Oracle RAC - Standard Edition, Enterprise Edition & One Node
1. RAC - EE, SE, One Node-
How to Choose?
Leighton L. Nelson
VirtaThon 2011
2. About Me
Senior Oracle DBA with over 10 years experience
Worked on Oracle 7.3, 8i,9i,10g,11g with RAC &
DataGuard
Member of IOUG, Brain Surface
Blogger (blogs.griddba.com)
VirtaThon 2011
3. Agenda
Oracle Clusterware
Real Application Clusters Overview
Standard Edition
RAC One Node
Feature Comparison
RAC Success Factors
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4. Oracle Clusterware Architecture
Provides cluster membership and high availability
Services for RAC and ASM
Manages instances, listeners, services, databases etc.
Clusterware relies on private network and shared disks
for registry and membership details –
interconnect, OCR, Voting Disks
High Availability API allows for non-Oracle applications
to be managed by Oracle Clusterware
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5. Real Application Clusters
Provides high availability solution for databases
A single database which consists of multiple instances
Provides scalability for applications
Forms the basis for Oracle’s Grid Computing
Shared everything architecture
Requires Oracle Clusterware (10g and higher)
Can be run on top of third-party Clusterware*
VirtaThon 2011
7. Standard Edition RAC
From Oracle 10g SE you can use RAC without additional
license
Restricted to maximum of 4 sockets in cluster
Requires the use of ASM for all database files
11gR2 requires the use of ACFS for binaries
Third-party Clusterware not supported
Lower cost-entry point than Enterprise Edition
VirtaThon 2011
8. Standard Edition
Advantages/Disadvantages
Advantages Disadvantages
RAC license included Maximum of 4 sockets in cluster
RAC HA features supported Limited scalability
(FAN/TAF/FCF)
Load balancing Limited High Availability
Storage Consolidation (ASM) No third-party Clusterware
Support
Significantly reduced ASM required for datafiles
license/maintenance costs
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9. RAC One Node
RAC One Node is an option of 11gR2 Enterprise Edition
Provides High Availability (Failover) of RAC
Only one instance of DB runs in the cluster at any given
time*
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10. RAC One Node
RAC One Node Failover
If database instance fails then Clusterware will try to
restart it or failover to another server
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11. RAC One Node
Online Relocation
• Second instance started during relocation
• Connections migrated to new instance
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12. RAC One Node
Advantages/Disadvantages
Advantages Disadvantages
Reduced licensing costs Third-party Clusterware not
supported
Server Consolidation Not supported with SE
Rolling DB, OS, Clusterware, ASM Not many support notes
patching and upgrades
Standardized HA deployment
Online upgrade to full RAC
Instance Caging to limit CPU
resources
Elimination of Cache Fusion
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13. RAC Feature Comparison
Features SE EE One Node
Online Yes Yes Yes
Upgrades/Patchin
g
Management Enterprise Enterprise Enterprise
Manager Manager Manager
Clusterware No third-party Third- No third-party
Clusterware. party/Oracle Clusterware
Oracle Clusterware
Clusterware only
Storage Yes (ASM) Yes (ASM) Yes (ASM)
Consolidation
High Availability Yes (Limited) Yes Yes
Workload Yes Yes Yes
Management
Load Balancing Yes (Instance) Yes (Instance) Yes (Server) 2011
VirtaThon
Restrictions Yes No No
14. RAC Success Factors
Project Guide for Oracle RAC Implementation (10gR2)
System Test Plan Outline
Load Testing (Swingbench, Real Application Testing, ORION)
Swingbench – TPM/Throughput/IOPS/Scalability
Real Application Testing – Capture & Replay Production
Workload
ORION – Benchmark Storage IOPS/Latency/Throughput
RAC: Frequently Asked Questions (Doc ID 220970.1)
RAC Assurance Support Team: RAC and Oracle Clusterware
Starter Kit and Best Practices (Generic) (Doc ID 810394.1)
VirtaThon 2011
15. RAC Success Factors
Review Application Behavior in RAC
Review sequences (CACHE, NOORDER)
Truncate – Can cause latencies due to checkpointing
DDL Statements – Generate row cache locks, library cache
locks
Instrumentation of Code helps with troubleshooting
Review Application Server Connections
Third-party JDBC drivers can cause issues with failover
Connection pooling can help with load balancing
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16. Possible Scenarios
Commodity servers with maximum of 2 sockets -> SE
High End Servers, IBM P series, Sun T-series -> EE
High End/Commodity Servers with more than 2 sockets -
> EE/RAC One Node
Sub-minute failover – EE/SE
Maximum Availability Architecture - EE
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17. Summary
Have clear business requirements for RAC
Make sure you understand the benefits of each edition
and also thedrawbacks
You can convert from Standard Edition to Enterprise
Edition
Consider Standard Edition if you don’t need features
such as AWR/ASH
VirtaThon 2011
18. References
RAC: Frequently Asked Questions (Doc ID 220970.1)
RAC Assurance Support Team: RAC and Oracle
Clusterware Starter Kit and Best Practices (Generic)
(Doc ID 810394.1)
Whitepaper: Oracle Real Application Clusters One Node:
Better Virtualization for Databases
Whitepaper: Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC)
11gR2
“RAC or Not, Here I Come” by RiyajShamsudeen
VirtaThon 2011
Disclaimer The descriptions mentioned in this presentation are for educational and demonstration purposes only. I accept no responsibility for any loss of data production or otherwise.
Oracle Clusterware provides cluster membership and high availability services. It provides the cluster membership for features such as Oracle Real Application Clusters and Oracle ASM. It includes the following features:Application monitoring, restart, and failoverCluster membership servicesServer monitoring and fencingSingle Client Access Name (SCAN)Server PoolsGrid Naming ServicesOracle Clusterware can be used to protect any application (restarting or failing over the application in the event of a failure), free of charge, if one or more of the following conditions are met:The server OS is supported by a valid Oracle Unbreakable Linux support contract.The product to be protected is either:Any Oracle product (e.g. Oracle Applications, Siebel, Hyperion, Oracle Database EE, Oracle Database XE)Any third-party product that directly or indirectly stores data in an Oracle databaseAt least one of the servers in the cluster is licensed for Oracle Database (SE or EE)A cluster is defined to include all the machines that share the same Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR) and Voting Disk.
RAC NOT required for high availability (Active/Passive Server)*Oracle Clusterware must manage RAC databaseCompare shared-everything vs Shared-nothing vs Shared-diskThird-party Clusterware solutions including IBM HACMP, Veritas Cluster, etc.
OCFS and OCFS2 not supported in SE$10000per socket
Limited HA and scalability due to practicality of running commodity hardware with less than 4 sockets.If you use Standard Edition or Standard Edition One on a 2 processor system you simply need 2 licenses. However, if you use Enterprise Edition you need to take the number of cores into account as well.
*During failover more than one instance may be activeCustomers with existing ELA/ULA which includes RAC can run RAC One NodeList price of $10000 per CPUOracle RAC One Node is only supported with with version 11.2 (and above) of Oracle grid infrastructure.Oracle Restart for instance/listener/ASM/Services plus FailoverCache Fusion Overhead?
Unattended failover from 5 - 30 minutes.
During relocation database runs in active-active mode until all connections have been migrated
11.2.0.2.2 provides easier installation/administration with OUI and srvctl than 11.2.0.1.0Managed using familiar clusterware commandsInstance caging using CPU_COUNT parameter
Since there can only be a maximum of 4 sockets in a SE cluster it’s not practical to have more than a 2-node cluster
Oracle has two whitepapers that detail test plan outlines for 10gR1/R2 and 11g and load testing toolRAC Assurance Support Team: RAC and Oracle Clusterware Starter Kit and Best Practices (Generic) (Doc ID 810394.1)OS specific RAC Starter Kits availableProject Guide for Oracle RAC Implementation – ChristopherHaskinsA critical component of any successful implementation, particularly in the High Availability arena, is testing. For a RAC environment, testing should include both load generation, to monitor and measure how the system works under heavy load, and a system test plan, to understand how the system reacts to certain types of failures. ORION – Determine I/O Workload first
While in general – applications are not needed to be modified for RAC. It is true that in order for applications to scale in a RAC database, they should first be able to scale in a single-instance database.Sequences can cause severe degradation of performance in RAC – Use High Cache Values and NOORDER Instrumentation using DBMS_APPLICATION_INFO to set module, action, client
How to Convert a RAC database from Standard Edition (SE) to Enterprise Edition (EE)? (Doc ID 451981.1)