Planning the Installation and Configuration

To register and configure HA for Oracle External Proxy, you must consider or provide information on the following points.

• Decide whether to run HA for Oracle External Proxy as a failover or scalable data service.

• Decide which extension properties to set. See the Oracle Solaris Cluster Data Services Planning and Administration Guide for information about the standard properties and Appendix A, HA for Oracle External Proxy Extension Properties for information about the extension properties.

• Provide the name of the resource type for HA for Oracle External Proxy. This name is ORCL.oracle_external_proxy.

• Provide the names of the cluster nodes that will master the data service.

Configuration Requirements

The following sections describe the configuration requirements for Oracle External Proxy.

• Remote Database User

• Secure Remote Database Password

• tnsnames.ora File

• Remote Oracle Notification Service

Remote Database User

On the Oracle Database or the Oracle RAC database, create a user that will be used by the Oracle External Proxy resource.

The following example shows that a user hauser with a password hauser has been created by using the SQL commands. You can choose a different username and password. The username and password that you chose will be used later by the Oracle Solaris Cluster resource.

-bash-3.00$ sqlplus "/as sysdba"

SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.2.0 Production on Fri Nov 4 05:23:31 2011

Copyright (c) 1982, 2010, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Connected to:
Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.2.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, Real Application Clusters, Automatic Storage Management, OLAP,
Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

SQL> create user hauser identified by hauser;

User created.

SQL> grant create session to hauser;

Grant succeeded.

SQL> grant execute on dbms_lock to hauser;

Grant succeeded.

SQL> grant select on v_$instance to hauser;

Grant succeeded.

SQL> create profile hauser limit PASSWORD_LIFE_TIME UNLIMITED;
 
Profile created.

SQL> alter user hauser identified by hauser profile hauser;

User altered.

SQL>

Secure Remote Database Password

The ORCL.oracle_external_proxy resource type verifies a connection to the remote Oracle database. There is no requirement for any Oracle Client software on the nodes where the ORCL.oracle_external_proxy resource type will execute. You will need to create a secure password to connect to a remote database. Example 1-1 shows how to encrypt the database user password. The example uses hauser as the password. However, this password must correspond to the password you used when creating the database user in Remote Database User.

Example 1-1 Encrypting the Database User Password

Assuming a root role on all Oracle Solaris Cluster nodes, do the following:

bash-3.00# dd if=/dev/urandom of=/var/cluster/scoep_key bs=8 count=1
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
bash-3.00#
bash-3.00# echo hauser | /usr/sfw/bin/openssl enc -aes128 -e -pass \
file:/var/cluster/scoep_key -out /opt/ORCLscoep/.oep-rs_passwd
bash-3.00#

oep-rs in oep-rs_passwd represents the resource name that you will create later. However, you can choose a different resource name. Now verify that the password can be decrypted.

bash-3.00# /usr/sfw/bin/openssl enc -aes128 -d -pass \
 file:/var/cluster/scoep_key -in /opt/ORCLscoep/.oep-rs_passwd
hauser
bash-3.00# chmod 400 /var/cluster/scoep_key
bash-3.00# chmod 400 /opt/ORCLscoep/.oep-rs_passwd

tnsnames.ora File

A valid tnsnames entry for the Oracle Database or Oracle RAC service is required. If an existing Oracle installation exists, for example if an Oracle Application Tier is installed on the Oracle Solaris Cluster nodes, then it is acceptable to use the tnsnames.ora file in that installation:

${ORACLE_HOME}/network/admin/tnsnames.ora

When registering an Oracle External Proxy resource, you need to specify a tns_admin extension property, unless the default value /var/opt/oracle is acceptable. If so, you can provide either of the following entries:

-p TNS_ADMIN=<${ORACLE_HOME}>/network/admin
-p TNS_ADMIN=your path to tnsnames.ora

If the tns_admin extension property is omitted, the Oracle External Proxy resource defaults to the /var/opt/oracle file. If you are interrogating an Oracle Database , the HOST entry in tnsnames.ora must refer to the SCAN name.

bash-3.00# mkdir /var/opt/oracle
bash-3.00# cat /var/opt/oracle/tnsnames.ora
ORCL =
  (DESCRIPTION =
    (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = dbhost-scan-lh)(PORT = 1521))
    (CONNECT_DATA =
      (SERVER = DEDICATED)
      (SERVICE_NAME = ORCL)
    )
  )
bash-3.00#

The hostname dbhost-scan-lh must be resolvable and within the /etc/inet/hosts file on each node.

bash-3.00# grep dbhost-scan-lh /etc/inet/hosts
10.134.84.58 dbhost-scan-lh.us.oracle.com dbhost-scan-lh
bash-3.00# 

Remote Oracle Notification Service

Running Oracle Notification Service on every database node reduces the time it takes for the ORCL.oracle_external_proxy resource type to connect to the database and to determine the state of the database. To verify that Oracle Notification Service is running on the database nodes, run the following command.

bash-3.00# su - oragrid
Oracle Corporation SunOS 5.11 11.0 November 2011
-bash-3.00$ crsctl stat res ora.ons -t
---------------------------------------------------------
NAME TARGET STATE SERVER STATE_DETAILS Local Resources
---------------------------------------------------------
ora.ons
ONLINE ONLINE dbhost1
ONLINE ONLINE dbhost2
bash-3.00$

If Oracle Notification Service fails or stops running on a database node, the ORCL.oracle_external_proxy resource will still continue to monitor the remote database. However, it will take longer to connect to the database and determine the state of the database.