OpenVMS: Oracle Release 10gR2 Mixed Architecture (Multi-Home) CRS/RAC Installation on hp Itanium and Alpha (Doc ID 785970.1)

Last updated on APRIL 16, 2024

Applies to:

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure - Database Service - Version N/A and later
Oracle Database Backup Service - Version N/A and later
Oracle Database Cloud Exadata Service - Version N/A and later
Oracle Database Exadata Express Cloud Service - Version N/A and later
Oracle Database - Enterprise Edition - Version 10.2.0.4 to 10.2.0.5 [Release 10.2]
HP OpenVMS Itanium
HP OpenVMS Alpha

Purpose

This document presents a step by step guide for doing a Mixed Architecture (Multi-Home) CRS and RAC installation of Oracle Release 10gR2 on an hp OpenVMS cluster.

A standard CRS/RAC installation on OpenVMS results in all RAC nodes sharing the same CRS and RAC code trees.

A Mixed Architecture (Multi-Home) install offers the flexibility to have Oracle CRS and RAC code installed on a cluster comprising of both Alpha and Itanium nodes.

Therefore, using this approach, a RAC cluster can be split into a number of logical groups of nodes where each group contains one or more physical nodes.

Each logical group of nodes must be of the same architecture (e.g all Apha nodes or all Itanium nodes)

Then the CRS and RAC code is installed once per logical group of nodes.

The net result being that a given database will be managed by multiple Oracle code trees across the RAC cluster.

This can reduce down time when applying Oracle patches (e.g Patchsets, CPU or one-off patches) as each logical group of nodes can be patched in isolation from the reset of the active RAC cluster.

The only down time required is during the period when SQL scripts related to any of the patches are executed against the database(s).

Similarly, if each logical group of nodes have their own OpenVMS System disk, then this can also reduce the down time required when upgrading or maintaining the OpenVMS Operating System.

Please note that all nodes within a Mixed Architecture/Multi-Home Oracle CRS/RAC install must be running compatible versions of OpenVMS.

In other words, the OpenVMS versions in use must be classed as supported by HP in a cluster configuration. We do not support OpenVMS versions that are only considered for migration purposes - these can lead to problems with CRS.

Please also note that to be supported when running on Mixed Architecture RAC clusters, you must be running a minimum version of 10gR2 patchset 10.2.0.4

Scope

This document is not intended to provide generic CRS or RAC information.

If you are unfamiliar with CRS (Clusterware) and RAC, please consult the generic Real Application Clusters documentation:

      OracleR Database Oracle Clusterware and Oracle Real Application Clusters
    Administration and Deployment Guide
      10g Release 2 (10.2)
      Part Number B14197-03

This is available at:

      http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/rac.102/b14197/toc.htm

The hp OpenVMS specific 10.2 documentation can be found in the following documents.

   Installation Guide for hp OpenVMS 10.2 (Chapters 5, 6 and Appendix C):

      http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/install.102/b25414/toc.htm

   In the Administrator Reference for hp OpenVMS 10.2 (Appendix G):

      http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b25416/toc.htm

It is beyond the scope of this document to detail the steps required for configuring the Network for the various IP addresses that CRS and RAC rely on (e.g Public, Private and Virtual).

Therefore, an assumption is made that this work has been completed correctly prior to the start of the Oracle installation.