Relocating Central Inventory from Shared Location to Private (Local) Location for RAC users (Doc ID 604513.1)

Last updated on AUGUST 28, 2023

Applies to:

Goal

In a Real Applications Cluster, customers have the option of installing the CRS and RDBMS homes either locally on each node, or as one central shared home.  Regardless of whether you choose a shared or non-shared Oracle Home, however, each node must still have its own private Oracle software Central Inventory.

The Oracle Central Inventory is a small repository that holds information about the Oracle software that is installed on that node only; it must not be placed on a clustered/shared filesystem to be shared by other nodes in an Oracle RAC environment.   This is documented in the 10.2 install documentation in the OUI guide, in Chapter 6, "Cluster Environment Installation" :

However, versions of OUI prior to 10.2.0.4 did not display a warning if the DBA chose a shared location for the Oracle Central Inventory, and so some customers who did a cluster installation prior to 11.1 may have a Central Inventory in a shared location.

OUI 10.2.0.4 and above DOES provide a warning, so customers who installed an earlier version and created a shared inventory will get a warning like this one when trying to apply the 10.2.0.4 patchset:

This note provides steps to convert a shared Central Inventory into a local inventory on each node.

Solution

My Oracle Support provides customers with access to over a million knowledge articles and a vibrant support community of peers and Oracle experts.