masterschema

Happy Canada Day Boxing Day

eric — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 02:19:35 +0000

Ok, a day late with this one… recorded a bunch of tracks yesterday (Canada Day, July 1 2010) and edited down to this rather interesting video.

Yes, way off topic… have also recorded a bunch of segments on VMWare, and in 2 weeks will put together some slides/animations to explain virtual networking in VMWare. May also demonstrate Citrix XenServer and Oracle VM depending on time. VirtualBox just has not caught my attention partly because of it’s lacklustre performance and stability. I haven’t the time to play around with crashing junk.

Of course, I do have time to play around with garden hose junk! =)

Hope you enjoy!

Install Enterprise Manager Grid Control 11g Release 1

eric — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 16:17:19 +0000

Bored one late evening, I built up a VM in which I installed Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control 11g a couple days before it’s officially released. Started the project on April 20, 2010, product is to be released on April 22, 2010.

Quick synopsis of the procedure (a how-to may follow if I have the time):
1) Install and create a supported database
2) Install middleware (Weblogic Server)
3) Install Grid Control 11g
4) Deploy some agents

The big change for installation is that the Enterprise Manager package does not include the database or middleware bits for easy install.

It’s presently one day before the official release of the product. =)

Oracle completes acquisition of Sun – Analysis of ZFS vs ASM vs Clusterware vs Sun Solaris Cluster

eric — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 04:04:02 +0000

I quickly viewed all the webcasts that were available today and from what I can see, Oracle Grid Infrastructure is here to stay along with Oracle VM, and I guess Sun Cluster (Solaris Cluster) goes into legacy mode. No mention of ZFS, but enough mention of ASM that I suspect pieces of ZFS algorithms will be picked off and added to ASM.

Of course, nobody can predict the future…

Canadian Hoser – Olympic Theme

eric — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 08:12:54 +0000

I recorded some tracks on hose playing the piece well known as the olympic theme music/fanfare. I’d have to say that Vancouver 2010 is starting to show it’s face, and this is not a positive or negative comment… it was just a fun project for an afternoon with some garden hose.

I was really really bored… this is a concept which I’ll probably re-record more seriously. I’m also thinking other pieces, like O’Canada, perhaps the John Williams olympic fanfare and theme.

Yes, I realize the last two posts are a tad off beat; I’ll be back on the IT craze soon… it’s been holiday season for me.

I really hope you enjoy! If you do, please comment/rate/spread the word. It’s just plain funny!

Oracle RAC 11g R2 Install How-To in VMWare and iSCSI

eric — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 07:22:26 +0000

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

Thoughts about future video projects

eric — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 20:56:19 +0000

I would like to do the following as time permits:

Demonstrate installation of Solaris Cluster (formerlly Sun Cluster) 3.2 using VMWare and iSCSI
Demonstrate Solaris Cluster + Oracle CRS Clusterware for RAC
Demonstrate Solaris Cluster + Zone Clusters + Oracle RAC
Demonstrate ADVM + ACFS to give applications high availability (I think MySQL would be a fitting example)
Demonstrate the configuration of Oracle RAC Guard (RAC to RAC Dataguard)
Demonstrate the configuration of Oracle Dataguard (non-RAC)
Demonstrate the concepts and basic administration of ASM, ADVM and ACFS
Demonstrate the concepts and basic administration ZFS
Demonstrate basic systems administration of RedHat Enterprise Linux (and derivatives) for the DBA

Document all the aforementioned… =)

Let me know what you think… I have this habit of biting off more than I can chew, but at least I manage to eat some of it… and to date, people seem to feel I’ve eaten a lot.

Removing an inaccessible or destroyed node from Oracle RAC 11gR2

eric — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:46:48 +0000

What do you do if you lose a node in a RAC as a result of destruction, theft, or other unrecoverable error? How do we clean up the existing cluster so the inaccessible node is removed permanently from Oracle Clusterware and Oracle RAC Databases?

I demonstrate the current process with 11gR2, which now has many new crsctl commands that can help with this administrative task.

Obviously when this type of thing does happen in production, I’m sure it’ll be impossible to remain calm and collected, but I hope this video helps to demonstrate just how easy it is to deal with this type of disaster.

Please enjoy!

More than one database in a single RAC cluster

eric — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:36:15 +0000

This is a video demonstrating the creation of a second database of 2 instances in an Oracle RAC of 4 nodes, coexisting with a pre-existing 4-instance database. I created this video to demonstrate an answer in response to a forum question:

http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=960350&tstart=0

Extending RAC 11gR2 to 4th node

eric — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:58:23 +0000

I put together a follow-up video to the 3-node install where I add a 4th node of RAC 11gR2 in VMWare successfully, including extending the database to a total 4 instances.

In less than 10 minutes of video, you will see the cloning of the Grid Infrastructure 11gR2 home, cloning of the Database 11gR2 home, and creation of a 4th instance all running in VMWare.

addNode.sh has changed slightly; it no longer seems to allow an interactive Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) run.

I hope you enjoy this video!

Install Oracle RAC 11g R2 in VMWare – 3 nodes

eric — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:40:55 +0000

I have just put together some videos to demonstrate installing Oracle RAC 11g R2 successfully in VMWare, simulating 3 separate nodes. I will be adding a 4th node in VMWare to demonstrate how to add (and later remove) nodes and RAC instances in open databases.

These videos show how viable it can be to use VMWare to build a test RAC enviroment, even with the latest version, 11g R2, despite the system requirements espoused by Oracle. I take great pains to build the VMs and prep them for installation success, and I will later document all these processes and possibly create videos of the process too.

Please enjoy and let me know what you think!

Video 1 shows Grid Infrastructure installing on 3 VMWare nodes
Video 2 was destroyed when Camtasia decided to crash and leave no temp files behind; it was the installation of 11g R2 Database in RAC
Video 3 shows DBCA starting up
Video 4 shows 3 instances of the RAC database up and kicking