How to install a brand new Exadata X5 (Part 1)

- Part 1 (this one) is more about the settings that are needed to proceed with the installation
- Part 2 is about the installation procedure itself
Anonymization
I have obviously anonymized the procedures, a little word here on the conventions I used here :- I have replaced the name of the Exadata cluster by "mycluster"
- "a_server" is a hostname outside the Exadata I used to reach it (a jump server, an administration server for example)
- "a_user" is my own non privileged user I use to reach the Exadata servers from this "jump server" (I could have wrote "fdenis" instead)
- I show the client specific IP like this one "<IP_of_an_IB_Switch>"
- Sometimes the customer specific IPs appear like that "10.XX.YY.ZZ" (no secret here, 10.x.x.x being the class A private network)
- All the clear text IPs are the Exadata defaults
What is already configured
When Oracle delivers an Exadata, they take care of the cabling and the first boot. During this first boot, few things are configured :- The Ethernet Switch
- The InfiniBand Switches (IB Switches)
- The PDUs
- An access to the ILOM of the first database server
What is needed to go further
<client>-<cluster>.xml
The DBA needs some customer specific information before heading on to the network configuration and the software installation of the new Exadata machine such as the hostnames , the IPs address of each components, the default gateway , etc… Since Exadata X2, Oracle is kind enough to provide an easy way to do that with a software named Oracle Exadata Deployment Assistant (OEDA). The client then download OEDA on his laptop, fill all the needed information and then generate an XML file (named <client>-<cluster>.xml ) that contains all the required information for the DBA to proceed with the installation. This file is vital as all the installation procedure is based on it.OEDA for Linux
OEDA is not only used to fill the XML file, it is also used to proceed with the set up (and as OEDA version can move pretty quickly, it is NOT provided with the Exadata machine), we then need to upload on the first database server the following components :- OEDA for Linux
- The <client>-<cluster>.xml file
- The databasemachine.xml file is nice to have as well as we can then use it to make an Exadata Status Script for example
Exadata set up
What’s in it ?
First, let’s have a look at what’s in this new Exadata ! we can easily know what is in the box by using the ibhosts command from any part of the IB network (here, I did it from an IB switch as there's not much server reachable at this part of the installation) https://gist.github.com/freddenis/9134c435be8c8ed62a9f2a0673915008 Here, we can see that we have 5 cells (5 storage servers) :- node1 elasticNode 172.16.2.37
- node2 elasticNode 172.16.2.38
- node3 elasticNode 172.16.2.39
- node4 elasticNode 172.16.2.40
- node6 elasticNode 172.16.2.42
- node8 elasticNode 172.16.2.44
- node9 elasticNode 172.16.2.45
- node10 elasticNode 172.16.2.46
- node12 elasticNode 172.16.2.48