Larry Ellison is announcing a major new feature this Wednesday at Open World. For the first time in a while, his keynote is dedicated to the “database” as opposed to the usual high level ERP/Apps/Fusion. Even the title of his keynote is catchy — “Extreme Performance”.

Oracle has been keeping the new feature a secret. Even the 11gR2 beta program had very few participants to prevent information leaking out. It’s, “Something’s coming, but I am not telling what.”

Okay, it worked on me, I’m excited about it. Let’s think what it could be. What single database feature is so major, that Larry himself will announce it during OpenWorld?

What do we know so far?

• Starting with the obvious, Larry’s keynote is “Extreme Performance”, so it’s related to performance.
• We know Kevin Closson has worked on it - he had a blog entry saying “I am working on something big” that got pulled off the web. (Here’s Google’s cache.)

Given these two point, let’s further think about it. What do we know about Kevin?

• He worked for PolyServe — a company whose main product is a cluster file system.
• He worked for Sequent on NUMA systems, which in today’s world is pretty close to cluster software with a very fast, low latency interconnect.
• He is an expert in storage systems and disk performance.
• He joined Oracle recently, possibly to work on this secret project.
• He must be really excited about it, to post anything on his blog under radio silence.

I think it’s something related to storage, something new and revolutionary about storage. But what?

We already know, from leaks on certain websites, that ASM will become a cluster filesystem which will allow storing OCR files, as well as user files, on the ASM disks.

But is this big enough? It’s definitely significant. Now you get a “free” reliable, cluster file system with Oracle. I don’t think it’s big enough though. Oracle already had OCFS and OCFS2. So it’s not something new to release a filesystem. And even if ASM becomes a true filesystem, that would not provide such a significant performance boost to warrant a keynote called “Extreme Performance”. An ASM filesystem would be a major manageability feature, not so much a performance feature.

That being ruled out, what could it be?

Recently, when setting up a new 11g database on a server with 128gb of RAM, I was setting up hugepages as usual, and thinking about how big my cache would be. It struck me that the cache will be bigger than the database for quite a while. Why do we even need the SAN/Datafiles?!

Then it hit me.

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Oracle RAC SIG web cast presented by your humble servant. Don’t miss it today! You can register on the RAC SIG web-site. This is a longer than usual session (90 minutes) packed with details of connection failover, load balancing and implementation details.

The session starts later than usual — 1pm PDT or 4pm EDT. However, I will have to wake up at 4am here in Sydney, Australia. Besides being way too early for me, it would be the first time I present in the form of a web cast. I’m somewhat worried that I won’t actually see the audience and there is no immediate feedback link but I guess I will have to assume that nobody is snoring. ;-)

That’s all folks. Can’t write too much rumblings here — I’m way too busy these days settling Down Under… settling down Down… eh, you know what I mean. See you on the web cast!

The process of adding a node to a 11.1 RAC is very similar to the 10.2 process described in Part 5 of this series. For this reason, this post will just focus on what has changed between the 2 versions. Here is the complete series up to now:

1. Installation of 10.2 And 11.1 Databases
2. Patches of 10.2 And 11.1 databases
3. Cloning Software and databases
4. Install a 10.2 RAC Database
5. Add a Node to a 10.2 RAC database
6. Remove a Node from a 10.2 RAC database
7. Install a 11.1 RAC Database
8. Add a Node to a 11.1 RAC database (This post!)
9. Remove a Node from a 11.1 RAC database
10. A ton of other stuff you should know

Before you start

Make sure you’ve kept a copy of the voting disk and that you have a backup of the OCR. Check that the locations for all the components to be installed, i.e.: Inventory, Clusterware, ASM, database software, OCR, Voting Disks, and data files, are writable. Confirm that all the prerequisites are met for the node and for the whole cluster with the node to be added.

Refer to the Oracle Clusterware Administration and Deployment Guide
11g Release 1 (11.1) - 4 Adding and Deleting Oracle Clusterware Homes
and the Oracle Real Application Clusters Administration and Deployment Guide
11g Release 1 (11.1) - 9 Adding and Deleting Oracle RAC from Nodes on Linux and UNIX Systems for the complete reference of how to perform these steps.

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If a MySQL DBA from Pythian goes to Oracle Open World, it would be a shame not to send an Oracle bloke, so there I am — presenting a 90-minute session on the first day of the OOW 08 entitled Under the Hood of Oracle Clusterware.

I gave it during RAC Attack in Chicago and I’m pretty satisfied with how it went, so there should be no significant changes to the presentation. The session is in “User Group Forum,” thanks to RAC SIG and Dan Norris.

When the session was first added to the agenda it was misspelled as “Under the Good of Oracle Clusterware.” That’s hilarious and I thought I should have left it as is. Too late now — it’s been fixed.

I’m pretty sure that many of you will be at the OOW as well, so I’ll be glad to meet you in person. I’m getting back on Twitter slowly, so it might be a good way to track me down in SF. No guarantee I’ll keep it up to the minute if it takes too much effort, but I’ll try.

This seventh post digs into some of the silent installation commands of an 11.1 RAC. For a complete series agenda up to now, see below:

1. Installation of 10.2 And 11.1 Databases
2. Patches of 10.2 And 11.1 databases
3. Cloning Software and databases
4. Install a 10.2 RAC Database
5. Add a Node to a 10.2 RAC database
6. Remove a Node from a 10.2 RAC database
7. Install a 11.1 RAC Database (this post!)
8. Add a Node to a 11.1 RAC database
9. Remove a Node from a 11.1 RAC database
10. A ton of other stuff you should know

As for the Installation of a 10.2 RAC Database, this post shows how to (1) install the 11.1 clusterware, (2) install the 11.1 database, and (3) create a RAC database. It doesn’t explore any Patch Set upgrade since 11.1.0.7 is not out for now. Another interesting question, however, is how to upgrade the 10.2 clusterware to 11.1, since it has to be done in place.

So let’s get into it.

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It’s all over now and I can’t describe how tired I am. As I type it, my flight from Chicago is delayed by 1.5 hour so far (the third delay already, 30 minutes each). I should say that I hate Chicago airport but I digress.

Last night, I left my presentation in a good state and verified the first batch of demos — all worked fine. This morning turned into a disaster as I found out that the rest of my demos stopped working — my 11g RAC cluster on Ubuntu (I have the reason for such unusual setup) got issues with network connectivity. I should probably blame VMware Fusion 2.0 beta combined with Ubuntu but the net result was failing network connections with weird TNS errors and hanging connection requests. Obviously, I couldn’t demonstrate advanced connection management without *simple* connections working.

Well, I didn’t have any other choice but to add new slides with some demo results. Since I did it in a rush, there were some overlaps and I ended up with way too many slides. Good news that the first demo generated sufficiently enough interest about services automation and connection load balancing so we spent significant time there. Well, nothing comes for free so the rest of the presentation had to be covered too quickly but I did manage to go through the failover scenarios and failover technologies available. Run-time load balancing and load balancing advisory wasn’t left aside either so I did make it till the very last slide!

All in all, today’s session wasn’t as good as yesterday but I managed to avoid a complete failure with the demos so I guess I shouldn’t complain.

This morning I checked how the labs went on the 24th floor and I should say that labs agenda looked very impressive and it seems that lab part was probably the best feature of the event. The amount of material Jeremy Schneider prepared was huge and there would be enough labs for 2 full days, not just one. The attendees could choose the areas they are interested in most and work on different threads with their own pace. Great job Jeremy!

Back to the reality and the airport… The flight Chicago-Ottawa is 3+ hours late and they moved us to another gate. Oh… Do I hate Chicago airport! In the meantime I managed to transfer this text from my MacBook to the Blackberry and publishing it from there. The Blackberry syncronisation utility for Mac is a big shame. Can’t wait for iPhone…

To finish on a good note — I’m very glad I came to RAC Attack! What a pleasure to see old friends and make new ones. I just hope I can actually *leave* this place…

I should say that I had interesting experience this evening — a tornado warning in downtown Chicago.

The alarms went off as soon as we tried to get out of the restaurant. Below is a year old example but it sounded exactly like that + it was much darker — like if the skies fell on us:

We had to turn back and were stuck in the pub for another hour or so sipping Guinness while the mother-nature had some fun around us. Funny, looks like it decided to come back now — skies are falling again with heavy rain, clouds and lightnings everywhere. The thunder is very loud and sirens went off again — can’t even sleep. But I digress so let’s get back to the overview of the day…

I love small classes! I mean small rooms with all chairs taken when people are close to me as I present and close to each other. The audience today was exact fit for the room — 20 people could fit on the chairs around the desks and few more (organizers and presenters) next to the back wall. What I like about small classes is the intimate atmosphere in the room. I also like live speech where my voice delivered natively without electronic distortion keeping all the beauty of the Russian accent (some people *still* noticed bits of German influence there).

The only small problem was the location of the stand where a speaker hosts the laptop — it was in the middle of the room. That felt somewhat odd and I kept running between the middle of the room and the stage (well, or the place where it’s supposed to be). I used to the fact that I have another view on my laptop screen — speaker’s view with next slide/motion and my reminders. I also had to do several demo’s on my RAC cluster and I obviously needed the keyboard badly for that. I should apologize that 8 people had to observe my back instead of my face for some time and I also couldn’t see how they were taking the material but I tried to look back from time to time and as soon I did that — I could see confirming nods so thanks for that!
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Just a quick note that I’m going to present two sessions on the RAC Attack! event in Chicago next week — 4-5 August 2008. The event is organized as two threads — one for advanced RAC DBA’s and another one for beginners. Each thread will have one day of hands-on labs and one day of lectures. Another option would be to choose two days of lectures. More details on the RAC Attack event home page.

I’ll be presenting on both days. The beginner’s presentation will be “Under the Hood of Oracle Clusterware” and the more advanced session is called “Connections! Connections! Connections!”. Now, I’m terribly busy preparing for it — working on the slides (yes, I started earlier than some might expect…) and setting up the live demo.

RAC Attack is organized by IOUG and RAC SIG and, as far as I know, the attendance will pretty good but there are still few places left so you have a chance to register.

What’s for me? Great opportunity to catch up with few old friends and, hopefully, meet some new ones. In addition, I have never been to Chicago so it’s something I really keen to experience while I have a chance.

This sixth post describes how to remove a node from a 10.2 RAC cluster in silent mode. It differs from the associated documentation in that it will show how to remove a node, even if it has been made unavailable for any reason, including an error by a DBA or a SA.

Here is the complete series agenda:

1. Installation of 10.2 And 11.1 Databases
2. Patches of 10.2 And 11.1 databases
3. Cloning Software and databases
4. Install a 10.2 RAC Database
5. Add a Node to a 10.2 RAC database
6. Remove a Node from a 10.2 RAC database (this post!)
7. Install a 11.1 RAC Database
8. Add a Node to a 11.1 RAC database
9. Remove a Node from a 11.1 RAC database
10. A ton of other stuff you should know

Now for the substance of this part.

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This fifth post assumes that you want to add a new node to your cluster and database. It describes most of the associated “silent” syntaxes. Even if you don’t leverage RAC’s ability to add or remove nodes to gain in agility, it’s still very likely you’ll come to these techniques when you want to upgrade some of your Servers or Operating Systems. For a complete series agenda up to now, see below:

1. Installation of 10.2 And 11.1 Databases
2. Patches of 10.2 And 11.1 databases
3. Cloning Software and databases
4. Install a 10.2 RAC Database
5. Add a Node to a 10.2 RAC database (this post!)
6. Remove a Node from a 10.2 RAC database
7. Install a 11.1 RAC Database
8. Add a Node to a 11.1 RAC database
9. Remove a Node from a 11.1 RAC database
10. A ton of other stuff you should know

Adding a node involves adding all the components of the RAC in their order of appearance, i.e.: (1) The Clusterware and the associated resources, (2) the database software, (3) the listeners, (4) the ASM instance if necessary, and (5) the database instance. The last is the subject of this post.

For a complete reference to this procedure, see to the corresponding section of the 10.2 documentation.

Make Sure You Can Add The New Node To The Cluster

Before you start with anything else, proceed with the hardware and OS configuration. The new node must access the shared storage, the networks, the packages, parameter, users, etc. There is no difference if you add a node later or at the time of the initial install. You can use Oracle CVU and RDA as described in the corresponding section of the previous post to check that all the nodes can be part of a single cluster.

Adding a Node to the Clusterware

This step is actually pretty easy if the prerequisites are met. It’s also the one that can have the deepest impact on the cluster and the one that can end up badly. A lot of components are impacted by this addition: the voting disk, the cluster registry (OCR), and the inventories from all the nodes. Make sure you know how to revert any changes you are going to make. Make sure also that you have everything you need to revert the changes.

Note
Before you start with the node addition, make sure you’ve backed up the voting disk. There is no need to backup the OCR because it’s done automatically but it’s probably a good idea to locate the backup and make sure it contains the latest changes you’ve made.

You should also make sure that the Clusterware owner, oracle, or crs, or whatever it is, can write into the Clusterware ORACLE_HOME and the Oracle Inventory on the new server. Create the associated directory if necessary.

We’ll assume we want to add a new node rac-server5 to the cluster we’ve build in the previous post. In order to proceed, connect as the Clusterware owner on any of the existing nodes and run the set of commands below:

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