Thoughts on crs installation on HP-UX

We have a 5-node HP-UX cluster using Service Guard and Veritas for clustering. We are also installing Oracle CRS and will eventually have 6-10 Non-RAC databases running on this system.

Our current system (HP Tru64) has it's own clustering software and doesn't need any Oracle clustering software. We typically have 2 ORACLE_HOMEs so that we can patch one, move databases to the patched OH, then patch the other OH, and have minimal downtime for the databases.

So, my questions are related to CRS.

We typically have the ORACLE_HOME directories on shared filesystems. This installation, though won't allow the oraInventory to be shared. Is there something that we should not have done during the installation in order to allow for a shared oraInventory? The problem only occurs when we apply the 102040 patch.

Any comments on having a shared installation vs installing on each node of the cluster? We're trying to plan ahead for minimal downtime for upgrades. If the software is shared, then it's likely that in order to upgrade, we will need to shut down *all* databases, not just those running on the node where we are running the upgrade. I've not yet looked at how rolling upgrades actually work....

Is it possible to install a newer version of CRS in a new ORACLE_HOME while everything is running out of the old ORACLE_HOME, then do the switch when it's all installed? If so, then we could continue to do things the way we do now, with an alternate ORACLE_HOME available for patching. This may not be an issue since CPU patches are not applied to the CRS ORACLE_HOME, though.

Feel free to email off list with any comments/suggestions.

• Maureen

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