Before you install the data service, consider the points listed in the following sections.
Sun Cluster Support for Oracle Parallel Server/Real Application Clusters is an atypical Sun Cluster high availability data service. This data service does not provide automatic failover or fault monitoring because the Oracle Parallel Server/Real Application Clusters software already provides this functionality. This data service is a set of packages that, when installed, enables Oracle Parallel Server/Real Application Clusters to run on Sun Cluster nodes.
The Oracle Parallel Server/Real Application Clusters software is not registered with or managed by the Sun Cluster Resource Group Manager (RGM). However, Sun Cluster Support for Oracle Parallel Server/Real Application Clusters is similar to other data services in that it depends on the RGM to query cluster information.
You can configure Oracle Parallel Server/Real Application Clusters to use the shared-disk architecture of the Sun Cluster software. In this configuration, a single database is shared among multiple instances of the Oracle Parallel Server/Real Application Clusters software that access the database concurrently. The UNIX Distributed Lock Manager (Oracle UDLM) controls access to shared resources between cluster nodes. Typically, these shared resources contain process and database instance membership information. The internal DLM that resides in each Oracle database instance controls access to shared resources between cluster nodes. The shared resources are typically disk blocks and other shared resources such as transaction locks. See the Oracle documentation for details about the globally shared resources that the internal DLM manages.
Before you begin the installation, note the following pre-installation considerations.
Sun Cluster Support for Oracle Parallel Server/Real Application Clusters requires a functioning cluster with the initial cluster framework already installed. See the Sun Cluster 3.1 Software Installation Guide for details about initial installation of cluster software.
Decide which volume manager you will use—either VERITAS Volume Manager (VxVM) or RAID Manager.
Verify that you have obtained the appropriate licenses for your software. If, for example, you use VxVM, run the vxlicense -p check command to ensure that you have installed a valid license for the Volume Manager cluster feature. If you install your licenses incorrectly or incompletely, the nodes might abort.
Check with a Sun Enterprise Services representative for the current supported topologies for Sun Cluster Support for Oracle Parallel Server/Real Application Clusters, cluster interconnect, volume manager, and hardware configurations.
Ensure that you have installed all of the applicable software patches for Solaris, Sun Cluster, Oracle, and your volume manager. The Oracle UDLM consists of two packages—ORCLudlm, which Oracle supplies, and SUNWudlm, which Sun supplies. You must install both of these packages. If you need to install any Sun Cluster Support for Oracle Parallel Server/Real Application Clusters patches, you must apply these patches after you install the data service.
You should install the Oracle binaries locally on each node in the cluster, rather than globally on the cluster file system, to avoid overwrite issues with configuration files and logs. However, if you plan to install the Oracle binaries on the cluster file system, contact Oracle to validate the support of this configuration. Additionally, see the Oracle documentation for configuration specifics.