Overview of Global Data Services Administration

Administering the Global Data Service (GDS) configuration includes managing the catalog, GSM software, regions and pools, services, users, and monitoring operations.

The GDSCTL utility is used to create, manage and monitor a Global Data Services configuration and all of its components. This utility is very similar to the \ utility that is used to manage Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) deployments. The following topics explain how to administer your GDS configurations.

Global Data Services is managed by the Global Data Services administrator. The administrator's responsibilities include the following tasks:

Installing and upgrading the global service manager software
Creation and maintenance of the Global Data Services catalog
Starting, stopping, and configuring global service managers
Creation and administration of Global Data Services regions and pools
Management of global services
Monitoring of the Global Data Services framework components

Each Global Data Services configuration requires at least one Global Data Services administrator. A small configuration can be administered by a single person who performs all the administrative duties. For a large configuration with many regions and pools it may be necessary to have a group of Global Data Services administrators who share responsibilities. All Global Data Services administrators have privileges to perform all the listed administrative tasks for a given Global Data Services configuration.

An operating system account should exist for the Global Data Services administrator on all computers where global service managers are expected to run. The account user should have privileges to install and run global service manager software. Only Global Data Services administrators should be granted these privileges.

A Global Data Services administrator must also be added as a user to the Global Data Services catalog database and granted the GSMADMIN_ROLE role. The database account for a Global Data Services administrator should be created by a database administrator of the catalog database. The Global Data Services administrator might create this account by himself if he happens to have local database administrator privileges on this database.

If a Global Data Services configuration contains multiple pools, then in addition to Global Data Services administrators who manage the entire configuration, each pool can have one or more Global Data Services pool administrators. Responsibilities of a pool administrator are limited to the administration of a particular pool and include the following tasks:

Adding and removing databases in the pool
Management of global services in the pool

To perform these tasks a Global Data Services pool administrator must be a user of the Global Data Services catalog database with the appropriate privileges. Creation of the database user for a pool administrator and granting of the privileges is performed automatically when a Global Data Services pool is created with the -USER option. A pool administrator can also be added to a pool after its creation using gdsctl modify gdspool command. A Global Data Services administrator always has privileges to administer any pool in the database configuration.

All administrative operations should be performed using the appropriate GDSCTL commands. Execution of the most GDSCTL commands requires access to the Global Data Services catalog. For such commands, credentials for the catalog database must be specified using the appropriate command options.

Many administrative operations, such as adding a database to a Global Data Services pool, or enabling a global service, require making changes not only to the Global Data Services catalog, but also to databases in the Global Data Services configuration. The generic workflow for such commands is as follows:

GDSCTL connects to the catalog database with credentials provided by the administrator and makes appropriate changes to the catalog.
The catalog database notifies all global service managers in the Global Data Services configuration about the changes. The notification is sent using an Oracle Net Services connection that each global service manager maintains with the catalog database.
After receiving the notification one of the global service managers connects to the configuration databases that need to be configured and makes the appropriate changes.

To support this workflow a global service manager should be able to connect to the catalog and configuration databases. The connection to the catalog database is established using GSMCATUSER account, which is created by default on any Oracle database during database installation. The account must be unlocked by the database administrator of the catalog database and its password given to the Global Data Services administrator. Whenever a new global service manager is added to the GDS configuration, the Global Data Services administrator has to specify the password for the GSMCATUSER account. The password is then encrypted and stored in the global service manager wallet for future use by the global service manager.

The global service manager connects to the pool databases using the GSMUSER account, which also exists by default on any Oracle database. The account is locked after the database installation. It should be unlocked by the local database administrator before the database can be added to a Global Data Services pool. The password for the GSMUSER account is given to the pool or Global Data Services administrator who adds the database to a Global Data Services pool and must be specified in the gdsctl add database command. The password is stored in the Global Data Services catalog for future use by all global service managers.

Parent topic: GDS Administration