oracle 11g clusterware study notes.
Oracle Clusterware enables servers to communicate with each other, so that they appear to function as a collective unit. This combination of servers is commonly known as a cluster. Although the servers are standalone servers, each server has additional processes that communicate with other servers. In this way the separate servers appear as if they are one system to applications and end users.
Oracle Clusterware provides the infrastructure necessary to run Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC). Oracle Clusterware also manages resources, such as virtual IP (VIP) addresses, databases, listeners, services, and so on. These resources are generally named ora.
host_name.resource_name
. Oracle does not support editing these resources except under the explicit direction of My Oracle Support.
Although Oracle RAC continues to support many third-party clusterware products on specific platforms, you must also install and use Oracle Clusterware.
Oracle Clusterware has two stored components, besides the binaries:The voting disk files, which record node membership information, and the Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR), which records cluster configuration information. Voting disks and OCRs must reside on shared storage available to all cluster member nodes.
Most servers have at least one local disk that is internal to the server. Often, this disk is used for the operating system binaries; you can also use this disk for the Oracle software binaries. The benefit of each server having its own copy of the Oracle binaries is that it increases high availability, so that corruption to a one binary does not affect all of the nodes in the cluster simultaneously. It also allows rolling upgrades, which reduce downtime.
When the operating system is installed and working, you can then install Oracle Clusterware to create the cluster. Oracle Clusterware is installed independently of Oracle Database. Once Oracle Clusterware is installed, you can then install Oracle Database or Oracle RAC on any of the nodes in the cluster.