Re: 9i RAC External shared hard disks

"Connor McDonald" <connor_mcdonald_at_yahoo.com> wrote in message news:3EC2E840.3C84_at_yahoo.com...
> Jack wrote:
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I am planning to install 9i RAC on two test machine. Are external shared
> > hard disks mandatory? Can one disk on one of the machine act as "shared
hard
> > disks"? Do shared hard disks have to be external? I just want to know if
I
> > can make use of the internal IDE disk to test drive RAC on my home PC.
> >
> > Thanks.
>
> Head over to www.OakTable.net for some articles on the subject. They
> talk about using VMWare to set up virtual disk systems, but if you have
> spare unpartitioned space you can skip that step as well

Only in Linux, Connor, I believe. With Windows, it is not enough to have a spare unpartitioned bit of a disk: the Cluster Services installer refuses to recognise it as useable by the cluster.

However, in Windows, if you happen to have an entire spare physical drive lying around, with not a whif of a partition on it anywhere, then yes it can be done.

(In other words, if you have a 20GB hard disk, and it contains a 1GB partition of any sort, then you can't use it for pretend-RACing. But if that 20GB disk is entirely empty, then you can persuade the Cluster Services installer to see it as a shareable drive).

No doubt, you could 'tailor' the relevant installer to do your bidding, too. But it's too tricky for me to have pulled it off as yet.

Regards
HJR Received on Thu May 15 2003 - 07:10:16 CDT