The process of adding a node to a 11.1 RAC is very similar to the 10.2 process described in Part 5 of this series. For this reason, this post will just focus on what has changed between the 2 versions. Here is the complete series up to now:

1. Installation of 10.2 And 11.1 Databases
2. Patches of 10.2 And 11.1 databases
3. Cloning Software and databases
4. Install a 10.2 RAC Database
5. Add a Node to a 10.2 RAC database
6. Remove a Node from a 10.2 RAC database
7. Install a 11.1 RAC Database
8. Add a Node to a 11.1 RAC database (This post!)
9. Remove a Node from a 11.1 RAC database
10. A ton of other stuff you should know

Before you start

Make sure you’ve kept a copy of the voting disk and that you have a backup of the OCR. Check that the locations for all the components to be installed, i.e.: Inventory, Clusterware, ASM, database software, OCR, Voting Disks, and data files, are writable. Confirm that all the prerequisites are met for the node and for the whole cluster with the node to be added.

Refer to the Oracle Clusterware Administration and Deployment Guide
11g Release 1 (11.1) - 4 Adding and Deleting Oracle Clusterware Homes
and the Oracle Real Application Clusters Administration and Deployment Guide
11g Release 1 (11.1) - 9 Adding and Deleting Oracle RAC from Nodes on Linux and UNIX Systems for the complete reference of how to perform these steps.

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Many of us would have come across RDA (Remote Diagnostic Agent) while working on a ticket with Oracle support. In case you have not heard about it, I would recommend to go through Metalink Note:314422.1 - Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) 4 - Getting Started

RDA captures System Information such as OS,Hardware Details (like number of CPU and amount of RAM),OS error log,OS Monitoring tool output (like vmstat,TOP,etc). This can be handy in case you do not know the command or the location of the OS logs.Similary you can find Database version,Database Patch inventory,Database Alert log and trace files.

This can help save lot of time as you need not remember all OS commands to capture the information.
Similarly RDA also collects Database Performance Statistics like OS Statistics (CPU,Memory and Disk I/O Stats) along with TOP SQL, Locking and Latch statistics. In case of 10g, it generates AWR Report (60 mins) and ADDM report based on captured Snapshots. All this information can be helpful for diagnosing a Performance Problem.

There is one more use of RDA which not many people are aware of. i.e RDA Health Check / Validation Engine (HCVE). HCVE Engine can be used to perform Pre-Install checks for Oracle Database and Oracle Application server on Unix system (At time of writing this article, this functionality is not available on windows)

To run this , you need to execute rda.sh -T hcve e.g I need to validate if I can install Oracle 10gR2 on my OEL4 (Linux x86).

$ ./rda.sh -T hcve
Processing HCVE tests ...
Available Pre-Installation Rule Sets:
   1. Oracle Database 10g R1 (10.1.0) PreInstall (Linux-x86)
   2. Oracle Database 10g R1 (10.1.0) PreInstall (Linux AMD64)
   3. Oracle Database 10g R1 (10.1.0) PreInstall (IA-64 Linux)
   4. Oracle Database 10g R2 (10.2.0) PreInstall (Linux AMD64)
   5. Oracle Database 10g R2 (10.2.0) PreInstall (IA-64 Linux)
   6. Oracle Database 10g R2 (10.2.0) PreInstall (Linux-x86)
   7. Oracle Database 11g R1 (11.1.0) PreInstall (Linux AMD64)
   8. Oracle Database 11g R1 (11.1.0) PreInstall (Linux-x86)
   9. Oracle Application Server 10g (9.0.4) PreInstall (Linux)
  10. Oracle Application Server 10g R2 (10.1.2) PreInstall (Linux)
  11. Oracle Application Server 10g R3 (10.1.3) PreInstall (Linux AMD64)
  12. Oracle Application Server 10g R3 (10.1.3) PreInstall (IA-64 Linux)
  13. Oracle Application Server 10g R3 (10.1.3) PreInstall (Linux-x86)
  14. Oracle Portal PreInstall (Generic)
Available Post-Installation Rule Sets:
  15. Oracle Portal PostInstall (generic)
  16. RAC 10G DB and OS Best Practices (Linux)
  17. Data Guard PostInstall (Generic)
Enter the HCVE rule set number
Hit 'Return' to accept the default (1)
> 6

Enter value for < Planned ORACLE_HOME location or if set >
Hit 'Return' to accept the default ($ORACLE_HOME)
> /u01/app/oracle

Test "Oracle Database 10g R2 (10.2.0) PreInstall (Linux-x86)" executed at Wed Aug 27 15:12:18 2008

Test Results
~~~~~~~~~~~~

   ID NAME                 RESULT VALUE
===== ==================== ====== ========================================
   10 OS Certified?        PASSED Adequate
   20 User in /etc/passwd? PASSED userOK
   30 Group in /etc/group? PASSED GroupOK
   40 Input ORACLE_HOME    RECORD /u01/app/oracle
   50 ORACLE_HOME Valid?   PASSED OHexists
   60 O_H Permissions OK?  PASSED CorrectPerms
   70 Umask Set to 022?    PASSED UmaskOK
   80 LDLIBRARYPATH Unset? FAILED IsSet
  100 Other O_Hs in PATH?  FAILED OratabEntryInPath
  110 oraInventory Permiss PASSED oraInventoryOK
  120 /tmp Adequate?       PASSED TempSpaceOK
  130 Swap (in MB)         RECORD 1051
  140 RAM (in MB)          FAILED 1001
  150 Swap OK?             FAILED InsufficientSwap
  160 Disk Space OK?       PASSED DiskSpaceOK
  170 Kernel Parameters OK PASSED KernelOK
  180 Got ld,nm,ar,make?   PASSED ld_nm_ar_make_found
  190 ulimits OK?          FAILED StackTooSmall MaxLockMemTooSmall
  200 EL4 RPMs OK?         PASSED EL4rpmsOK
  204 RHEL3 RPMs OK?       PASSED NotRedHat
  205 RHEL4 RPMs OK?       PASSED NotRedHat
  209 SUSE SLES9 RPMs OK?  PASSED NotSuSE
  212 Patch 3006854 Instal PASSED NotRHEL3
  214 ip_local_port_range  PASSED ip_local_port_rangeOK
  220 Tainted Kernel?      PASSED NotVerifiable
  230 Other OUI Up?        PASSED NoOtherOUI
Result file: /home/oracle/rda/output/RDA_HCVE_A201DB10R2_lnx_res.htm

I also tried out option “RAC 10G DB and OS Best Practices (Linux)” which is part of Post Install but for some reason some of the components failed.

Enter the HCVE rule set number
Hit 'Return' to accept the default (1)
> 16

Enter the password for 'SYSTEM':
Please re-enter it to confirm:

Test "RAC 10G DB and OS Best Practices (Linux)" executed at Wed Aug 27 17:26:33 2008

Test Results
~~~~~~~~~~~~

   ID NAME                 RESULT VALUE
===== ==================== ====== ========================================
   10 ORA_CRS_HOME         RECORD /u01/app/crs
  100 Database Name        RECORD orcl
  102 Database Version     RECORD 10.2.0.4.0
  104 Interconnect Network RECORD
  106 DB Block Size        RECORD 8192
  108 DB File Multiblock R RECORD 16
  120 Max Commit Propagati PASSED 0
  130 SYS.AUDSES$ Cache Si PASSED 10000
  132 SYS.IDGEN1$ Cache Si FAILED 20
  140 Parallel Execution M FAILED 2148
  150 Min Parallel Servers RECORD 1
  152 Min Parallel Servers FAILED 0
  200 $ORA_CRS_HOME Define PASSED Found
  210 Remote Access        PASSED All loaded
  220 _USR_ORA_DEBUG / CRS FAILED blrraclnx1:? blrraclnx2:?
  230 _USR_ORA_DEBUG / ORA FAILED blrraclnx1:? blrraclnx2:?
  240 rmem_max             PASSED OK
  250 UDP Buffer Size      PASSED OK
  260 wmem_max             PASSED OK
  270 rmem_default         PASSED OK
  280 wmem_default         PASSED OK
  290 Sysrq Magic Keys     PASSED OK
  300 Oracle Executable Li PASSED linked
  310 hangcheck-timer      FAILED blrraclnx1:Unknown blrraclnx2:Unknown
  320 aio-max-size Setting FAILED blrraclnx1:Unknown blrraclnx2:Unknown
  330 Memory (32-bit)      PASSED OK
  340 Swap (32-bit)        FAILED [blrraclnx1:]Swap<2RAM [blrraclnx2:]S..>
  350 Swap (64-bit)        PASSED OK
  360 Patch List           PASSED Complete
Result file: /home/oracle/rda/output/RDA_HCVE_P400RAC_lnx_res.htm

We can find details about prescribed values at

https://metalink.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/docs/HCVE_P400RAC_lnx.htm

e.g To fix SYS.IDGEN1$ Cache Size, we need to set cache size for sequence SYS.IDGEN1$ greater than or equal to 10,000.

SQL> alter sequence SYS.IDGEN1$ cache 10200;

Sequence altered.

Now we see that SYS.IDGEN1$ requirement is passed

132 SYS.IDGEN1$ Cache Si PASSED 10200

Refer Note:250262.1 - RDA 4 - Health Check / Validation Engine Guide for more information on HCVE.

Related Posts

• Upgrading Oracle RAC Database -10g (0)
• Verification of CRS Integrity Was Unsuccessful (0)
• 10g RAC - Single Node Install Error (0)
• Enabling Flashback On RAC Database (0)
• UNKNOWN State Of RAC Resources (0)

I came across this behavior today while writing some additional comprehensive ALTER TABLE tests for use in the test suite that we run against the Kickfire database appliance to ensure quality.

mysql> CREATE TABLE `t1` (
-> `col1` tinyint(4) DEFAULT NULL,
-> `id` int(11) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0' COMMENT 'min=1,max=65535',
-> PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
-> ) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> alter table t1 drop column id,
-> add column id int auto_increment primary key;
ERROR 1089 (HY000): Incorrect prefix key; the used key part isn't a string, the used length is longer than the key part, or the storage engine doesn't support unique prefix keys

This is a regression in 5.0 (and 5.1, I didn't try 6) that was reported almost one year ago. This alter table works just fine in 4.1 and there isn't any reason it should complain about 'prefix index length' when there are no prefix indexes involved.

Ask MySQL to fix this regression in 5.0 before 5.1 GA.

http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=31031

Can't get enough cloud computing? Then you must really be a glutton for punishment! But just in case, here are some cloud computing resources, collected from various sources, that will help you transform into a Tesla silently flying solo down the diamond lane.

Meta Sources

Cloud Computing Email List: An often lively email list discussing cloud computing.

Cloud Computing Blogs & Resources. An excellent and big list of cloud resources.

Cloud Computing Portal: A community edited database for making the vendor selection process easier.

List of Cloud Platforms, Providers, and Enablers.

datacenterknowledge.com's Recap: More than 70 Industry Blogs : A nice set of blog's for: Data Center, Web Hosting, Content Delivery Network (CDN), Cloud Computing

Specific Blogs

James Urquhart's The Wisdom of Clouds : Cloud Computing and Utility Computing for the Enterprise and the Individual. James writes great articles and has a regular can't miss links style post summarizing much of what you need need to know in cloud world.

Many more below the fold.

read more

As part of a project of Technocation, Inc I took a whole bunch of videos at OSCon 2008. The conference was about a month ago, and about 2 weeks ago I’d finished processing and uploading all the videos, but it was only today where I had the 5-6 hours I needed to finish posting all the video, and making this matrix of video.

The video may not be the quality that the O’Reilly folks took and put up on blip tv’s OSCon site, but all the videos here are freely downloadable or playable in your browser.

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