In the previous post, I have tried to explain how to install Grid Infrastructure on your VirtualBox instance. In this post, before moving to the next post in which I will be explaining RDBMS 11g Release 2 configuration, I wish to look at a new tool shipped with Grid Infrastructure, namely ASMCA(ASM Configuration Assistant).

We will not be going deep with ASMCA in this post but rather it will be just like a first contact with aliens. ASMCA is a very capable and accompanying tool with the new capabilities of ASM like ADVM or ACFS.

Starting with ASMCA

	Starting ASMCA is simple. Go to your GRID_HOME set ORACLE_SID to +ASM and run asmca binary. [oracle@localhost ~]$ export ORACLE_HOME =/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/grid [oracle@localhost ~]$ export ORACLE_SID = +ASM [oracle@localhost ~]$ $ORACLE_HOME/bin/asmca   As you will notice there is already one disk group namely DATA listed under Disk Gruops pane. This is the one created during Grid Infrastructure installation. Now click on Create to create our FRA diskgroup.
	As you click on Create button a new dialog to create your new disk group will appear.  Enter FRA for Disk Group Name textbox. Choose External(None) radio button to choose external ASM redundancy. Notice that not all disks (asm disks) are available for your use (this controlled by two radio buttons in Select Member Disks pane) Select all three disks for FRA. Now click on Show Advanced Options button to see RDBMS and ASM compatibilities.
	Notice that ASM and Database Compatibility fields are both set to 11.2.0.0.0 This means ASM instance will allow you to use all new features introduced in 11.2 for this diskgroup but the minimum RDMS instance can use this diskgroup should be in 11.2 release. Click on Hide Advance Options button and then OK to complete diskgroup creation.
	ASM will do the necessary initializations to create FRA diskgroup and switch back to initial screen after it is done.
	As you see FRA is created and mounted by your ASM instance.
	Now right click on your DATA diskgroup. In the list ASMCA allows you to Add Disks into the diskgroup Edit Attributes of the diskgroup Manage Templates for the diskgroup Mount/Dismount the diskgroup Drop the diskgroup Choose Edit Attributes from the list to see attributes of DATA diskgroup.
	As you see ASMCA enables the attribute fields those are possible to modify and disables the static ones (the ones fixed in creation of diskgroup). Click X to close this window.
	Click on Exit button to leave ASMCA.

ASMCA is the youngest member of Oracle *CA family. It seems that ASM users will be using it actively for management by the new features in 11g Release 2. Such as,

• ASM Volume (ADVM) Management
• ASM File System (ACFS) Management
• Read-only snapshot management

Read the post recently published in my company’s blog to learn how I become an Oracle expert.

In Oracle 11g Release 2 you will find that things have changed even for single instance database installation. I will try to illustrate in this series of posts how to install a single instance Oracle 11g Release 2 database to your Linux machines.

As the first part of our installation series, we will start by installing brand new Grid Infrastructure which you might think to be a fancy name for CRS+ASM but you will find out later that it is a bit more.

VirtualBox Configuration

Here is the sufficient VirtualBox virtual hardware configuration for your 11g Release 2 playground (Keep in mind that this is the bare minimum configuration to have a painless installation. More resource is obviously better):

Hardware	Amount	Description
Memory	512MB	Although minimum memory requirement for Oracle 11g Release 2 in a real production environment is documented to be 1024M, for all practical requirements of your playground 512MB will be sufficient.
Root Disk	16GB	16 GB root disk for OS+SWAP+Oracle Binary space will be sufficient
ASM Disks	6×2GB SCSI Disks	We will be doing an ASM based installation so 6 disks over SCSI interface will be enough to simulate a real life experience with ASM.

You are now ready to start your VirtualBox for Oracle 11g Release 2 installation.

Install Grid Infrastructure

Pre-work

There are a few important tasks in OS level we should complete before starting grid infrastructure installation.

Physical Partition Creation

The first thing is to create physical partitions over your virtual SCSI devices. Actually this is not crucial for ASM installation because ASM can use physical disk as a whole without any partition. However if you wish to create ASMLIB you will need those partitions.

Changing ASM devices ownership to oracle

Physical partitions we have created are owned by root. They should be changed to be owned by ASM user (oracle in our case) in order to make them visible for ASM discovery.

In order to make those changes permanent (if you reboot the system Linux will set all device owners back to root otherwise) you should create a udev permission file

Ensure /dev/shm is sufficiently sized

You should ensure that /dev/shm is minimum 256MB for a successful ASM installation (and 512-750M for RDBMS installation) with MEMORY_TARGET parameter.

You can resize tempfs online by using

In order to make this mount operation persistent you should modify the tempfs line in /etc/fstab file as follows:

Notice that although we have VirtualBox instance with 512M memory, Linux allows us to mount tempfs with a size of 750M. This most probably due to lazy allocation of memory over tempfs.

Create installation directory and set its ownership

Final step is to create our software directory and set the required ownership to it.

Installation

	[oracle@localhost ~]$ unzip linux_11gR2_grid.zip [oracle@localhost ~]$ cd grid [oracle@localhost grid]$ ./runInstaller
	Choose Install and Configure Grid Infrastructure for a Standalone Server option and click on Next > button.
	Set Selected Language language to English and click on Next > button.
	Next step is to perform ASM configuration for your grid. Choose External as the redundancy of DATA diskgroup. Now click on Change Discovery Path… button to define asm_diskstring parameter.
	Set Disk Discovery Path to /dev/sd?1 and click on OK
	Since /dev/sd?1 matches all six SCSI partitions and they are not members of any other diskgroup, installer will list all of them as Candidate disks.Check-out /dev/sda1,/dev/sdb1,/dev/sdc1 devices as members disks of DATA diskgroup then click on Next >Other disks will be used for Flash Recovery Area later on.
	Choose Use same passwords for these account for a simple configuration then set Specify Password and Confirm Password fields to same password strings and click on Next >.I will be using sysadm throughout the post for any Oracle password required.
	One of the security enhancements introduced in Release 2 is the separation of different levels of ASM access. This defines different roles for “Who can start/stop ASM instance ?”, “Who can add/drop disks to/from diskgroups?” or “Who can use those diskgroups at RDBMS level ?”For the simplicity of installation we will be setting all roles to dba group.Now set all three select lists to dba and click on Next >.
	Set Oracle Base to /u01/app/oracle and Software Location to /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/grid. Then click on Next >.
	Next step is unique to first Oracle software installation as you all may know. You should set Inventory Directory (if it is not already set by installer) to /u01/app/oraInventory. Keep oraInventory Group Name as oinstall and click on Next >
	In this step installer will check the installation prerequisites as it does in previous releases.
	By 11g Release 2, if any of the prerequisites fail it will be reported in a tree structure with different categories. In my case majority of the kernel settings are automatically managed since I have installed oracle-validated-configuration rpm during OEL installation.Only problem seems to be insufficiently sized core.net.wmem_max which is defined to be the maximum socket send buffer size.When you click on Fix & Check Again button, installer will generate a single shell script for you to correct all fixable errors and after its execution it will recheck for any possible problems left.
	Run the generated script as root user [root@localhost ~]# /tmp/CVU_11.2.0.0.2_oracle/runfixup.sh Response file being used is :/tmp/CVU_11.2.0.0.2_oracle/fixup.response Enable file being used is :/tmp/CVU_11.2.0.0.2_oracle/fixup.enable Log file location: /tmp/CVU_11.2.0.0.2_oracle/orarun.log Setting Kernel Parameters… net.core.wmem_max = 262144 net.core.wmem_max = 1048576 When the script is executed click OK to restart the prerequisite check process.
	As you see kernel parameter problem has gone. Other three errors can not be corrected by installer automatically, but we know that those are not critical ones. First one is PhysicalMemory error due to our VirtualBox 512 MB memory size. The second one is insufficient SwapSize that can be by-passed also for a play ground. And the final problem is RunLevel of Linux which is also not a great deal for us.Now check Ignore All and click on Next > (button will be enabled after checking out Ignore All) to continue.
	On the summary screen confirm that everything is ok and click on Finish to start installation.
	After installer successfully completes copy,install,link,etc steps it will pop-up a root.sh execution dialog. Run the required scripts as root. [root@localhost ~]# /u01/app/oraInventory/orainstRoot.sh [root@localhost ~]# /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/grid/root.sh Then switch back to installation dialog and click OK in Execute Configuration scripts dialog to proceed.
	Final tasks for installer will be to configure new HA service for ASM, diskgroup (DATA) and the default listener (on port 1521) which will be automatically configured also .
	Finally we are done Your ASM, default listener, and HA service is ready to be used.

Post Installation Checks

Login ASM

Check Default Listener Status

Check HA Targets

All you may now that RMAN DUPLICATE command has two modes by 11g Release 1. The first mode is the good old Offline Duplicate which is based on making backups of the source system available to target system first.

Although it is a very useful feature, the basic problem with that  is to keep a staging are (either on tape or disk) to duplicate your database. When it comes to duplicate VLDBs it is always a problem.

The second mode is the so-called Active Duplicate which requires no staging area at all, but utilize the TCP/IP network (SQL*Net Layer) on the fly to ship what ever required to duplicate your database.

I think this feature is one of the best features introduced in 11g Release 1 for DBAs who are constantly duplicating their databases  (either full or partial) as test,poc, or/and development environments.

In this post you will find a playground example of this perfect tool to clone an Oracle 11g Release 2 database running on VirtualBox over another VirtualBox machine.

Create a Listener in RDBMS Home (Clone Site)

As you might notice by 11g Release 2, Oracle has standardized the default listener to be located in grid home. So we will not be using the default listener (on port 1521) for our clone database but create a new one on port 1525.

	Choose “Listener configuration” option and click on “Next”
	Choose “Add” option and click on “Next”
	Choose LISTENERT as the “Listener name” and click on “Next”
	Choose TCP as the “Selected Protocols” and click on “Next”
	Set “Use another port number” field to “1521 and click on “Next”
	Choose “No”  and click on “Next”
	Click on “Next”
	Click on “Finish” to leave NETCA

Fine Tunes

There  are two  important fine tunes we should do. first one is to change listener HOST parameter to a valid IP address and then to modify the listener we have created in a way that listener can accept connections even when the clone instance is not up. So open listener.ora with your vi editor

First change the HOST parameter of the listener to an IP that can be accessible from the source machine (I have created a private network between to virtual machines, you can find how to do this on VirtualBox HOWTOs and tutorials page)

Then add SID_LIST for the LISTENERT:

Now you are ready to restart your  listener LISTENERT.First stop the listener

Then start it

At the bottom line of output if you see

you are done with the listener configuration.

Create a Seed Parameter File and Start Your Clone Instance (Clone Site)

In the next step, we will be starting the clone instance with a very primitive server parameter file to let RMAN to connect it and restore SPFILE from source site.

You can now start the instance with this seed parameter file

Create Password Files at Clone and Source Sites

Equality of passwords for SYS user is critical for DUPLICATE to work when clone and source instances are located on different hosts. I will be using SYSADM for SYS password.

Clone Site

Source Site

Switch to VirtualBox machine that contains the source database

Modify TNSNAMES.ORA at Source Site to Reach Clone Instance (Source Site)

Next step will be to add TNS entry for clone instance into the TNSNAMES.ora file of the source site:

Add the following lines into file then save & exit:

Ensure that you can connect to the NOMOUNT state clone instance over TNS from source site.

Create ADUMP Destination at Clone (Clone Site)

Audit log directory will not be generated by Oracle automatically as opposed to diagnostic destination directory hierarchy. So you should manually create before starting DUPLICATE. Now switch back to clone instance and create adump directory

Start DUPLICATE (Source Site)

After all, you are ready to run DUPLICATE. Switch back to source site and start DUPLICATE

You can find my duplicate.log file to see what RMAN is doing during DUPLICATE operation.

You are Done (Clone Site)

If duplication is completed without an error, your clone database will be up on the clone VirtualBox. Switch to clone VirtualBox instance and check it.

For More

• Refer to Oracle My Support Note 452868.1
• Duplicate Tahiti Reference

In Open World 2009, my second presentation was a joint session with my friend Timothy Chien who works for Oracle as Principal Product Manager of Database HA products. The room was almost full (~900 people).Thanks to all attendees.  It seems this topic is still hot . You can find Tim’s and my part below:

• Part 1 (Timothy Chien’s Presentation)
• Part 2 (Husnu Sensoy’s Presentation)

Here is the content of my first presentation in Open World 2009:

How to Achieve All in One with Oracle 11g

As you all may know Voltaire is one of the most prominent IB technology vendors and investors had the partnership with Oracle in building Exadata Version 1. Yet another beautiful thing about Voltaire is that it is one of the companies invest on Open Source technologies and HPC (High Performance Computing) a lot, like OFED stack development on Linux.

You can find my comments about Voltaire 20Gbit IB solution which we have already used in our large (25TB) RAC consolidation project on Oracle 11g Release 1.

Business Worldwide Choose Voltaire InfiniBand to Enhance  Performance and Scalability of Oracle RAC

ZFS (Zeta File System) is my favorite storage solution for Oracle databases (in some later post I may explain why) after ASM. Although ZFS is shipped with Solaris and Open Solaris, it is also possible to use (at least taste) it with FUSE file system in your favorite Linux distro. You can find how to use ZFS on your Ubuntu in ZED House (The ZFS on Linux with FUSE) article at Linux Pro Magazine (June 2009).

One problem for Oracle Enterprise Linux (or Red Hat if you like) distro in using ZFS was that FUSE was not shipped (and supported) until 5.4 which is the latest update. By now you can choose to install FUSE modules (development libraries, kernel & user modules, and management tools) and use any FUSE file system in your system.

It might be a bit tricky to enable ZFS on OEL 5.4 if you have no experience on FUSE, ZFS and Linux stuff. I will try to explain the installation step by step. In this post I will not dive into demos of ZFS which is available in Open Solaris related page.

Ensure that you have installed the FUSE packages during the OEL 5.4 Installation

The first point is to ensure that you have FUSE related packages (rpms)  installed with your OEL 5.4. You can ensure this by choosing the following packages during your installation:

• Development >> Development Libraries >> fuse-devel-2.7.4-8.el5.i386
• Base System >> Base >> fuse-2.7.4-8.el5.i386
• Base System >> Base >> fuse-libs-2.7.4-8.el5.i386

Download & Install SConS first

Since it is totally out of this post’s scope, I will not explain what SCons is but you can think it as a improved,cross-platform substitute for Make utility implemented in Python. ZFS-FUSE has been packed with SCons so you need to install SCons rpm first. You can download SCons rpm by clicking here (If you have any problems, click here to go sourceforge SCons download page).

Install SCons rpm as root user:

[oracle@localhost Desktop]$ su -
Password:
[root@localhost ~]$ cd /home/oracle/Desktop
[root@localhost Desktop]$ rpm -ivh scons-1.2.0.d20090919-1.noarch.rpm
Preparing...                ############################################ [100%]
     1:scons                  ############################################ [100%]

Download & Install ZFS-FUSE

Now you are ready to download and install ZFS-FUSE to your OEL 5.4. Either click here to download 0.5.0 version of zfs-fuse or directly go to download main page by clicking here. To build and install zfs-fuse

[root@localhost Desktop]# ark --extract zfs-fuse-0.5.0.tar.bz2
[root@localhost Desktop]# cd zfs-fuse-0.5.0/src
[root@localhost src]# scons
scons: Reading SConscript files ...
scons: done reading SConscript files.
scons: Building target ...

[root@localhost src]# scons install
scons: Reading SConscript files ...
scons: done reading SConscript files.
scons: Building target ...

Run ZFS-FUSE

Before using any ZFS command like zfs or zpool, you should first start up zfs-fuse daemon by

[root@localhost src]# cd zfs-fuse
[root@localhost zfs-fuse]# ./run &
[1] 8796

Test ZFS

There is a detailed test module packed with zfs-fuse. To check zfs-fuse is running you can use it. Before using it please ensure that /tmp has more than 2 GB of free space

[root@localhost zfs-fuse]# cd ../cmd/ztest
[root@localhost ztest]# ./runtest -T 300
Start date: Fri Sep 25 04:13:53 EEST 2009
5 vdevs, 7 datasets, 23 threads, 300 seconds...

After completing the test, its your responsibility to clear temporary files in /tmp

[root@localhost ztest]# cd /tmp
[root@localhost tmp]# rm ztest.*

If everything is fine, you are ready to play with zfs and apply any demonstrations mentioned above or you find on internet.

My second session will take place on 13th of October in Moscone South Room 104 at 14:30, and with session ID# S311394.

In this presentation we will be presenting together with my friend Timothy Chien who is a principal product manager in HA group (RMAN, data guard,etc) at Oracle.

For my part, I will be presenting the backup & recovery best practices of a newly implemented cluster environment (“all-in-one” RAC grid to be discussed in my other presentation) over 11g Release 1 in the first part. In the second part, I will be sharing my initial experiences about backup & recovery in 11g Release 2 over real Telco data warehouse data.

If you wish to learn more about real-life B&R experiences of a DBA who is responsible with +200 TB of data warehouse environment, join us at OOW.