Re: os accounts on windows servers

I recommend all your words about using Linux platform for managing Oracle Production Databases systems. Windows platform is not fully compatible with Oracle products so these problems always appear.

If your production servers are installed at windows platform ,You shouldn't let them to join windows Domain at installation phases, as this is a wrong decision for running time performance.

You should use a Workgroup or primary DNS suffix which allow you to avoid such problems you may face at joining windows Domain.

Thanks

Mostafa Eletriby
Sr. Oracle Apps DBA

• On Fri, 2/11/11, Martin Bach <development_at_the-playground.de> wrote:

From: Martin Bach <development_at_the-playground.de> Subject: Re: os accounts on windows servers To: "Guillermo Alan Bort" <cicciuxdba_at_gmail.com>, niall.litchfield_at_gmail.com Cc: adar666_at_inter.net.il, "ORACLE-L" <oracle-l_at_freelists.org> Date: Friday, February 11, 2011, 4:43 PM

Reading this reply reminded me of a situation where I inherited a 10.2.0.2 RAC SE on Windows 2003.

Clusterware was installed with a domain account. That proved to be a fatal mistake when this particular domain the account belonged to was shut down as part of a migration project. After a scheduled reboot Clusterware wouldn't start at all.

End of the story was a complete rebuild of the environment using local administrator accounts.

Martin Bach

Oracle Certified Master 10g
http://martincarstenbach.wordpress.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/martincarstenbach

• Reply message ----- From: "Guillermo Alan Bort" <cicciuxdba_at_gmail.com> Date: Thu, Feb 10, 2011 14:15 Subject: os accounts on windows servers To: <niall.litchfield_at_gmail.com> Cc: <adar666_at_inter.net.il>, "ORACLE-L" <oracle-l_at_freelists.org>

Something I'd keep in mind when installing oracle using an AD account is password security (expiration of the domain password) and to make sure that the software is set to run as LOCAL SYSTEM and not the DA account. That being said, I've performed the installation using an AD account several times and (at least the 11g installer) creates ORA_DBA group and the services are created to run with Local System... of course, you need to be part of the Local Administrator group, which is a good idea for the DBA to be and administrator in a DB server anyway  (in windows, and windows only)

With all that being said, I feel it is my duty to recommend you to avoid using windows as a server when at all possible. I've working in fairly large environments with a lot of diversity, and it is my experience that everything is more diffucult on windows than on unix, starting with the damned SQLNET.AUTHENTICATION_SERVICES parameter in sqlnet.ora... Also, just as a thought, Oracle's development platform is Linux...

Oh, and when you have to do maintenance on a DB on a Windows server and the IT Security department tells you NOT to log in to ANY server using your AD account because there's a virus in the network and we need to contain it... and when they have to reboot a production DB server to apply a hotfix (which happens a lot more often than unix patches) or when they need to reboot the DB server because it's been up more than 90 days straight... well, that's when you know the platform you've chosen is probably not the wisest choice.

I am sorry, I do not want this to turn into an OS Flame war... but it's just as easy to install linux and far easier to manage in the long run...

hth
Alan.-

On Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 7:56 AM, Niall Litchfield < niall.litchfield_at_gmail.com> wrote:

> The installer will create the ORA_DBA group and add the installing user to
> it if it doesn't exist - and last time I looked would add the installing
> user if the group existed but the user wasn't a member. I feel a blog
> article coming on - especially as you might not actually want the installing
> user to become sysdba on all databases on the server.
>
> On Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 10:17 AM, Yechiel Adar <adar666_at_inter.net.il>wrote:
>
>> No problem. All our installs are performed with domain accounts.
>>
>> The account need to a member of local administrators and also a member of
>> ORA_DBA group on the oracle server.
>>
>> Yechiel
>>
>>
>> On 09/02/2011 00:07, Joe Smith wrote:
>>
>> Where is there a document on setting up oracle users to administrator the
>> database on Windows servers?
>>
>> Our admin wants to use domain accounts with Active Directory , but that
>> does not sound right to me.
>>
>> I have looked on metalink and the install docs but have not found anything
>> yet.
>>
>> Can somebody point to a document?
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Niall Litchfield
> Oracle DBA
> http://www.orawin.info
>

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