Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#sha1"/>
<ds:DigestValue>gIBakmtUNi9EVW/XQoE1mym3Bnw=</ds:DigestValue>
...
<ds:SignatureValue>cgw3yhP/2oEm5DJzdachtfDMbEr2RSfFFUlZujLemnOgsM...=</ds:SignatureValue>

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Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM)

ASM is a volume manager and file system.

ASM operates efficiently in both clustered and
nonclustered environments.
ASM is installed in the Grid Infrastructure home separate
from the Oracle Database home.
Application

Application

File system

ASM
Logical Volume Manager

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Operating system

Operating system

Hardware

Hardware

Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

ASM: Key Features and Benefits

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Stripes files rather than logical volumes

Provides redundancy on a file basis
Enables online disk reconfiguration and dynamic
rebalancing
Reduces the time significantly to resynchronize a transient
failure by tracking changes while disk is offline
Provides adjustable rebalancing speed
Is cluster-aware
Supports reading from mirrored copy instead of primary
copy for extended clusters
Is automatically installed as part of the Grid Infrastructure

Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

ASM and Grid Infrastructure

ASM provides enterprise-class shared storage for Oracle

RAC databases.
OCR and voting disks can be stored in Oracle ASM.
Storing OCR and the voting disk on Oracle ASM eliminates
the need for third-party cluster volume managers.

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Only one Oracle ASM instance is supported on a server.

When managing an ASM instance, the administration
activity must be performed in the Grid Infrastructure home.

Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Quiz
Which of the following statements regarding Grid Naming
Service is not true?
a. GNS is an integral component of Grid Plug and Play.
b. Each node in the cluster runs a multicast DNS (mDNS)
process.
c. The GNS virtual IP address must be assigned by DHCP.
d. The cluster subdomain is defined as a delegated domain.

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Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Quiz
Each cluster nodes public Ethernet adapter must support UDP
or RDS.
a. True
b. False

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Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Summary
In this lesson, you should have learned how to:
Explain the principles and purposes of clusters
Describe Cluster hardware best practices
Describe the Oracle Clusterware architecture
Describe how Grid Plug and Play affects Clusterware

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Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.