Let’s begin by reviewing the structure of a Real Applications Cluster. Physically, a RAC consists of several nodes (servers), connected to each other by a private interconnect. The database files are kept on a shared storage subsystem, where they’re accessible to all nodes. And each node has a public network connection.
In terms of software and configuration, the RAC has three basic components: cluster software and/or Cluster Ready Services, database software, and a method of managing the shared storage subsystem.
The cluster software can be vendor-supplied or Oracle-supplied, depending on platform. Cluster Ready Services, or CRS Where vendor clusterware is used, CRS interacts with the vendor clusterware to coordinate cluster membership information; without vendor clusterware, CRS, which is also known as Oracle OSD Clusterware, provides complete cluster management.
The database software with the RAC option, of course.
Finally, the shared storage subsystem can be managed by one of the following options: raw devices; Automatic Storage Management (ASM); Vendor-supplied cluster file system (CFS), Oracle Cluster File System (OCFS), or vendor-supplied logical volume manager (LVM); or Networked File System (NFS) on a certified Network Attached Storage (NAS) device.
The process is simple , from the 12c Oracle Home start DBCA and create a CDB Instance with one PDB. Then you have all the necessary setup for the migration. Now with few simple steps one can migrate to the CDB instance.
In this demo my Non-CDB name is DIEGO and the newly created CDB instance name is GLOBALDB, it has one PDB named PDB001 and will later add DIEGO into the CDB as a PDB.
What is Clustering? Clustering is the grouping of individual computers in such a way that they can act as a single computer system. These combined resources can then be presented to applications as a single system. One benefit of a cluster is that the application does not need to be cluster “aware”, and requires no special coding to take advantage of most cluster related services.
Oracle clustering is a shared everything architecture that involves sharing of storage by the systems of the cluster.
Oracle RAC: Oracle RAC stands for Real Application Cluster. It was introduced by Oracle with 9i release. Oracle RAC is a cluster database with a shared cache architecture that overcomes the limitations of traditional shared-nothing and shared-disk approaches to provide highly scalable and available database solutions for all your business applications. Oracle RAC is a key component of Oracle’s private cloud architecture.
Single Instance Vs RAC Instance As can be seen from the below diagram Oracle RAC database has more than one instance, whereas the database is single and shared across all the instances. Thus focus of RAC is on share everything concept. This ensures availability of Oracle database and also the scalability. Each RAC instance is installed on different machine (called nodes) thus scaling the computing power and maximizing availability.
Below is the architecture diagram which shows the implementation of Oracle RAC instance in real life scenario. What it additionally shows is the interconnect (hb) i.e high speed communication between the RAC instances to ensure ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Independent and Durability).
ASM (Automatic Storage Management) Instance:
An Oracle ASM instance is a special Oracle instance that manages Oracle ASM disks. It’s an instance for Storage Management. Both the ASM and the database instances require shared access to the disks in an ASM disk group. ASM instances manage the metadata of the disk group and provide file layout information to the database instances. Database instances direct I/O to ASM disks without going through an ASM instance. An ASM instance is built on the same technology as a database instance. For example, an ASM instance has a system global area (SGA) and background processes that are similar to those of a database instance. However, an ASM instance cannot mount a database and performs fewer tasks than a database instance.
Oracle Commands for RAC & ASM
I have tried to highlight the commands which are used for different instances. As the system has grown with different components, so have the commands to manage and monitor them. Below table shows the list of commands, their usage, where used (RAC/ASM) and home directory where the command is located.
Cluster Verify Utility or cvu performs system checks in integrity of all nodes, integrity of OCR, connectivity between all nodes, compare properties of one node with that of other and space availability
Starting and stopping Oracle Clusterware resources, Enabling and disabling Oracle Clusterware daemons, Checking the health of the cluster, Managing resources that represent third-party applications.
Server Control Utility to manage the Oracle RAC database. SRVCTL commands to add, remove, start, stop, modify, enable, and disable a number of components/objects, such as databases, instances, listeners, SCAN listeners, services, grid naming service (GNS), and Oracle ASM.Some SRVCTL operations for instance, database, service and nodeapps modify the configuration data stored in the Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR). Good link which shows various options for this command is here
ASMCMD is a command-line utility that you can list the content, perform searches, create and remove directories and aliases, display space utilization within Automatic Storage Management (ASM) disk groups. Orafaq link for ASMCMD is here
The ocrconfig command is used to manage the OCR. Ocrconfig provides the ability to import, export, add, delete, restore, overwrite, backup, repair, replace, move, upgrade, or downgrade the OCR. Same command can be used for OLR using –local option.
The ocrdump utility allows you to dump the contents of the OCR or the OLR to a file or to stdout. You can then read the resulting output for diagnostic and administration purposes.
The ocrcheck utility is used to validate the integrity of the OCR and the OLR. Use the ocrcheck command whenever you have made any changes to your cluster (such as changing the VIP for example)
