Database Upgrade Guide – 10g to 11g

I came across this useful upgrade advisor/guide on Metalink(ID 251.1) so thought I should share this. I think it was available earlier as well but in some crude format. It’s a nice step-by-step guide / reference for anyone who wants to upgrade to 11g. It explains you the benefits of 11g and guides you through a 6-step approach (Evaluate, Plan, Configure, Test, Implement and Accept) to get to 11g. It explains each phase with expected deliverables/outcomes and lists a host of referenceable material – documents / guides, ppts, multimedia trainings, metalink notes etc. one can refer to.

It’s very handy guide for anyone who wants to migrate from 10g to 11gR2.

Virtathon - A virtual conference for Oracle community

BrainSurface is organizing an online, virtual conference for the Oracle community called “VirtaThon” which includes Java and MySQL communities as well. I like the idea of online and virtual conference since personally I have not attended many conferences like Oracle Open World or IOUG etc. being in a part of the world where such conferences happen very less. I have always rued that I haven’t been able to attend such conferences organized for my community but now I’m very excited and looking forward to participate in VirtaThon.

I feel this is definitely a great way to learn about the latest and listen to experts in your domain. And the best part is that it’s FREE. So just go and register yourself for VirtaThon.

Dates – 16^th to 21^st July 

Venue – Online

Cost – Registration is Free

Where to Register – http://www.brainsurface.com/virtathon/sign-up

Speakers (names listed in alphabetical order) – Arup Nanda, Brian Huff, Colin Charles, Dan Hotka, Dario Laverde, David Koelle, Dr. Bert Scalzo, Guy Harrison, Lewis Cunningham, Matt Warman, Mike Ault, Riyaj Shamsudeen, Syed Jaffar Hussain, Tariq Farooq, Vinod Haval

Topics being covered – I’m listing only the topics that would be of interest for a DBA.

• Oracle (Database, Cloud Computing, Virtualization, Oracle Linux, Data Modeling and Exadata etc.)
• MySQL (Replication and Scale out, High availability and Clustering, Enterprise database administration and Security, Database Performance Tuning, Storage Engine Development and Optimization, Partition Strategies, Cloud computing etc.)
• Java (details can be found on the VirtaThon site)

Being a virtual conference, you don't have to travel anywhere to attend the sessions; you can simply attend from the comfort of your home or office. This is not a webcasts rather much like normal conferences you can participate by asking questions, interact via chat and have follow ups after talks. All you need is a computer with an internet connection.

Request all to participate, contribute and learn from this conference. As far as I know, this is one of the first Oracle-centric virtual conference. Look forward to more such online oriented conferences. Great effort and move by BrainSurface; Hats off to entire group and Tariq Farooq - the main man behind Brainsurface and this conference.

Pre-packaged Oracle VM Images for Oracle Database and RAC

Oracle has made available pre-configured virtual machines containing pre-installed Oracle enterprise software stacks. These Oracle VM templates can be downloaded from Oracle's E-Delivery site.

Pre-packaged VM’s would greatly useful if you need to quickly test out or do a POC etc. You would anyways download the software so why not download a pre-installed VM image and get started immediately as opposed to going through painstaking process of installing it unless your POC is about installation and configuration.

All you would need is Oracle VM already installed on your server/desktop. Then you can simply download the VM images, import and deploy the template VM’s. However you do need to provide some basic information such IP (DHCP or static), passwords etc. and you will have a fully installed / configured Oracle environment ready without having to install products from scratch.

Currently, I could find the following templates for Oracle Database and RAC on both 32-bit and 64-bit (x86 platforms). All of these are based on Oracle Enterprise Linux version 5.2 onward. No pre-packaged VM’s are available for Windows or other UNIX flavors.

Database VM Templates for x86 (32-bit)

URL - https://edelivery.oracle.com/EPD/Download/get_form?egroup_aru_number=10551276

 

RAC VM templates for x86 (32-bit)

 

URL - https://edelivery.oracle.com/EPD/Download/get_form?egroup_aru_number=12356456

 

RAC 11gR2 Templates for x86 (32 bit)

 

URL - https://edelivery.oracle.com/EPD/Download/get_form?egroup_aru_number=12918773

 

Database VM Templates for x86 (64-bit)

 

URL - https://edelivery.oracle.com/EPD/Download/get_form?egroup_aru_number=10551278

RAC VM templates for x86 (64-bit)

URL - https://edelivery.oracle.com/EPD/Download/get_form?egroup_aru_number=12356458

 

RAC 11gR2 Templates for x86 (64 bit)

 

URL - https://edelivery.oracle.com/EPD/Download/get_form?egroup_aru_number=12918775

There are pre-installed/configured VM’s for other products as well e.g. Grid control, Fusion middle-ware, E-business suite etc. Get them @ Oracle E Delivery - https://edelivery.oracle.com/EPD/GetUserInfo/get_form?caller=LinuxWelcome

RAC One Node changes in 11.2.0.2

I have covered Oracle RAC One Node in one of my previous post. RAC One Node is a single instance of an Oracle RAC database running on node in a cluster. There have been significant changes in the way a RAC One database is administered in version 11.2.0.2 compared to earlier versions. I have briefly summarized the changes herein –

• OUI has a new option to select RAC One Installation (look at the screenshot below)

• You can now create and configure RAC One database using DBCA
• Configure and administer RAC One database using SRVCTL instead of using  "Omotion", "raconestatus", "raconeinit", "racone2rac" etc.
• So move/relocate and convert your database using  SRVCTL
• Dataguard Broker is RAC One aware

I thought to quickly cover the changes since I had previously posted about RAC One. You can also refer to Metalink note 1232802.1 for details.

Oracle Database on Amazon Cloud - Now Available

Amazon has kept its promise of making Oracle 11g available on per hour billing. Finally, after its announcement in Feb 2011, Oracle 11g database is now available on Amazon RDS. Which means you can use Oracle database on cloud with the same per hour billing rates (pay-as-you-go model) you pay for other resources.

Amazon RDS brings Oracle Standard One, Standard and Enterprise editions on RDS. It’s now the 2^nd database to be available on RDS; MySQL was available for quite some time now. As I had mentioned in my earlier post, Oracle will be available under 2 difference licensing scheme –

BYOL (Bring Your Own License) – Basically allows you to bring and reuse your existing licenses. Start from $0.11 per hour, this is mainly for the underlying hardware.

License Included – No upfront investment/commitment.  Start from $0.16 per hour, this includes underlying hardware and oracle database license cost.

Important to note that only “Standard Edition One” is available under “License included” model which means if you need Enterprise features then you need to go via BYOL which has upfront cost.

Options you see on launching a database on Amazon RDS -

In terms of features, you need not worry about general DBA tasks, backup, patching, monitoring (using CloudWatch) etc. All these tasks will be Amazon’s responsibility. As per the Amazon site, parameter control is available via DB Parameter but on my first glance couldn’t find any editable parameters (maybe I’m missing something). Replication (similar to what’s available with MySQL) is not yet ready. What I liked is that there is no additional charge for backup storage up to 100% of your provisioned database storage for an active DB Instance. You have to pay for it as soon as you terminate the database instance. 

Currently only one version, Oracle 11.2.0.2, is available. It remains to be seen on the choice of version that will be made available in future.

Refer to Amazon RDS site for more details around cost and features.

How to Configure Oracle Restart on Standalone Server

In one of my previous post, I had talked about Oracle Restart – a new feature in 11gR2 that enhances availability in case of single/standalone instances. In this post, I am briefly describing the steps to install and use this great feature for an existing database installation.

Oracle Restart is part of Oracle Grid Infrastructure which needs to be installed without which Oracle Restart cannot be used. One either installs Grid infrastructure first and database later or vice-versa. The difference being that the components either gets automatically added to Oracle restart configuration (if Grid is installed first) or need to be manually added (In case DB is installed first and Grid later).

The Oracle grid infrastructure for a standalone server is the Oracle software that provides system support for an Oracle database including volume management, file system, and automatic restart capabilities. Basically it combines “Oracle Restart” and “ASM” into Grid binaries. So, to use Oracle Restart or ASM, installing grid infrastructure is a MUST (which of course I don’t like). Is there license implication?

Further, Oracle Restart can only manage 11.2 resources. However, Oracle database releases prior to 11.2 can coexist on the same server but without being managed by Oracle Restart.

Is it a separate binary?

Yes, a separate binary available for download - http://download.oracle.com/otn/linux/oracle11g/R2/linux_11gR2_grid.zip

However if you download the latest version 11.2.0.2 (from metalink) then you do not need to download the above. Grid is part of the installable. What I don’t like is installing Grid even for “Oracle Restart” only.

How to install?

There are 2 options. When you start installing the grid, it throws the following screen; if you just want to install Oracle Restart then choose “Install Grid Infrastructure Software Only” else choose “Install and Configure Grid Infrastructure for a Standalone Server” which will ask for ASM configuration details.Ensure that the grid infrastructure components are installed in a separate Oracle home.

 

To continue the installation, just  follow the screenshots below; the above screenshot is the first step when you run "./runInstaller" from installable folder.

 

At the end of the installation you are required to run the “root.sh” script to successfully complete the installation. Please note that you need to run the script as “root” user.

#/u01/app2/product/11.2.0/grid/root.sh

What do I need to Configure?

Next is to run “roothas.pl” script to ensure to configure Grid Infrastructure for a stand-alone server. Run the following command as the root user:

#/u01/app2/product/11.2.0/grid/perl/bin/perl -I/u01/app2/product/11.2.0/grid/perl/lib -I/u01/app2/product/11.2.0/grid/crs/install /u01/app2/product/11.2.0/grid/crs/install/roothas.pl

One last step before we can term “Oracle Restart” configuration to be complete and add components to it.

# cd $ORA_GRID_HOME/bin

# crsctl enable has

So that’s it! “Oracle Restart” is now configured on your standalone server.

How to add components to Oracle Restart

1.      Add the existing database to “Oracle Restart”

$ srvctl add database –d -o <$ORACLE_HOME> -p -s -t

$ srvctl add database -d testdb -o /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1 

2.      Add listener

$ srvctl add listener –l LISTENER -o /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1

Can I turn off Oracle Restart?

Yes; first check the current status of auto start and then simply run the command (as “root” user) to turn off the autostart option.

#crsctl config has

CRS-4622: Oracle High Availability Services autostart is enabled.

#crsctl disable has

CRS-4621: Oracle High Availability Services autostart is disabled.

Conclusion

That completes the Oracle restart installation and configuration.It's nice feature to have on a standalone instance/server. The best part is the manual procedures we used to adopt to start/stop all components of database and the shell scripting required is gone. And of course, get braced up for they way things work in a RAC environment. Let me know your feedback.

crs_stat deprecated in 11gR2

The most used to command "crs_stat -t" is gone (deprecated) on 11gR2. Instead you would use - 

crsctl status resource [the output will be status of all resources]

You can still use the "-t" option to get a tabular report though ;)

crsctl status resource -t

Specify resource name "ora.mydb.vip" to get the status of any particular resource -

crsctl status resource ora.mydb.vip

In fact, quite a few commands have been deprecated in 11gR2; For the complete list refer to http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E11882_01/rac.112/e16794/crsref.htm#CHDHBECE