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Oracle® Real Application Cluster

Addendum

Release 1 (9.0.1) for Alpha OpenVMS

September 2001

Part No. A95129-01

The OpenVMS release of Oracle9i Release 1 (9.0.1) includes the Oracle Real Application Cluster, (RAC), option. Oracle Real Application Clusters, allows multiple database instances to share the same database files. For complete information about configuring and using Oracle Real Application Clusters, please see the Oracle Real Application Clusters, Concepts and Administration manual for Release 1 (9.0.1).

Oracle9i Release 1 (9.0.1) now incorporates the use of the Oracle Group Membership Services within the Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) environment. As of this release, there is no need to start up the OGMS daemon. This process is now automatically performed within the RAC environment.

Oracle Real Application for Oracle9i incorporates the Oracle Distributed Lock Manager. However, a limited number of native VMS locks are also used in the clustering interface. The usage of VMS locks has been greatly reduced from that of Parallel Server for Oracle 7.3.

Use of OpenVMS 7.2-1

In order to use Oracle Real Application Clusters, for OpenVMS, your system MUST be running Alpha OpenVMS version 7.2-1 or above. Also, depending on your OpenVMS version, you need to have applied the Compaq ECO's prior to running Oracle Real Application Clusters.

The information below will help you in determining what Compaq ECO kits to apply.

List of OpenVMS patches for Oracle9i Release 1 (9.0.1)

Please note that you need some mandatory Compaq OpenVMS patches if you are running Real Application Clusters.

For OpenVMS 7.2-1:

VMS721_SYS-V1000
TCP/IP - TCPIP_ECO V5.0-112
VMS721_LIBRTL-V0300
VMS721_RMS-V0200
VMS721_ACRTL-V0300

For OpenVMS 7.2-1H1:

OpenVMS VMS721H1_ACRTL-V0100 Alpha V7.2-1H1 Compaq C RTL ECO Summary
Update 4 - VMS721H1_UPDATE V4.0
TCP/IP - TCPIP_ECO V5.0-112
VMS721H1_SYS-V0300
VMS721H1_LIBRTL-V0300
VMS721H1_RMS-V0400

For OpenVMS 7.3

VMS73_SYS-V0100
TCP/IP 5.1 ECO 1

These ECO's can be downloaded from the Compaq Services website at:

http://ftp.support.compaq.com/patches/.new/openvms.html

Note that the above are minimum versions, likely to be superceeded by higher versions. Install the latest versions available.

Changes from Oracle8i

Note that Oracle9i Real Application Clusters has many architectural changes from the version supplied with Oracle8i. Users are urged to review the new features section of the Oracle Real Application Clusters Concepts and Administration manual for a complete discussion of these changes.

The keywords used inside of the init.ora parameter file for Real Application Clusters have been changed. Users should not simply copy a pre-existing options file into a new installation. Please refer to the Real Application Clusters Concepts and Administration manual for complete information on these changes.

Installation of the Oracle9i Real Application Clusters option

The Real Application Clusters option is installed by selecting the PSOPT menu choice for the Oracle Installer Build and Load Options menus.

Note:
You must link the Real Application Clusters option into the RDBMS Server before RAC operation is possible. This is done by selecting YES or "Y" to question 8 of the RDBMS Configuration Options screen.

Note:
For Oracle9i, please make sure that your Oracle SID values are unique on each node participating in a Real Application Cluster. If you do not, you may receive an ORA-00304 error, which points to "instance_number" already in use on another instance.
This message can be misleading, please also check your SID values for each node. The Oracle SID must be unique, just as in previous releases, see the Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Administration Guide for more information.

Addition to Createcat Procedure

Before operating your database in Cluster Database mode, be sure to add the following line to the end of the ora_db:createcat_<dbname>.sql file in your database (ora_db) directory:

@ora_rdbms_admin:catparr.sql

If you have already created the database before adding the reference to catparr, simply do the following:

connect  / as sysdba
@ora_rdbms_admin:catparr.sql

A number of SQL scripts were replaced in Real Application Clusters.

The utlopslt.sql script is replaced by utlclust.sql
The catparr.sql script is replaced by catclust.sql
The ops.sql script is replaced by clustdb.sql

Quota Considerations for Oracle9i Real Application Clusters

Oracle9i Real Application Cluster is a completely rearchitected feature from the Parallel Server Option in version below Release 1 (9.0.1). Oracle9i now includes a portable Distributed Lock Manager (DLM) internal to the database server.

Because of this, the usage of ENQLM quota by the Real Application Cluster Option has been greatly reduced. Large ENQLM boosts for background processes are no longer necessary in the Oracle9i environment.

The Process Quota estimation functions of the Oracle Server attempt to make reasonable calculations for the various backgrounds launched during server operations. You can change the quota allocated to a background process by defining certain system logical names before the instance is started.

To effect the process quota given to all backgrounds in an instance, define the following:

$ define/system ORA_<sid>_PQL$_<quota>  <quota_value>

If you have a SID named TOM1, and you wish to boost the BYTLM to 2 megabytes, you would use the following:

$ define/system ORA_TOM1_PQL$_BYTLM     2000000

Or, you could effect the process quota of a particular background by defining the following:

$ define/system ORA_<sid>_<process>_PQL$_<quota>  <quota_value>

If you wanted the LMD0 process of the TOM1 SID to get 3 megabytes of BYTLM, you would use the following:

$ define/system ORA_TOM1_LMD0_PQL$_BYTLM 3000000

RAC init.ora parameters for OpenVMS

Oracle9i Real Application Cluster allows the user to directly specify the IP network address via the cluster_interconnects parameter.

CLUSTER_INTERCONNECTS (OpenVMS environment)

Oracle uses information from this parameter to specify the IP address for a specific (RAC) instance.

You should set a value for CLUSTER_INTERCONNECTS ONLY, when you have an alternate network address to use for the specific (RAC) instance within a Real Application Cluster environment.

Typically you would use an alternate network address when the default OpenVMS Cluster network address is insufficient to meet the bandwidth requirements of large Real Application Clusters databases.

On OpenVMS Galaxy systems this can be a shared memory network address.

Note:
If you specify an OpenVMS shared memory network address, all RAC instances which are part of your Real Application Cluster environment must be within the SAME OpenVMS Galaxy and must ALL be using shared memory network addresses.

The syntax of the parameter is:

CLUSTER_INTERCONNECTS = ifn

where ifn is an IP address in standard dotted-decimal format, for example, 144.25.16.214.

Subsequent non OpenVMS platform implementations may specify interconnects with different syntaxes.

Warning:
When you set CLUSTER_INTERCONNECTS in OpenVMS configurations it must be unique for each instance in the Real Application Cluster.