I recently got an opportunity to do some testing with a Dell Powerstore 5000T all-flash storage array, so I thought I would share some of the notes I made during my testing, for the benefit of any DBAs who might be using one to deliver ASM disks to their Oracle databases.
This will be part of a series of posts that focus on the management of Oracle and ASM with Powerstore, so consider this post as a foundational topic. Nothing especially earth shattering, but some solid points nonetheless.
Oracle Partitioning is a great feature.
Large tables can be partitioned into smaller pieces based on data ranges, values or dates, and queries that are designed to respect the partitioning scheme can automatically discount from consideration partitions that do not contain applicable data.
Partitions can be added or removed, moved, made read only, and so on.
That is only a very brief overview of the benefits of partitioning to large database tables, and anyone who had designed a data warehouse will understand why this feature is so powerful.
But it is also very expensive.
Oracle Partitioning is only available as an add-on cost to the already expensive Enterprise Edition license.
But what about if you want to realize some of these benefits without paying for the Partitioning option? Taking this even further could we implement some form of Partitioning with the massively less expensive Standard Edition?
So your dutiful Infrastructure Team upgrades the Data Domain backup appliance with the latest DD OS code and patches, bringing you up to the latest patch level.
After this, your RMAN backups using DD Boost start failing, and checking the sbtio.log file, which is found in the user dump destination, we see entries like this:
SBT-27970 (211074992) 04/01/16 21:45:01 ERR : [6D42:C94BFB0] ddp_open_file() failed for File: dd0205_boost/XIO11WSB_df_svr1vlas_1_1.bk, Err: 5034-nfs create failed (nfs: Permission denied) SBT-27970 (211074992) 04/01/16 21:45:01 error 7501: sbtbackup: Could not create file XIO11WSB_df_svr1vlas_1_1.bk on host rstdd0205mgmt.us.oracle.com, error 5034 SBT-27973 (227712944) 04/01/16 21:45:01 ERR : [6D45:D929FB0] ddp_open_file() failed for File: dd0205_boost/XIO11WSB_df_t0r1vlas_1_1.bk, Err: 5034-nfs create failed (nfs: Permission denied) SBT-27973 (227712944) 04/01/16 21:45:01 error 7501: sbtbackup: Could not create file XIO11WSB_df_t0r1vlas_1_1.bk on host rstdd0205mgmt.us.oracle.com, error 5034
As stated somewhere else in this blog, I am currently working at EMC.
There are quite a number of Oracle experts at the company doing all manner of interesting things.
A useful resource for any DBA is our Everything Oracle site listed below:
Time Required: 60 minutes
Class Materials:
Next we are going to install the Oracle Database 11gR2 software.
This is the last part of our ten-part process of installing a two node RAC on VMware Workstation 8.
To begin, download the zip file from the Oracle software download website and unzip on Orpheus. Make sure you are logged into Orpheus as the oracle user so that oracle owns the unzipped files.
Time Required: 60 minutes
Class Materials:
Next we are going to install the Oracle Grid Infrastructure software.
The Grid Infrastructure will provide the Cluster software that allows the RAC nodes to communicate, as well as the ASM software to manage the shared disks.
To begin, download the zip file from the Oracle software download website and unzip on Orpheus. Make sure you are logged into Orpheus as the oracle user so that oracle owns the unzipped files.
Time Required: 60 minutes
Class Materials:
Next we are going to add some shared disk to our new freshly minted VMs
VMware Workstation makes the allocation of shared disk to VMs very simple. Shared disk has been the biggest obstacle to create Oracle RAC clusters at home, but now VMware gives us a reliable and portable solution that does not require fire-wire hacks, your own NFS server or a SCSI disk array.
Best of all this whole solution can exist on a single laptop, so you can take your RAC on the road.
Time Required: 60 minutes
Class Materials:
Next we are going to give our two new VMs identities.
As discussed in the previous section, I have decided to name my VMs Orpheus and Eurydice. In this section we will give each machine a hostname plus static IP address on the VMnet2 and VMnet3 networks we created earlier.
This will allow our two operatic lovers to communicate both publicly and privately.
Time Required: 60 minutes
Class Materials:
Next we are going to create two networks for our RAC system to talk on.
The Oracle RAC system requires at least two network connections between cluster nodes. One network will be the public IP and the second will be a private IP reserved for inter-cluster traffic.
Time Required: 20 minutes
Class Materials:
Next we will install the ASMLib drivers that simplify management of ASM on Linux.
ASMLib is an interface between block devices presented to Linux, and the Oracle ASM software that executes as the Oracle user.
the gruffdba 