On 23 july 2012 ODA bundle patch 2.3.0.0.0 was released, a long awaited version which should (and indeed does) include multi-home support. As with each new bundle patch, in this version the patch process is getting more robust and the long awaited support for rolling upgrade of the Grid Infrastructure and RAC databases is implemented. Unfortunately the installation of the… Read more »
Whenever something goes wrong during the deployment of an ODA, you can try to fix the problem and restart the deployment from the step where the deployment failed (using the GridInst.pl script). Sometimes however when the deployment fails, restarting the deployment doesn’t work and the only (or fastest) solution is to cleanup and start all over. There is a script… Read more »
With the release of ODA patch bundle 2.2.0.0.0 a tool available on Exadata only, is available for ODA too. This tool named “Exadata Configuration Audit Tool – exachk” is modified and renamed to odachk and is located in /opt/oracle/oak/odachk. With this tool you can check the configuration your complete ODA environment (numerious checks for OS, GI, RDBMS) and will show… Read more »
On 17 April 2012 ODA patch bundle 2.2.0.0.0 was released, which includes an Linux kernel upgrade (2.6.18-194.32.1.0.1.e15 to 2.6.32-300.11.1.el5uek – Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel), Oracle Grid Infrastructure patchset 11.2.0.3.2 and Oracle RDBMS patchset 11.2.0.3.2. Oracle made the installation of various parts of the patch bundle a lot more flexible. Now you can install the infrastructure (OS, firmware, OAK, etc.), GI and… Read more »
Not long ago I got a warning from Oracle Enterprise Manager that the REDO diskgroup on one of our ODA’s exceeded the warning threshold of 75%. Looking at the number of database instances and configured online redo log sizes I couldn’t understand how this was possible while the ODA documentation states that diskgroup +REDO size is 97.3 GB ( 4… Read more »
We just finished installing ODA Patch Bundle 2.1.0.3.0 on one of our ODA’s….. There goes one of the key features for the ODA – Simple one-button patch installation. As a DBA (and I think all administrators) are very reserved when these kind of statements are made. First of all applying Patch Bundle 2.1.0.3.0 (and Patch Bundle 2.1.0.3.1, but this one… Read more »
Oracle found a bug (a Seagate firmware issue) for ODA’s with Patch Bundle 2.1.0.3.0 applied. They highly recommend the installation of patch 13817532 after you’ve applied Patch Bundle 2.1.0.3.0. The problem is described in MOS note 1438089.1, but in short the problem is that a disk failure could trigger a complete system (ODA) shutdown. One good thing about this patch… Read more »
Until now, one of the biggest problems with the ODA was with applying one-off patches on Oracle Homes for high-impact problems. The only supported patching of an ODA was by installing an ODA patch bundle which (could) include Oracle Database PSU’s. If you run into a bug that is fixed by a one-off patch, it is not guaranteed that this… Read more »
The default location for the password file is $ORACLE_HOME/dbs which in most cases (if you don’t have your ORACLE_HOME on a shared disk) is on a non-shared filesystem. Whenever you grant SYSDBA or SYSOPER to a database user Oracle will add the user to the password file. What the Oracle documentation doesn’t tell you is that the user will only… Read more »
A snapshot controlfile is a read consistent copy of a database controlfile which RMAN creates because the controlfile is changed constantly. As of Oracle 11.2 (11.2.0.2 to more precise) the snapshot controlfile must be on a location shared by all RAC nodes in a cluster (it must be accessable by all nodes on which instances for an RAC database can… Read more »