I’m working on a series of videos to demonstrate all the steps required to create a RAC 11g R2 using VMWare and iSCSI from scratch. These videos will be reasonably free from clips, to show the full process and what to expect. I find there are a lot of “How-tos” out there that are written, with screenshots, but that do not provide the newer DBA with the confidence that the procedure will work. I feel a video first, procedure second, provides confidence that the steps documented do lead to something usable in the end.
These videos will be published in a seemingly random order, partly related to how I decide to edit/cut them. Also there will be some differences in video/audio quality as I improve my processes over time. The videos were not necessarily shot in the order of execution, but I will sequence them in a “Playlist” on youtube so it’s easy to figure out the order in which they should be watched.
Please keep in mind there will be gaps. At present, I have put four new videos up; my intention is the following set of videos:
- Working with VMWare: Understanding guests, multiple virtual NICs, vmnet, vmdks, and the cloning process
- Install Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL, RHEL, CentOS) 5.4 or 5.3 using a kickstart file to build a generic “base brick machine” (BBM)
- Understanding runlevels and booting into single user mode with GRUB and Linux
- Create an iSCSI target host using a BBM (not bloated openfiler)
- Create a router using a BBM to serve as a gateway and DHCP server for the public network of a RAC
- Create a DNS server using a BBM, and create zones for Oracle Grid Infrastructure GNS
- Install Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control 10.2.0.x and patch to 10.2.0.5 (10gR5) on a BBM
- Understanding ssh user equivalency and using the basics of authorized_keys
- Prepare a BBM for Oracle Grid Infrastructure 11g R2
- Install Oracle Grid Infrastructure 11g R2 in VMWare on 2 nodes
- Run root scripts for Oracle Grid Infrastructure 11g R2
- Install Oracle Database Real Application Clusters (RAC) 11g R2 on 2 nodes
- Creating a RAC 11g R2 database using DBCA
Arguably steps 4 and 9 are probably the most difficult for configuring a RAC; #4, creating the shared storage “device” (in this case, a server running OEL with iSCSI target software) and #9, attaching the nodes to this device.
The 4 videos I’ve prepared and uploaded so far:
4. Create an iSCSI target host using a BBM
9. Prepare a BBM for Oracle Grid Infrastructure 11g R2
10. Install Oracle Grid Infrastructure 11g R2 in VMWare on 2 nodes
11. Run root scripts for Oracle Grid Infrastructure 11g R2
The playlist that I will maintain with this full list of videos is at this link.
http://www.youtube.com/user/masterschema#grid/user/8DBBE5E49A28EA6A
10 Comments
Great Blog – keep it up! Saved me hours of time building my own. Thank you!
Nice tutorials – i am looking forward to the first two videos as those will serve as a foundation for trying out what you are showing in the videos.
Keep up the great videos – thanks.
Nice staff dude!!
I am very wet on this and want to dive very deep. Keep me busy watching and scratching my head
There is a lot of very good information here. I have been playing with the concepts on a test machine at home. It has been awesome. You mentioned having notes for this. Is it possible to get a copy? I am interested in the step of creating the iscsi luns with tgtadm and having them available in ASM. I seem to be missing a step. The luns are created by when I do the ASM install I am not able to see them as Cantidate disks. I am using 1 disk for all of this. Thanks.
This is great. I followed video for step 4 and was successful in creating the iscsi LUNS. I followed video for step 9. I got to the point that i was running the iscsiadm -m discovery -t sendtargets -p XXXXXX command and I come up with no output. If I just run iscsiadm -m discovery I get XXXXXX:3260 via sendtargets. I might have missed something but can’t figure it out. I already went thru the video twice.
Hi Eric
I really liked these videos. I have the following question:
In the very first video you say I will be preparing this node for SAN and I will start from the base build from previous video. Where is that previous video?
Regards
Eric,
Excellent videos! I am looking forward to hopefully see a step by step guide to setup 11gR2 RAC with VMWare on the Mac.
Cheers,
Ben
Thank you for putting together a great article.
I just followed the your document and able to complete until creating CentOS_BASE_RAC , RAC vm is able to discover the target/Luns available on iscsi machine. when I shutdown CentOS_BASE_RAC, “Synchronizing SCSI cache for disk sdm ” start .. after 3 attempts of 180s it fails to sync. I guess this is happening because network connection were closed before the “Synchronizing SCSI cache” step and CentOS_RAC_BASE vm unable to reach iSCSI server. Is this a bug ..or am I missing configuration like _netdev in /etc/fstab for network dependant drives? I am using Cent OS 5.5 x86_64 version( I am experiencing the same issue with Cent OS 5.4 x86_64). At the end it failes on all disks sdb-sdm, and shutdown process completes.
Did any have faced this issue?
Thank you.
Excellent work! I hope you can finish all the videos for all the steps specially the networking (router/dns setup) using BBM. thanks!
Hi,
Could you please provide me the steps to complete step 6 – Create a DNS server using a BBM, and create zones for Oracle Grid Infrastructure GNS?
Thanks in advance.
Marcello Travassos.
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