6.14 Adding Additional Elastic Nodes to an Existing Rack

You can add nodes to an existing rack using elastic configuration.

The elastic configuration procedure described in Performing Initial Elastic Configuration of Oracle Exadata Database Machine can also be used to add new servers to an existing rack. The new servers and existing servers must be at least X5. The procedure assigns IP addresses to the new database servers and cells, in preparation for adding them into existing setups. The addition of X5 or later model servers into previous generation racks using this methodology is not supported.

The XML configuration file generated by the Oracle Exadata Deployment Assistant (OEDA) must contain the existing nodes, plus the new nodes to be added.

If you are adding only storage servers, then you can run the applyElasticConfig.sh script from a storage server rather than a database server.

The overall process for adding a new server to an existing rack is:

1. Use Oracle Exadata Deployment Assistant (OEDA) to add the new server to the rack configuration and generate the configuration files.

2. Download and unzip the OEDA archive to an existing server in the rack where you are adding the new server.

3. Install the new server into the rack.

4. Review the OEDAconfiguration file for the rack to determine the location within the rack (the ulocation) for the new server. For example:

   <uLocation>16</uLocation>

5. Log in to the ILOM on the new server using the local serial management connection (SER MGT port), and review the system location in the SP.

   For example:

   -> show /sp/ system_location
   
    /SP
       Properties:
           system_location = ru_06
   
   ->

6. If the location in the ILOM SP is different from the OEDA location, then modify the location in the ILOM SP to match the value from OEDAILOM.

   Note:

   Ensure that there are no duplicate locations in the OEDA rack configuration XML file.

   Set the system location in the ILOM SP with the following command:

   -> set /SP/ system_location=RU16

7. For a database server with InfiniBand Network Fabric only, log in to the server and reclaim the unused disk space.

   Disk space for unused system partitions must be reclaimed before installing software on all database servers with InfiniBand Network Fabric. Use the following command to reclaim the disk space: /opt/oracle.SupportTools/reclaimdisks.sh -free -reclaim. This command is not required on RoCE-based Exadata database servers.

   reclaimdisks.sh performs partition reconfiguration and a few other necessary configuration changes that take typically less than a minute to complete.

8. Log in to the server where you unzipped the OEDA configuration files and run the applyElasticConfig.sh script.

   For example, if you unzipped the OEDA ZIP file into the /opt/oracle.SupportTools/onecommand/linux-x64 directory, then use the following commands:

   # cd /opt/oracle.SupportTools/onecommand/linux-x64
   
   # ./applyElasticConfig.sh -cf customer_name-configFile.xml

   The applyElasticConfig.sh script performs network configuration for the new servers. The new servers are restarted at the end of the process.