6 Cloning Oracle RAC to Nodes in a Cluster

Deploying Oracle RAC Database Homes

Deploying the Oracle RAC database home to a cluster is a multiple-step process.

This section provides step-by-step instructions that describe how to:

1. Prepare the new cluster nodes

2. Deploy the Oracle RAC database software

3. Run the clone.pl script on each node

4. Run the $ORACLE_HOME/root.sh script on each node

5. Run DBCA to create the Oracle RAC instances on each node

Step 1   Prepare the new cluster nodes

Perform the Oracle RAC preinstallation steps, including such things as:

• Specify the kernel parameters.

• Use short, nondomain-qualified names for all names in the Hosts file.

• Verify that you can ping the public and interconnect names.

• Ensure Oracle Clusterware is active.

• Ensure that Oracle ASM is active and there at least one Oracle ASM disk group exists and is mounted.

See your platform-specific Oracle RAC installation guide for a complete preinstallation checklist.

Step 2   Deploy the Oracle RAC database software

To deploy the Oracle RAC software, you need to:

1. Restore the Oracle home to all nodes. For example:

   [root@node1 root]# mkdir -p /opt/oracle/product/11g/db
   [root@node1 root]# cd /opt/oracle/product/11g/db
   [root@node1 db]# tar –zxvf /path_name/db1120.tgz
   

   When providing the home location and path_name, the home location can be in the same directory path or in a different directory path from the source home that you used to create the tar.

2. Change the ownership of all files to the oracle and oinstall group. For example:

   [root@node1 db]# chown –R oracle:oinstall /opt/oracle/product/11g/db
   

Note:

You can perform this step at the same time you perform steps 3 and 4 to run the clone.pl and ORACLE_HOME/root.sh scripts on each cluster node.

Step 3   Run the clone.pl script on each node

To run the clone.pl script, which performs the main Oracle RAC cloning tasks, you must:

• Supply the environment variables and cloning parameters in the start.sh script, as described in Table 6-2 and Table 6-3. Because the clone.pl script is sensitive to the parameters being passed to it, you must be accurate in your use of brackets, single quotation marks, and double quotation marks.

• Run the script as the oracle operating system user.

Table 6-1 lists and describes the clone.pl script parameters.

Table 6-1 clone.pl Script Parameters

Parameter	Description
ORACLE_HOME=Oracle_home	The complete path to the Oracle home you want to clone. If you specify an invalid path, then the script exits. This parameter is required.
ORACLE_BASE=ORACLE_BASE	The complete path to the Oracle base you want to clone. If you specify an invalid path, then the script exits. This parameter is required.
ORACLE_HOME_NAME= Oracle_home_name | -defaultHomeName	The Oracle home name of the home you want to clone. Optionally, you can specify the -defaultHomeName flag. This parameter is not required.
OSDBA_GROUP=group_name	Specify the operating system group you want to use as the OSDBA privileged group.
OSOPER_GROUP=group_name	Specify the operating system group you want to use as the OSOPER privileged group.
OSASM_GROUP=group_name	Specify the operating system group you want to use as the OSASM privileged group.
-O	The clone.pl script passes anything following this flag to the Oracle Universal Installer command line.
-debug	Specify this option to run the clone.pl script in debug mode
-help	Specify this option to obtain help for the clone.pl script.

Example 6-1 shows an excerpt from the start.sh script that calls the clone.pl script.

Example 6-1 Excerpt From the start.sh Script to Clone Oracle RAC for Linux and UNIX

ORACLE_BASE=/opt/oracle
ORACLE_HOME=/opt/oracle/product/11g/db
cd $ORACLE_HOME/clone
THISNODE=`hostname -s`

E01=ORACLE_HOME=/opt/oracle/product/11g/db
E02=ORACLE_HOME_NAME=OraDBRAC
E03=ORACLE_BASE=/opt/oracle
C01="-O'CLUSTER_NODES={node1, node2}'"
C02="-O'LOCAL_NODE=$THISNODE'"

perl $ORACLE_HOME/clone/bin/clone.pl $E01 $E02 $E03 $C01 $C02

Example 6-2 shows an excerpt from the start.bat script that the user must create that calls the clone.pl script.

Example 6-2 Excerpt From the start.bat Script to Clone Oracle RAC for Windows

set ORACLE_home=Oracle_home
cd %ORACLE_home%\clone\bin
set THISNODE=%hostname%
set E01=ORACLE_HOME=%ORACLE_home%
set E02=ORACLE_HOME_NAME=OraDBRAC
set E03=ORACLE_BASE=Oracle_Base
set C01="-O'CLUSTER_NODES={node1,node2}'"
set C02="-O'LOCAL_NODE=%THISNODE%'"
perl clone.pl %E01% %E02% %E03% %C01% %C02%

Table 6-2 describes the environment variables E01, E02, and E03 that are shown in bold typeface in Example 6-1.

Table 6-2 Environment Variables Passed to the clone.pl Script

Symbol	Variable	Description
E01	ORACLE_HOME	The location of the Oracle RAC database home. This directory location must exist and must be owned by the Oracle operating system group: oinstall.
E02	ORACLE_HOME_NAME	The name of the Oracle home for the Oracle RAC database. This is stored in the Oracle Inventory.
E03	ORACLE_BASE	The location of the Oracle Base directory.

Table 6-3 describes the cloning parameters C01 and C02, that are shown in bold typeface in Example 6-1.

Table 6-3 Cloning Parameters Passed to the clone.pl Script.

Variable	Name	Parameter	Description
C01	Cluster Nodes	CLUSTER_NODES	Lists the nodes in the cluster.
C02	Local Node	LOCAL_NODE	The name of the local node.

Step 4   Run the $ORACLE_HOME/root.sh script on each node

Note:

This step applies to Linux and UNIX installations, only.

Run the $ORACLE_HOME/root.sh as the root operating system user as soon as the clone.pl procedure completes on the node.

[root@node1 root]# /opt/oracle/product/11g/db/root.sh -silent

Note that you can run the script on each node simultaneously:

[root@node2 root]# /opt/oracle/product/11g/db/root.sh -silent

Ensure the script has completed on each node before proceeding to the next step.

Step 5   Run DBCA to create the Oracle RAC instances on each node

This step shows how to run the DBCA in silent mode and provide response file input to create the Oracle RAC instances.

The following example creates Oracle RAC instances on each node, registers the instances in the OCR, creates the database files in the Oracle ASM disk group called DATA, and creates sample schemas. It also sets the sys, system, sysman and dbsnmp passwords to password which is the password for each:

[oracle@node1 oracle]$ export ORACLE_HOME=/opt/oracle/product/11g/db
[oracle@node1 oracle]$ cd $ORACLE_HOME/bin/
[oracle@node1 bin]$./dbca -silent -createDatabase -templateName General_Purpose.dbc\
-gdbName ERI -sid ERI 
-sysPassword password -systemPassword password \
-sysmanPassword password -dbsnmpPassword password \
-emConfiguration LOCAL \
-storageType ASM -diskGroupName DATA \
-datafileJarLocation $ORACLE_HOME/assistants/dbca/templates \
-nodeinfo node1,node2 -characterset WE8ISO8859P1 \
-obfuscatedPasswords false -sampleSchema true \
-oratabLocation /etc/oratab

See Also:

Oracle Database 2 Day DBA for information about using DBCA to create and configure a database