3.1.1 Considerations and Requirement for Using OEDA

Review this information before using Oracle Exadata Deployment Assistant (OEDA).

• Oracle Exadata ships with the Oracle Linux operating system installed on the servers.

• The rack prefix is used to generate host names for all components. For example, if you specify dbm0 for the rack prefix:

  • The database server host names are like dbm0db01
  • The storage server host names are like dbm0cel01
  • The InfiniBand Network Fabric switch names are like dbm0sw-iba1
  • The RoCE Network Fabric switch names are like dbm0sw-rocea1

  Note:

  The rack prefix can contain a maximum of 20 letters and numbers. Spaces and symbols are not permitted; for example, exclamation (!), hyphen (-), and so on.

  In you have multiple racks, then, each rack prefix should be a unique value that identifies the rack. Oracle recommends using dbm01 for the first rack, dbm02 for the second, dbm03 for the third, and so on.

• If you configure Oracle Exadata with storage management using Oracle Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM), the backup method and redundancy protection levels you use determine how to size the Oracle ASM disk groups that are created during installation.

  • If you configure internal backups, then the database backups are created on disk in the Fast Recovery Area in the RECO disk group for the database. The Fast Recovery Area also contains Archived Redo Logs and Flashback Log Files. The division of disk space between the DATA disk group and the RECO disk group is 40% and 60%, respectively.

  • If you configure external backups, then database backups are created on disk or tape media that is external to currently deployed Oracle Exadata. The Fast Recovery Area contains only objects such as Archived Redo Logs and Flashback Log Files.

    Because you do not need to reserve additional space in the RECO disk group for backups, the division of disk space between the DATA disk group and the RECO disk group is now 80% and 20%, respectively.

• If you configure Oracle Exadata with storage management using Oracle Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM), Oracle recommends the use of high redundancy disk groups for mission critical applications. Use the following guidelines to assist in sizing the disk groups based on the redundancy levels for the disk groups:

  Table 3-1 Protection Levels and Disk Group Contents

  Oracle ASM Redundancy Level for DATA Disk Group	Oracle ASM Redundancy Level for RECO Disk Group	DATA Group Contents	RECO Group Contents
  High	High	Data files Temporary files Online redo logs Control file	Archive logs Flashback log files
  High	Normal	Data files Online redo logs Control file.	Archive logs Temporary files Flashback log files
  Normal	High	Data files Temporary files	Online redo logs Control file Archive logs Flashback log files
  Normal	Normal	Data files Temporary files Online redo logs Control file	Archive logs Flashback log files

• A valid time zone name is required when installing Oracle Exadata. Time zone values provided for Oracle Exadata and Oracle Linux comes from the Time Zone Database. You must specify a valid time zone name for each server using the TZ environment variable. The variable value is of the form Area/Location. For example, America/New_York is a valid TZ value; EST, EDT, and UTC-4 are invalid values.

• OEDA configures all Exadata components, including the database servers (with or without virtualization), storage servers, and the RDMA Network Fabric. For successful configuration, OEDA requires access to:

  • The client and administration network interfaces on the database servers, including the VM server host and the VM guests where applicable.
  • The administration network interfaces on the storage servers.
  • The administration network interfaces on the RDMA Network Fabric switches.

  Ensure that you run the OEDA deployment phase on a host with access to all of the required network interfaces.