Complete these setup tasks before Oracle Database Appliance is delivered.
Tasks:
Add your hardware Support Identifier (SI) to your My Oracle Support account profile.
Your hardware SI is supplied when you purchase Oracle Database Appliance. If you acquire new software licenses, then you must also register your new software SIs. The SI registration process can take up to 24 hours to complete.
Note:
You cannot obtain support or software from Oracle without registered SIs.
Use these topics to help you to make decisions about your Oracle Database Appliance configuration.
These topics help you to select the correct Oracle Database Appliance and plan for deployment. Record your decisions and the information that you require before you proceed to complete system configuration checklists.
Caution:
Do not use Oracle Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA) to create databases on Oracle Database Appliance. Only use Oracle Appliance Manager for database configuration. Deploying Oracle Database instances using Oracle Appliance Manager ensures that these databases are properly configured, optimized, and supported on Oracle Database Appliance.
Topics:
Oracle Database Appliance is shipped from the factory to deploy as bare metal.
Review the systems requirements, database configuration, and software downloads to continue with a bare metal deployment.
Parent topic: Planning Oracle Database Appliance Configuration Options
Review Virtualized Platform options, and requirements for these options, such as shared disks and virtual local area networks.
Before you implement virtual machines, you must decide how and where you want them to run. Based on your requirements, you can select High Availability options, or you can select options to reduce interference between competing virtual machines for CPU and network access. You can also select options to provide more storage space, or enable automatic startup for virtual machines. Some of these options require additional network configuration beyond the configuration required for the Oracle Database Appliance servers.
By default, Oracle Database Appliance includes one local repository on each node. The maximum size of that repository depends on your Oracle Database Appliance hardware. The maximum size is 350 GB for Oracle Database Appliance X6-2-HA Virtualized Platform.
When you create virtual machines in the default repositories, the virtual machines can run only on the node where they are located. Because they run on only one node, they have no failover capability.
To obtain the most flexible shared machine environment, use a shared repository with Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs). Shared repositories provide High Availability options, more storage capacity, and reduced local storage use. VLANs help you partition network traffic for your virtual machines.
When you use a shared repository hosted on shared disks, the virtual machines consume space in Oracle Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM) disk groups, DATA and RECO. When you use shared disks, you can convert virtual machines to do the following:
Start automatically whenever the repository becomes available
Run on a preferred node
Start or fail over to the other node, if the preferred node is unavailable
Oracle Database Appliance Virtualized Platform deployments support multiple VLANs on the same network interface card (NIC) port. Each VLAN is essentially an independent logical network that operates with other VLANs over the same physical connection.
Use VLANs to minimize the number of required physical connections and NICs while concurrently separating traffic. Each VLAN is assigned a distinct VLAN identification (ID). The network switch uses VLAN IDs to segregate traffic among the different VLANs operating on the same link. When a VLAN is configured, the VLAN functions exactly like a separate physical connection.
Note:
You must configure virtual LANs on the physical switches before you use them.
Parent topic: Planning Oracle Database Appliance Configuration Options
Select the database templates and configuration options to properly size and configure your initial database.
Review the database configuration options and select the templates for Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC), and Oracle RAC One Node databases needed to configure your initial database. This information is relevant to you if you plan to configure an initial database during Bare Metal or Virtualized Platform deployments.
Record your decisions and the information that you require for your database templates before you proceed to complete system configuration checklists.
Caution:
Do not use Oracle Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA) to create databases on Oracle Database Appliance. Only use Oracle Appliance Manager for database configuration. Deploying Oracle Database instances using Oracle Appliance Manager ensures that these databases are properly configured, optimized, and supported on Oracle Database Appliance.
Topics:
Parent topic: Planning Oracle Database Appliance Configuration Options
If you plan to create an initial database during deployment, then use these lists to select an Oracle Database deployment option, and prepare for the deployment.
Oracle Appliance Manager installs Oracle Database software on mirrored disks that are internal to Oracle Database Appliance. During the initial deployment with the Oracle Appliance Manager Configurator, you can either create a database or you can defer database creation to a later time.
Options:
Enterprise Edition: Oracle Database 12c release 1 Enterprise Edition (no automated failover), with the following characteristics:
Single-instance Oracle Database Enterprise Edition home
Oracle Database software installation on both nodes
Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) One Node: Oracle RAC One Node 12c release 1, with the following characteristics:
Oracle RAC One Node has a designated Oracle Database Appliance home node
Oracle RAC One Node software is installed on both servers
Automated failover is configured
Enterprise Edition license is required
Oracle RAC One Node license on each server is required
Exception: If you designate one server as a backup server, then you can use that server without a license, in accordance with the 10-day rule.
Oracle RAC: Oracle Real Application Clusters 12c release 1, with the following characteristics:
Oracle RAC home
Oracle RAC software is installed on both servers
Enterprise Edition license is required
Oracle RAC license on each server is required (not eligible for the 10-day rule)
Note:
For information about the 10-day rule, see the Oracle Software Investment Guide at http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/sig-070616.pdf
.
Parent topic: Selecting Database Configuration Options
Oracle Database Appliance software includes preconfigured templates that incorporate Oracle best practices with optimization for different classes of databases.
Because of differences in CPU counts, memory size, and other resources available with different Oracle Database Appliance models, some templates are not supported on all models.
Each Oracle Database template has different workload profile and performance characteristics:
Memory requirements, which are calculated from the System Global Area (SGA), and Program Global Area (PGA) sizes
Processing requirements, which are calculated from the number of processes
Logging requirements, which are based on log buffer size, and online redo log size
Review the types of database templates for guidelines and sizing information.
Determine the template that you want to use. The following templates are available for Oracle Database Appliance X6-2-HA:
Odb-01s
Odb-01
Odb-02
Odb-04
Odb-06
Odb-12
Odb-16
Odb-20
Note:
Oracle strongly recommends that you use the Oracle Database Appliance templates. These templates implement best practices, and are configured specifically for Oracle Database Appliance.
On Oracle Database Appliance Virtualized Platform, if you only plan to deploy one Oracle Database, then Oracle recommends that you use a template for your ODA_BASE that has the same name as the template that you choose for your Oracle Database.
You do not have to select database templates with the same size category as the ODA_BASE template. For example, you can use a small ODA_BASE template to host two very small databases, and you can use a large ODA_BASE template to host either one large with one small database, or host one medium database with one small and two very small databases.
Caution:
The total requirements for your selected database templates must not exceed the capacity of your ODA_BASE template. You can adjust the size of ODA_BASE after the initial deployment, so can expand ODA_BASE to accommodate more databases in ODA_BASE.
Parent topic: Selecting Database Configuration Options
After you select templates for your planned Oracle Database, identify your workload type, and determine the total number of CPUs that you require to support the templates.
Oracle Database Appliance templates are configured and tuned for specific types of Oracle Database workloads:
Generic templates
Online analytic transaction templates (OLTP)
Decision support services templates (DSS)
In-Memory database templates
These templates are designed to run on a specific number of cores. Caging ensures that each database workload is restricted to the set of cores allocated by the template, enabling multiple databases to run concurrently with no performance degradation, up to the capacity of Oracle Database Appliance. You can select database template sizes larger than your current needs to provide for planned growth, which you accommodate later by adjusting System Global Area (SGA) and Program Global Area (PGA) sizes, as well as the number of cores.
Parent topic: Selecting Database Configuration Options
Use these checklists to collect information before deploying Oracle Database Appliance.
Collect security, storage, and network information required to prepare for deploying Oracle Database Appliance.
Review your security requirements for root
passwords, determine your storage requirements and network administration requirements, and complete any required configuration before your Oracle Database Appliance hardware is delivered.
Security Requirements
What root password should you use for Oracle Database Appliance? Root passwords should comply with your system security requirements.
Secure operating systems are an important basis for general system security. Ensure that your operating system deployment is in compliance with common security practices.
Storage Administration Requirements
Storage administration is integrated into Oracle Database Appliance. No additional storage configuration is required.
Oracle Database Appliance includes integrated storage for operational files (operating system, Oracle Grid Infrastructure home, Oracle Database homes, tools), user data (database files), and log files (database redo logs). Operational files are stored on mirrored internal system disks in each server. Data and database redo log files are stored on shared disks in the storage shelf.
The Oracle Database Appliance X6-2-HA storage shelf contains ten 1.6 TB SSDs (partitioned to 1.2 TB to improve performance) for data, which are configured as a DATA ASM disk group. Four 200 GB SSDs are used for the database redo logs, which are configured as a REDO ASM disk group.
Note:
Disk hardware capacity is measured using the formula that 1 KB equals 1,000 bytes; software storage requirements are based on 1 KB equals 1,024 bytes.
Network Administration Requirements
Ensure that the names and addresses that you provide for network configuration are configured in your Domain Name System (DNS) servers. The addresses that you provide are configured in the /etc/hosts
file to provide IP name and address resolution, even if a DNS server is not available.
You have the option to connect either to a copper, or to a fiber public network. Ensure that your network planning is based on the correct type of public network.
Oracle recommends that you resolve addresses using a DNS server, so that you can use Single Client Access Names (SCANs). Having a single name to access the cluster enables the client to use the EZConnect client and the simple JDBC thin URL to access any Oracle Database running in the cluster, independent of the active servers in the cluster. The SCAN provides load-balancing and failover for client connections to these databases. The SCAN works as a cluster alias for Oracle Databases in the cluster.
If you deploy without using a DNS server, then you can add a DNS server later, and add SCANs. If you add SCANs, then you must specify additional VIP addresses for those SCANs.
A correctly configured Oracle Database Appliance requires at least six public addresses on the same subnet for the nodes:
A public IP name and address for each node
A virtual IP name and address for each node
Two addresses that resolve to the SCAN for the cluster.
All names must conform to the RFC 952 standard, which permits alphanumeric characters and hyphens ("-"), but does not allow underscores ("_").
Provide an IP address for the public interface for each node. This interface is bond0
, or Eth1
on Oracle Database Appliance Virtualized Platform, (a bond of Eth2 and Eth3), which is used for the host IP address for the node.
Use bond1
and bond2
for management, backup, disaster recovery, or other options where you require a network interface. Be prepared to provide a netmask and a gateway for each interface, as both are required when you configure network connections for Oracle Database Appliance. If you select a Custom installation, then provide names and addresses for the bond1
optional interface.
Also determine answers to the following questions:
Do you have a Network Time Protocol (NTP) service configured for each server, so that the local system time for each server is synchronized?
If you have NTP servers, and you want to synchronize time between Oracle Database Appliance nodes using NTP, then be prepared to provide the addresses for the servers. If you do not provide addresses for NTP servers, then Oracle Grid Infrastructure software configures time synchronization between nodes using Cluster Time Synchronization Service (CTSS).
Do you want to plug in the public IP address cables to redundant switches, so that you can avoid a single point of failure for Oracle Database Appliance? Oracle recommends that you use redundant switches for High Availability.
Parent topic: Gathering System Requirement Information
Use the checklist to gather system information that you need to obtain for Oracle Database Appliance. Record the values for your system.
Table 2-1 Checklist for System Configuration Information for Oracle Database Appliance
System Information | Description |
---|---|
Host Name |
The name for the Oracle Database Appliance System. The name must conform with the RFC 952 standard, which allows alphanumeric characters and hyphens ( - ), but does not allow underscores ( _ ). The name should not begin with a numeral or hyphen and should not end in a hyphen. Oracle recommends that you use all lowercase characters for the host name. |
Domain Name |
Your domain name. For example: |
Master Password |
The password set for the root password of the system, OS users, database users, and pdbadmin. The password is also used to set the database |
DNS Server |
(Optional) DNS server details. |
NTP Server |
(Optional) Network Time Protocol (NTP) service details. |
Region |
The region where you plan to operate the Oracle Database Appliance system. |
Timezone |
Select the time zone where you plan to operate the Oracle Database Appliance system. |
Database Edition |
Select an Oracle Database edition, either Enterprise Edition or Standard Edition. You cannot mix editions. The database edition you select determines the database editions that you create in the appliance. To change editions, you must redeploy Oracle Database Appliance. |
Backup Location |
Determine the backup location setting. The setting determines how the NVMe Disks are partitioned between DATA and RECO. Select External, Internal, or Custom:
|
Percentage of Storage Reserved for Data |
If you select a Custom backup location, determine the amount of reserves for DATA storage. The percentage must be a whole number between 10 and 90. |
Diskgroup Redundancy |
If the machine has 4 NVMe, select normal redundancy (two way mirror) or high redundancy (three way mirror). If the machine has 2 NVMe, redundancy is automatically set to normal and this field does not appear. |
Network Information |
Obtain network information:
|
Initial Database Details (if you want to create one during deployment) |
|
Parent topic: Gathering System Requirement Information
Use the checklists in this topic to identify the IP addresses required for Oracle Database Appliance.
By default, names for network interfaces are derived from the Oracle Database Appliance system name, which you provide during installation. Also, when you use Oracle Appliance Manager Configurator, the addresses for the public IP addresses can be automatically assigned in a sequence starting with the address you provide for the public IP address for Node 0. The other IP addresses generated are, in order, the public address for Node 1; the virtual IP address for Node 0; the virtual IP address for Node 1; and the SCAN addresses.
You can retain the default values, or you can use addresses provided by your system administrator to perform a custom configuration. Ensure that all addresses listed as "Yes” in the "Same Subnet" column are on the same subnet as each other.
Minimum IP Address Requirements for Oracle Database Appliance Bare Metal Deployment
Table 2-2 Minimum IP Address Requirements for Oracle Database Appliance Bare Metal Deployment
Type of IP | Minimum IP Address Counts | IP Address Default Values | Your Values As Applicable | Same Subnet |
---|---|---|---|---|
Host Public Addresses |
2 |
No default |
No default |
Yes |
Host Private Addresses |
4 |
192.168.16.24 192.168.16.25 192.168.17.24 192.168.17.25 |
Not applicable: the private addresses are defined before deployment and should not be changed. If you are using InfiniBand, IP addresses 192.168.17.24 and 192.168.17.25 are not used |
Yes |
Oracle RAC VIP |
2 |
No default |
No default |
Yes |
Single Client Access Name (SCAN) |
2 |
No default |
No default |
Yes |
Oracle Integrated Lights Out Manager (ILOM) |
2 |
No default |
No default |
No |
User Virtual Machine |
Not Applicable |
No default |
No default |
No |
Minimum IP Address Requirements for Oracle Database Appliance Virtualized Platform Deployment
Table 2-3 Minimum IP Address Requirements for Oracle Database Appliance Virtualized Platform Deployment
Type of IP | Minimum IP Address Counts | IP Address Default Values | Your Values As Applicable | Same Subnet |
---|---|---|---|---|
Host Public Addresses |
2 (for ODA_BASE) 2 (for Dom0) (Total of 4) |
No default |
No default If you are using InfiniBand, IP addresses 192.168.17.24 and 192.168.17.25 are not used |
Yes |
Host Private Addresses |
2 |
192.168.16.24 (for Dom0) 192.168.16.25 (for Dom0) 192.168.16.27 (for ODA_BASE) 192.168.16.28 (for ODA_BASE) |
Not applicable: the private addresses are defined before deployment and should not be changed. |
Yes |
Oracle RAC VIP |
2 |
No default |
No default |
Yes |
Single Client Access Name (SCAN) |
2 |
No default |
No default |
Yes |
Oracle Integrated Lights Out Manager (ILOM) |
2 |
No default |
No default |
No |
User Virtual Machine |
At least 1 for each Virtual Machine |
No default |
No default |
No |
Parent topic: Gathering System Requirement Information
Use the standalone Oracle Database Appliance Configurator to create an offline deployment plan and validate your network settings before the actual deployment.
If you prefer to configure your system at the time you deploy it, you can wait and use the online Configurator that is part of the base Oracle Database Appliance software. If you want to use the Configurator to create a configuration file before your appliance is delivered, then review these topics.
Topics:
Decide if you want to download the standalone Oracle Database Appliance Manager Configurator to create a configuration file for Oracle Database Appliance.
The standalone Oracle Appliance Manager Configurator is a Java-based tool that enables you to generate your deployment plan, and validate your network settings before the actual deployment.
If you want to use this tool before deployment, then you must download and run the Configurator on a local client system. The local client can be a Linux, UNIX, MAC, or Windows system.
At the end of an offline Configurator session, you can save your deployment plan in a configuration file. When you are ready to deploy Oracle Database Appliance, copy this configuration file to the appliance, and run the online Oracle Appliance Manager Configurator to import and deploy your saved plan. You can also print the file's content and use the printout as a checklist for setting up your external network configuration.
Before you save your configuration file, Oracle recommends that you test your network settings. To test the network settings, the client where you run the Configurator must be connected to same network that you intend to use for Oracle Database Appliance.
Parent topic: Creating an Oracle Appliance Manager Deployment Plan
Download and run the standalone Configurator to create a configuration file for Oracle Database Appliance X6-2-HA.
To obtain the standalone Oracle Appliance Manager Configurator that matches your version of Oracle Database Appliance software, download it from the following URL:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/database-appliance/overview/index.html
All versions of the Configurator are available from the Overview page by clicking the Oracle Database Appliance Manager Configurator link.
After you download the Configurator to a client, run it by using the following procedure:
Parent topic: Creating an Oracle Appliance Manager Deployment Plan