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.
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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
Time Required: 20 minutes
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Next we need to create the Oracle user account, OS groups and mount point.
The Oracle software will be installed and owned by the oracle user account. In additional several OS groups are created that allow other non oracle OS users privileged access to the database and grid resources.
Time Required: 20 minutes
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Next we need to configure the Linux kernel to support Oracle 11gR2.
Before we can install Oracle 11gR2 on our new VM, we need configure the Linux kernel. The following steps modify key settings to allow Oracle to execute. These steps are taken from the Oracle install guide located at the following URL:
the gruffdba 