1 Typical Installation for Oracle Grid Infrastructure for a Cluster

This chapter describes the difference between a Typical and Advanced installation for Oracle grid infrastructure for a cluster, and describes the steps required to complete a Typical installation.

This chapter contains the following sections:

Typical and Advanced Installation
Preinstallation Steps Completed Using Typical Installation
Preinstallation Steps Requiring Manual Tasks

1.1 Typical and Advanced Installation

You are given two installation options for Oracle grid infrastructure installations:

Typical Installation: The Typical installation option is a simplified installation with a minimal number of manual configuration choices. Oracle recommends that you select this installation type for most cluster implementations.
Advanced Installation: The Advanced Installation option is an advanced procedure that requires a higher degree of system knowledge. It enables you to select particular configuration choices, including additional storage and network choices, use of operating system group authentication for role-based administrative privileges, integration with IPMI, or more granularity in specifying Automatic Storage Management roles.

1.2 Preinstallation Steps Completed Using Typical Installation

With Oracle Clusterware 11g release 2 (11.2), during installation Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) generates Fixup scripts (runfixup.sh) that you can run to complete required preinstallation steps.

The fixup script is generated during installation. You are prompted to run the script as root in a separate terminal session. When you run the script, it completes the following configuration tasks:

If necessary sets kernel parameters required for installation and runtime to at least the minimum value.

1.3 Preinstallation Steps Requiring Manual Tasks

Complete the following manual configuration tasks

Verify System Requirements
Check Network Requirements
Check Operating System Packages
Create Groups and Users
Check Storage
Prepare Storage for Automatic Storage Management
Install Oracle Grid Infrastructure Software

1.3.1 Verify System Requirements

Enter the following commands to check available memory:

# /usr/contrib/bin/machinfo  | grep -i Memory
# /usr/sbin/swapinfo -a

The minimum required RAM is 4 GB. The minimum required swap space is 4 GB.

# bdf

This command checks the available space on file systems. If you use normal redundancy for Oracle Clusterware files, which is three Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR) locations and three voting disk locations, then you should have at least 2 GB of file space available on shared storage volumes reserved for Oracle grid infrastructure files.

If you plan to install on Oracle ASM, then to ensure high availability of Oracle Clusterware files on Oracle ASM, you need to have at least 2 GB of disk space for Oracle Clusterware files in three separate failure groups, with at least three physical disks. Each disk must have at least 1 GB of capacity to ensure that there is sufficient space to create Oracle Clusterware files.

Ensure you have at least 4.5 GB of space for the grid infrastructure for a cluster home (Grid home) This includes Oracle Clusterware and Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM) files and log files.

# bdf /tmp

Ensure that you have at least 1 GB of space in /tmp. If this space is not available, then increase the size, or delete unnecessary files in /tmp. If /tmp and the grid home are on the same filesystem, then add together their respective disk space requirements for the total minimum space required.

For more information, review the following section in Chapter 2:

"Checking the Hardware Requirements"

1.3.2 Check Network Requirements

Ensure that you have the following available:

Single Client Access Name (SCAN) for the Cluster
IP Address Requirements
Intended Use of Network Interfaces

1.3.2.1 Single Client Access Name (SCAN) for the Cluster

During Typical installation, you are prompted to confirm the default Single Client Access Name (SCAN), which is used to connect to databases within the cluster irrespective of which nodes they are running on. By default, the name used as the SCAN is also the name of the cluster. The default value for the SCAN is based on the local node name. If you change the SCAN from the default, then the name that you use must be globally unique throughout your enterprise.

In a Typical installation, the SCAN is also the name of the cluster. The SCAN and cluster name must be at least one character long and no more than 15 characters in length, must be alphanumeric, and may contain hyphens (-).

For example:

NE-Sa89

If you require a SCAN that is longer than 15 characters, then be aware that the cluster name defaults to the first 15 characters of the SCAN.

Refer to the following section for the SCAN address requirements.

1.3.2.2 IP Address Requirements

Before starting the installation, you must have at least two interfaces configured on each node: One for the private IP address and one for the public IP address.

Note:

Oracle recommends that you use a static hostname for all server node public hostnames.

1.3.2.2.1 IP Address Requirements for Manual Configuration

The public and virtual IP addresses must be static addresses, configured before installation, and the virtual IP addresses for each node must not currently be in use. Oracle Clusterware manages private IP addresses in the private subnet on interfaces you identify as private during the installation interview.

Configure the following addresses:

A public IP address for each node
A virtual IP address for each node
A single client access name (SCAN) configured on the domain name server (DNS) for Round Robin resolution to three addresses (recommended) or at least one address.

The single client access name (SCAN) is a cluster alias used to provide service access for clients to the cluster. Because the SCAN is associated with the cluster as a whole, rather than to a particular node, the SCAN makes it possible to add or remove nodes from the cluster without needing to reconfigure clients. It also adds location independence for the databases, so that client configuration does not have to depend on which nodes are running a particular database. Clients can continue to access the cluster in the same way as with previous releases, but Oracle recommends that clients accessing the cluster use the SCAN.

Note:

If you manually configure addresses, then Oracle strongly recommends that you use DNS resolution for SCAN VIPs.

See Also:

, Appendix C, "Oracle Grid Infrastructure for a Cluster Installation Concepts"for more information about network addresses

1.3.2.3 Intended Use of Network Interfaces

During installation, you are asked to identify the planned use for each network interface that OUI detects on your cluster node. You must identify each interface as a public or private interface, and you must use the same private interfaces for both Oracle Clusterware and Oracle RAC. For interfaces that you plan to have used for other purposes--for example, an interface dedicated to a network file system--you must identify those instances as "do not use" interfaces, so that Oracle Clusterware ignores them.

You can bond separate interfaces to a common interface to provide redundancy, in case of a NIC failure, but Oracle recommends that you do not create separate interfaces for Oracle Clusterware and Oracle RAC. If you use more than one NIC for the private interconnect, then Oracle recommends that you use NIC bonding. Note that multiple private interfaces provide load balancing but not failover, unless bonded.

1.3.3 Check Operating System Packages

Refer to the tables listed in Section 2.7, "Identifying Software Requirements" for the list of required packages for your operating system.

1.3.4 Create Groups and Users

Enter the following commands to create default groups and users:

One system privileges group for all operating system-authenticated administration privileges, including Oracle RAC (if installed):

# groupadd -g 1000 oinstall
# groupadd -g 1200 dba
# useradd -u 1100 -g oinstall -G dba oracle
# mkdir -p  /u01/app/11.2.0/grid
# mkdir -p /u01/app/oracle
# chown -R oracle:oinstall /u01
# chmod -R 775 /u01/

1.3.5 Check Storage

You must have space available on Automatic Storage Management for Oracle Clusterware files (voting disks and Oracle Cluster Registries), and for Oracle Database files, if you install standalone or Oracle Real Application Clusters Databases. Creating Oracle Clusterware files on block or raw devices is no longer supported for new installations.

Note:

When using Oracle Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM) for either the Oracle Clusterware files or Oracle Database files, Oracle creates one Oracle ASM instance on each node in the cluster, regardless of the number of databases.

1.3.6 Prepare Storage for Automatic Storage Management

Review the relevant sections in Chapter 3.

See Also:

Chapter 3, "Configuring Storage for Grid Infrastructure for a Cluster and Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC)" if you require detailed storage configuration information

1.3.7 Install Oracle Grid Infrastructure Software

Start OUI from the root level of the installation media. For example:
```
./runInstaller
```
Select Install and Configure Grid Infrastructure for a Cluster, then select Typical Installation. In the installation screens that follow, enter the configuration information as prompted.

If you receive an installation verification error that cannot be fixed using a fixup script, then review Chapter 2, "Advanced Installation Oracle Grid Infrastructure for a Cluster Preinstallation Tasks" to find the section for configuring cluster nodes. After completing the fix, continue with the installation until it is complete.