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

Table 2 shows a high-level comparison between the solutions.

Table 2. Storage management options comparison

CFS SLVM or CVM

ASM on SLVM (or ASM over raw

disks on HP-UX 11i v3 only)

Database version compatibility 9i RAC,

10g/11g RAC

9i RAC,

10g/11g RAC

Ease of management Best Good Good for managing Oracle Data

Integration with disaster recovery

solutions (DRS)

Yes Yes Yes*

Database and non-db application

data

Yes Yes Oracle database data and Oracle

Clusterware Storage (starting 11gR2)

Use of all normal backup utilities Yes No No

Use of file system management

tools (like ls, cp, etc.)

Yes No No

Number of nodes supported Up to 8 Up to 16 (SLVM) Up to 8 (with Serviceguard

framework)

* Supported starting with Metrocluster version A.11.00

Oracle RAC with SGeRAC Toolkit

Why Use the SGeRAC Toolkit?

The SGeRAC Toolkit

When Oracle RAC is configured in an SGeRAC environment, the pieces of the combined stack start

up and shut down in the proper sequence and the startup and shutdown sequences can be

automated. In particular, the storage needed for the operation of Oracle Clusterware must be started

before the Oracle Clusterware processes are started. Likewise, the storage needed for the operation

of a RAC database instance has to be started before the RAC database instance is started. On

shutdown, the sequence is reversed; Oracle Clusterware and the RAC database instance must be

terminated before shutting down the storage needed by these two entities.

provides documentation and scripts to simplify the integration of SGeRAC and

the Oracle RAC stack, including facilitating easy configuration of cluster interconnect monitoring. This

toolkit is required if you wish to deploy Oracle RAC in a Metrocluster. It also manages the

dependency between Oracle Clusterware and Oracle RAC instances with a full range of storage

management options supported in the Serviceguard/SGeRAC environment. The framework provided

by the SGeRAC Toolkit is unique in the high level of multi-vendor (Oracle, Symantec, HP) and

multi-storage platform (CFS, CVM, SLVM, ASM over SLVM) integration it offers.

SGeRAC Toolkit is available with Oracle 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.1) or a later version of Oracle RAC with HP Serviceguard Extension for Real

Application Clusters A.11.17 or later (SGeRAC).