Architecture considerations and best practices for architecting an Oracle RAC solution with Serviceguard and SGeRAC

Introduction

Beginning with its 10g release, Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) requires pre-integrated

clusterware from Oracle called Cluster Ready Services or CRS (also referred to as Oracle

Clusterware).

HP strongly recommends a combination of Oracle Clusterware and Serviceguard/SGeRAC for

Oracle RAC solutions on HP-UX 11i. This whitepaper describes best practices for designing a

combined Oracle Clusterware and Serviceguard/SGeRAC stack, and explains how Oracle

Clusterware interacts with Serviceguard/SGeRAC.

Scope

The scope of this document is limited to Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) 10gR2 and 11g,

R1 and R2, with Serviceguard up to version A.11.20, Serviceguard Extension for RAC up to version

A.11.20, and Serviceguard Storage Management Suite A.03.xx on HP-UX 11i.

All configurations listed in this document are compatible with HP BladeSystem and Virtual Connect

technologies.

Technologies overview

Serviceguard and Serviceguard Extension for RAC (SGeRAC)

Serviceguard

HP Serviceguard is a product for creating high-availability clusters using a networked grouping of

HP 9000 and HP Integrity servers. These servers are configured with redundant hardware and

software components to eliminate single points of failure (SPOFs). Serviceguard is designed to keep

application services running in spite of failures of hardware (for example System Processing Unit,

disk, LAN, etc.) or software (e.g., OS, user application, etc.). In the event of a hardware or software

failure, Serviceguard and other high-availability subsystems coordinate the transfer of functions from

failed to working components.

Serviceguard uses packages to group together sets of application services (e.g., individual HP-UX

processes). Packages are typically configured to run on several nodes in the cluster, one at a time, or

simultaneously (Serviceguard implements a shared-nothing cluster model). In the event of a service,

node, network, or other monitored package resource failure on the node where the package is

running, Serviceguard can automatically transfer control of the package to another node in the

cluster, keeping the services available with minimal interruption. Figure 1 shows an example of a

Serviceguard cluster.