Re: Using dbca and RAC with 9.2.0.5

snip

> does a less spectacularly brilliant job of creating RAC instances. Not
> saying it doesn't work: usually it does. But not always.

I think you guys are saying pretty much the same thing. Maybe RAC and dbca in 10g works smoother. In 9i R2 it's kind of flaky or downright buggy.  

> > and and in case you work with a well
> > prepared (own) templates you save a lot of work and manually tasks to
> > step through - especially when you create a RAC database.

Agree here -- but there is lots of misinformation in places. You have to test it yourself on your platform of choice.  

> There are about 8 alter system commands required to convert single
> instance database to a multi-instance one (assuming, as I should have
> said in my first post, that you are using an spfile, of course). I don't
> think that's a lot of effort.

True also.

One of the tricks that everyone should have up their sleeve when working with RAC is the ability to bring up your database either as a cluster or not.

After your RAC database is operational I recommend doing this.

alter system reset cluster_database scope=spfile sid='*'; alter system set cluster_database=TRUE scope=spfile sid='rac1'; alter system set cluster_database=TRUE scope=spfile sid='rac2';

With this setup, you can shutdown the database instances on all RAC nodes, change your ORACLE_SID to the db_name value, and startup the database
(exclusively) as non-cluster.

This type of setup can be very handy for applying maintenance, bringing it into or out of archive log mode, and/or for special circumstances.

You end up with spfile entries kind of similar to the following:

• of course the name of the database and instances will be different

*.cluster_database_instances=2

rac1.cluster_database=TRUE
rac2.cluster_database=TRUE
rac1.instance_name='rac1'
rac2.instance_name='rac2'
rac1.instance_number=1
rac2.instance_number=2

>
> Fair enough. Different experiences, different suggestions. Mine is based
> on several dozen RAC installations (real ones) that all went extremely
> smoothly doing it the way I suggested, and a couple where I used the
> dbca create-and-propagate method with mixed results.

Until you have figured out all the "gotcha's" using dbca and RAC and have all your ducks lined up, it can be a learning opportunity. I am tempted to say hair pulling but for us baldies not a good choice. Received on Wed Nov 24 2004 - 07:31:00 CST