8 Preparing the Host Computers for an Enterprise Deployment

It is important to perform a set of tasks on each computer or server before configuring the enterprise deployment topology. This involves verifying the minimum hardware and operating system requirements for each host, configuring operating system users and groups, enabling Unicode support, mounting the required shared storage systems to the host and enabling the required virtual IP addresses on each host.

This chapter describes the tasks you must perform from each computer or server that will be hosting the enterprise deployment.

Parent topic: Preparing for an Enterprise Deployment

8.1 Verifying the Minimum Hardware Requirements for Each Host

After procuring the required hardware for the enterprise deployment, it is important to ensure that each host computer meets the minimum system requirements.

After you have procured the required hardware for the enterprise deployment, log in to each host computer and verify the system requirements listed in Hardware and Software Requirements for the Enterprise Deployment Topology.

If you are deploying to a virtual server environment, such as Oracle Exalogic, ensure that each of the virtual servers meets the minimum requirements.

Ensure that you have sufficient local disk storage and shared storage configured as described in Preparing the File System for an Enterprise Deployment.

Allow sufficient swap and temporary space; specifically:

  • Swap Space–The system must have at least 500 MB.

  • Temporary Space–There must be a minimum of 500 MB of free space in /tmp.

8.2 Verifying Linux Operating System Requirements

You can review the typical Linux operating system settings for an enterprise deployment in this section.

To ensure the host computers meet the minimum operating system requirements, be sure you have installed a certified operating system and that you have applied all the necessary patches for the operating system.

In addition, review the following sections for typical Linux operating system settings for an enterprise deployment.

8.2.1 Setting Linux Kernel Parameters

The kernel-parameter and shell-limit values shown below are recommended values only. Oracle recommends that you tune these values to optimize the performance of the system. See your operating system documentation for more information about tuning kernel parameters.

Kernel parameters must be set to a minimum of those in Table 8-1 on all nodes in the topology.

The values in the following table are the current Linux recommendations. For the latest recommendations for Linux and other operating systems, see Oracle Fusion Middleware System Requirements and Specifications.

If you are deploying a database onto the host, you might need to modify additional kernel parameters. Refer to 12c (12.2.1.2) Configuring Kernel Parameters in Oracle Grid Infrastructure Installation Guide for Linux.

Table 8-1 UNIX Kernel Parameters

Parameter Value

kernel.sem

256 32000 100 142

kernel.shmmax

4294967295

To set these parameters:

  1. Sign in as root and add or amend the entries in the file /etc/sysctl.conf.
  2. Save the file.
  3. Activate the changes by entering the following command:
    /sbin/sysctl -p

8.2.2 Setting the Open File Limit and Number of Processes Settings on UNIX Systems

On UNIX operating systems, the Open File Limit is an important system setting, which can affect the overall performance of the software running on the host computer.

For guidance on setting the Open File Limit for an Oracle Fusion Middleware enterprise deployment, see Host Computer Hardware Requirements.

Note:

The following examples are for Linux operating systems. Consult your operating system documentation to determine the commands to be used on your system.

For more information, see the following sections.

8.2.2.1 Viewing the Number of Currently Open Files

You can see how many files are open with the following command:

/usr/sbin/lsof | wc -l

To check your open file limits, use the following commands.

C shell:

limit descriptors

Bash:

ulimit -n

8.2.2.2 Setting the Operating System Open File and Processes Limits

To change the Open File Limit values:

  1. Sign in as root user and edit the following file:

    /etc/security/limits.conf

  2. Add the following lines to the limits.conf file. (The values shown here are for example only): 
    * soft  nofile  4096
* hard  nofile  65536
* soft  nproc   2047
* hard  nproc   16384

    The nofiles values represent the open file limit; the nproc values represent the number of processes limit.

  3. Save the changes, and close the limits.conf file.
  4. Restart the host computer.

8.2.3 Verifying IP Addresses and Host Names in DNS or hosts File

Before you begin the installation of the Oracle software, ensure that the IP address, fully qualified host name, and the short name of the host are all registered with your DNS server. Alternatively, you can use the local hosts file and add an entry similar to the following:

IP_Address Fully_Qualified_Name Short_Name

For example:

10.229.188.205  host1.example.com  host1

8.3 Configuring Operating System Users and Groups

The users and groups to be defined on each of the computers that host the enterprise deployment are listed in this section.

Groups

You must create the following groups on each node.

  • oinstall

  • dba

Users

You must create the following user on each node.

  • nobody–An unprivileged user.

  • oracle–The owner of the Oracle software. You may use a different name. The primary group for this account must be oinstall. The account must also be in the dba group.

Note:

  • The group oinstall must have write privileges to all the file systems on shared and local storage that are used by the Oracle software.

  • Each group must have the same Group ID on every node.

  • Each user must have the same User ID on every node.

8.4 Enabling Unicode Support

It is recommended to enable Unicode support in your operating system so as to allow processing of characters in Unicode.

Your operating system configuration can influence the behavior of characters supported by Oracle Fusion Middleware products.

On UNIX operating systems, Oracle highly recommends that you enable Unicode support by setting the LANG and LC_ALL environment variables to a locale with the UTF-8 character set. This enables the operating system to process any character in Unicode. Oracle Business Intelligence technologies, for example, are based on Unicode.

If the operating system is configured to use a non-UTF-8 encoding, Oracle Business Intelligence components may function in an unexpected way. For example, a non-ASCII file name might make the file inaccessible and cause an error. Oracle does not support problems caused by operating system constraints.

8.5 Mounting the Required Shared File Systems on Each Host

It is important to understand how to mount the shared storage to all the servers that require access.

The shared storage configured, as described in Shared Storage Recommendations When Installing and Configuring an Enterprise Deployment, must be available on the hosts that use it.

In an enterprise deployment, it is assumed that you have a hardware storage filer, which is available and connected to each of the host computers you have procured for the deployment.

You must mount the shared storage to all servers that require access.

Each host must have appropriate privileges set within the Network Attached Storage (NAS) or Storage Area Network (SAN) so that it can write to the shared storage.

Follow the best practices of your organization for mounting shared storage. This section provides an example of how to do this on Linux using NFS storage.

You must create and mount shared storage locations so that BIHOST1 and BIHOST2 can see the same location if it is a binary installation in two separate volumes.

For more information, see Shared Storage Recommendations When Installing and Configuring an Enterprise Deployment.

You use the following command to mount shared storage from a NAS storage device to a Linux host. If you are using a different type of storage device or operating system, refer to your manufacturer documentation for information about how to do this.

Note:

The user account used to create a shared storage file system owns and has read, write, and execute privileges for those files. Other users in the operating system group can read and execute the files, but they do not have write privileges.

For more information about installation and configuration privileges, see Selecting an Installation User in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Installation Planning Guide.

In the following example, nasfiler represents the shared storage filer. Also note that these are examples only. Typically, the mounting of these shared storage locations should be done using the /etc/fstabs file on UNIX systems, so that the mounting of these devices survives a reboot. Refer to your operating system documentation for more information.

  1. Create the mount directories on BIHOST1, as described in Summary of the Shared Storage Volumes in an Enterprise Deployment, and then mount the shared storage. For example:

    mount -t nfs nasfiler:VOL1/oracle/products/ /u01/oracle/products/

  2. Repeat the procedure on BIHOST2 using VOL2.

Validating the Shared Storage Configuration

Ensure that you can read and write files to the newly mounted directories by creating a test file in the shared storage location you just configured.

For example:

$ cd newly mounted directory
$ touch testfile

Verify that the owner and permissions are correct:

$ ls -l testfile

Then remove the file:

$ rm testfile

Note:

The shared storage can be a NAS or SAN device. The following example illustrates creating storage for a NAS device from BIHOST1. The options may differ depending on the specific storage device.

mount -t nfs -o rw,bg,hard,nointr,tcp,vers=3,timeo=300,rsize=32768,wsize=32768 nasfiler:VOL1/Oracle/u01/oracle

Contact your storage vendor and machine administrator to learn about the appropriate options for your environment.

8.6 Enabling the Required Virtual IP Addresses on Each Host

You must enable the required virtual IP addresses on each host in order to prepare the host for the enterprise deployment. The procedure varies, depending on whether you are using Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 or Oracle Enterprise Linux 6.

Oracle Enterprise Linux 5

To prepare each host for the enterprise deployment, you must enable the virtual IP (VIP) addresses described in Reserving the Required IP Addresses for an Enterprise Deployment.

It is assumed that you have already reserved the VIP addresses and host names and that they have been enabled by your network administrator. You can then enable the VIPs on the appropriate host.

Note that the virtual IP addresses used for the enterprise topology are not persisted because they are managed by Whole Server Migration (for selected Managed Servers and clusters) or by manual failover (for the Administration Server).

To enable the VIP addresses on each host, run the following commands as root:

/sbin/ifconfig interface:index IPAddress netmask netmask
/sbin/arping -q -U -c 3 -I interface IPAddress

where interface is eth0, or eth1, and index is 0, 1, or 2.

For example:

/sbin/ifconfig eth0:1 100.200.140.206 netmask 255.255.255.0

Enable your network to register the new location of the virtual IP address:

/sbin/arping -q -U -c 3 -I eth0 100.200.140.206

Validate that the address is available by using the ping command from another node, for example:

/bin/ping 100.200.140.206

Oracle Enterprise Linux 6 or Later

Starting with Oracle Enterprise Linux 6, the "ifconfig" command is deprecated and is replaced with the "ip" command.

To enable the VIP addresses on each host, run the following commands as root:
  1. Determine the CIDR notation of the netmask. Each Netmask has a CIDR notation. For example, 255.255.240.0 has a CIDR of 20.
    If the netmask you are adding is the same as the interface, the fastest way to determine this is to examine the existing IP address assigned to the network card. You can do this using the following command:
    ip addr show dev bond0
    Sample output:
    2: bond0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast qlen 1000
link/ether 00:21:f6:03:85:9f brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
int 192.168.20.1/20 brd 10.248.11.255 scope global bond0
    In this example, the CIDR value is the value after the forward slash (/), which is, 20. If you are unsure of the CIDR value, contact your network administrator.
  2. Add the IP address 192.168.20.3, net mask 255.255.240 (CIDR20) on network card bond0 using the following command:
    ip addr add 192.168.20.3/20 dev bond0:1
  3. For each of the virtual IP addresses you define, update the ARP caches using the following command:
    arping -b -A -c 3 -I bond0 192.168.20.3

Note:

Due to a known issue in the ifconfig utility, during server migration, all VIPs are dropped from the network interface on the machine the WebLogic Managed Server is migrated from. This happens when the VIP is enabled on :0 of the network interface. To workaround the issue, enable the VIPs on the network interface starting with :1.