Installation guide

However, preparing the Windows OS for Oracle involves more than simply popping the CD in and clicking through a few menus. One
of the key problems is all of the drivers and hardware support required for an Oracle RAC installaon. For example, all RAC
implementaons require shared external storage. A variety of BIOS sengs, drivers, and support soware installaons are required
to implement shared storage on a SAN. If any of the soware versions are out of synch, the San may simply not funcon.
One of the best ways to avoid this type of piall is to use Dell’s Windows installaon media to assist in the installaon of Windows
and associated drivers. The Dell Server Assistant CD is perfect for this purpose. This CD will provide a matched set of drivers that will
provide a tested and cered conguraon for an Oracle RAC. You simply insert the Dell Server Assistant CD, and then work through
the menu choices. You will then be prompted to insert your Microso Windows CDs. The result will be a Windows installaon that is
designed to work with all of your hardware.
Aer the OS installaon, there are a few addional steps that need to be performed to prepare for the Oracle installaon. The rst
step is to ensure that hostnames and IP addresses are resolved for all servers in the RAC cluster. Check that the External/Public Host-
names are dened in your Directory Network Services (DNS) and that the correct IP addresses resolve for all nodes in the cluster. In
addion, you need to dene all External/Public and Internal/Private Hostnames in the HOSTS le on all nodes of the cluster. This le
is located in the WINDOWS_HOME\System32\drivers\etc directory.
For example, a two node cluster may look like:
For Oracle10g, an extra IP address is necessary for each server for a “virtual” IP address.
The virtual IP addresses should be included in the hosts le and registered in DNS. The
virtual IP addresses should be in the same subnet as the public addresses. An example
hosts le for a10g two node cluster would look like:
Do not assign the Virtual IP addresses to a specic network adapter; Oracle will manage these IP addresses directly and will assign
them to the correct network adapter during Oracle installaon. To test host name resoluon, open a
command line window and use the “ping” command to check all IP addresses and host names from each host. The
virtual IP addresses will me-out if ping’ed; this is expected behavior. For example: