Using HP PRM with Oracle Databases

Managing shared memory

By default, all shared memory is allocated from the PRM_SYS group.

Starting with HP-UX 11i v2 Update 2 and PRM C.03.01, PRM can control shared memory allocations

on a PRM group basis. You can selectively specify shared memory management for the groups that

need it—omitting groups where shared memory management would not be helpful.

You set a minimum allocation in megabytes for a group’s shared memory. (The size you should

allocate is usually available from the configuration settings for the consuming application, as is the

case with the Oracle SGA size.)

Capping is not available for shared memory.

Secure Resource Partitions

The HP-UX Security Containment feature is available starting with 11i v2 (B.11.23) and provides

secure compartments. These compartments provide isolation between unrelated resources to prevent

damage to a whole system if a compartment is penetrated. Applications configured in compartments

have restricted access to resources outside their configured compartments.

You can place one or more secure compartments in a single PRM group to manage the resource

allocation for those secure compartments. This combination is known as Secure Resource Partitions.

With this combination, you can securely combine Oracle instances on a single system and still ensure

they get the resources they need.

Application support

PRM’s application support enables you to put processes that are not fully qualified executables (that

is, processes created by other processes) into separate PRM groups. For the Oracle database

administrator, this means the ability to allocate different CPU and memory resources to Oracle

database instances by modifying the PRM configuration. The PRM application manager periodically

checks the system for new processes. Those processes matching PRM application records are placed

in the configured PRM groups.

The PRM partitioning is done between separate Oracle database instances—not within a single

instance. That is, all Oracle processes related to a specific database instance must be assigned to the

same PRM group, including Oracle server processes (shadow processes) that run on behalf of users

accessing the database.

$ORACLE_HOME and $ORACLE_SID are standard environment variable names for the Oracle home

directory and the name of the Oracle database instance, respectively. When you open an Oracle

database instance, the $ORACLE_HOME/bin/oracle executable renames itself using the UNIX®

environment variable $ORACLE_SID for a given database. The $ORACLE_SID environment variable

is used in generating Oracle process names: ora_<process_name>_$ORACLE_SID. For example,

all Oracle processes associated with the Sales database, where $ORACLE_SID is Sales, would be

renamed with Sales appended to the process name.