Category Archives: Uncategorized

I Am Speaking At SANGAM 16

SANGAM is the Largest Independent Oracle Users Group Conference in India, organised annually in the month of November. This year’s Sangam (Sangam16 - 8th Annual Oracle Users Group Conference) will be held  on Friday 11th & Saturday 12th November 2016 at Crowne Plaza,  Bengaluru Electronics City, India .

I will be speaking at this year’s SANGAM about “Policy Based Cluster Management In Oracle 12c“.

Oracle Clusterware 11g R2 introduced server pools as a means for specifying resource placement and administering server allocation and access. However,   all servers were considered to be equal in relation to processors, memory and other characteristics. This can lead to  sub-optimal performance of some applications if the servers  assigned to the server pools hosting those applications do not meet applications’ requirements.

Oracle Grid Infrastructure 12c enhances the use of server pools by introducing server attributes e.g. memory, CPU_count etc. which can be associated with each server. Server pools can be configured so that their members belong to a category of servers, which share a particular set of attributes. Moreover,  administrators can maintain a library of policies and switch between them as required rather than manually reallocating servers to various server pools based on workload. My session will  discuss in detail the new features of policy based cluster management in 12c.

My session will be held on Saturday November 12, 2016 10:05am – 10:55am  in
Room 4.

Hope to meet you there!!

CRS-2615: Could not find server pool ‘smallpool’

I received this error message when I was playing around with Extended Policy Framework in Oracle Clusterware 12c.

Policy-managed environment in Oracle clusterware 12c offers the capability to create policies to configure pools in accordance with business needs or application demand, so that pools provide the right service at the right time. Typically, administrators create multiple policies to reflect differences in requirements for the cluster based on business needs or demand, or based on calendar dates or times of the day. The collection of zero or more such user defined policies is called cluster policy set. Oracle Clusterware manages the server pools according to the active policy in the policy set. With a cluster configuration policy set, for example, more servers can be allocated to OLTP workload during weekly business, whereas on the weekends and evenings, batch workloads can be assigned more servers, while performing transitions of server pool configuration atomically.

I added Day policy for my Oracle 12.1.0.1 cluster.

[grid@host01 ~]$ crsctl add policy day -attr "DESCRIPTION='The Day Policy'"

When I tried to set  attributes of the  server pool smallpool for day policy, I received the error:

[root@host01 ~]# crsctl modify serverpool smallpool -attr "MAX_SIZE=2,MIN_SIZE=1,SERVER_CATEGORY=small" -policy day
CRS-2615: Could not find server pool 'smallpool'.
CRS-4000: Command Modify failed, or completed with errors.

[root@host01 ~]# oerr CRS 2615
2615, 1, "Could not find server pool '%s'."
// *Cause: An attempt was made to operate on a server pool that is not 
// registered.
// *Action: Check if the server pool is registered.

When I checked, serverpool smallpool existed and had two servers assigned to it

[root@host01 ~]# crsctl status serverpool smallpool
NAME=smallpool
ACTIVE_SERVERS=host04 host05

Reason:
Since server pool smallpool had not been specified to be in the scope of the cluster policy set, I was  getting above error.

Solution:
Add server pool name smallpool to the cluster  policyset

[root@host01 ~]# crsctl modify policyset -attr "SERVER_POOL_NAMES='smallpool free'" -ksp

Now that server pool smallpool has been added to the scope of the policyset, its configuration can be modified for day policy

[root@host01 ~]# crsctl modify serverpool smallpool -attr "MAX_SIZE=2,MIN_SIZE=1" -policy day

I hope this post was helpful.

Your comments and suggestions are always welcome!

Related Links :

Home

12c RAC Index

12c RAC : CRS-2917: The ‘Free’ server pool cannot be removed from the system

java.lang nullpointerexception While Installing 12.1.0.2 RAC Database Software

I have an Oracle  12.1.0.2c cluster having following 5 nodes :

  • Hub Nodes : host01, host02, host03
  • Leaf nodes: host04 and host05

I wanted to install RAC database software on the 3 hub nodes i.e. host01, host02 and host03.

I invoked the OUI as oracle user (Owner of Database Home)

[oracle@host01 database_12_1_0_2]$ ./runInstaller

and chose the option to install RAC database software only on the 3 hub nodes.

After all the pre-requisite checks were successful , I clicked the Install button.
I got the error: java.lang nullpointerexception

On clicking OK, the OUI aborted.

To troubleshoot, I ran the OUI in debug mode as :

[oracle@host01 database_12_1_0_2]$ ./runInstaller -debug -J-DTRACING.ENABLED=true -J-DTRACING.LEVEL=2 -J-DSRVM_TRACE_LEVEL=2 -J-DFULLTRACE

The trace file showed that the leaf node host05 was not responding:

[setup.flowWorker] [ 2016-04-18 14:33:22.771 IST ]
[CRSCTLUtil.getClusterNodeConfigRoles:1198] outputs[4] = CRS-4404: The following nodes did not reply within the allotted time:
[setup.flowWorker] [ 2016-04-18 14:33:22.772 IST ]
[CRSCTLUtil.getClusterNodeConfigRoles:1200] values length = 2
[setup.flowWorker] [ 2016-04-18 14:33:22.772 IST ]
[CRSCTLUtil.getClusterNodeConfigRoles:1198] outputs[5] = host05
[setup.flowWorker] [ 2016-04-18 14:33:22.772 IST ]
[CRSCTLUtil.getClusterNodeConfigRoles:1200] values length = 1

I realized that although I wanted to install database software on 3 nodes only, all the nodes
needed to be up and running whereas in my case, the node host05 was down at that time.

When I started the node host05 and reinvoked OUI, the database software was installed
successfully.

References:
http://www.hhutzler.de/blog/oracle-installer-and-rac-installation/

I am Oracle ACE

It gives me immense pleasure to share the news that I have been honored with the prestigious  Oracle ACE award. I am grateful to Oracle ACE Program for accepting my nomination. I would like to thank  Murali Vallath Sir who nominated me for this award. I am also thankful to my family members without whose support and motivation, this would not have been possible.  Thanks a lot to all the readers of my blog whose comments and suggestions helped me to learn and share whatever little knowledge I have.

I will do my best to participate in the Oracle ACE program.

 

 

I Am Speaking at OTN Yathra 2016

The Oracle ACE directors and Oracle Volunteers  in the region are organizing their third evangelist event called ‘OTNYathra 2016’ from 23rd  April 2016 to 1st May 2016.  This yathra or tour will a series of 6 conferences across 6 major cities (Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad,  Pune, Mumbai and Delhi) managed by ACE directors and Oracle Volunteers of the region.

I will be speaking at this year’s OTNYathra  about Oracle Database 12c new feature : Highly Available NFS (HANFS) over ACFS.

HANFS over ACFS enables highly available NFS servers to be configured using Oracle ACFS clusters. The NFS exports are exposed through Highly Available VIPs (HAVIPs), and this allows Oracle’s Clusterware agents to ensure that HAVIPs and NFS exports are always available. If the node hosting the export(s) fails, the corresponding HAVIP and hence its corresponding NFS export(s) will automatically fail over to one of the surviving nodes so that the NFS client continues to receive uninterrupted service of NFS exported paths.

My session will be held on Sunday 1st May, 2016   from 3:00pm to 3:50pm in
Room 1, BirlaSoft, H–9, Sector 63, NOIDA – 201306, NCR Delhi
Hope to meet you there!!

One Million Page Views

Yesterday page views of  my blog touched the magical figure of 1 Million.  I had started blogging in November 2012 with the aim of saving whatever I learn, on the web in a language simple enough to be understood by even a beginner. Well, I myself was a beginner then and even now I am a beginner.  I think I am a bit skeptical – not easily convinced until I get a proof. So, in most of my posts , I try to verify the facts mentioned in oracle documentation and I presume that’s what has clicked with the readers of my blog.

I would like to thank all the readers of my blog  who spent their precious time in going through my posts and giving their valuable feedback.

Keep visiting my blog…

ORA-39070: Unable to open the log file

I received this error message when I was trying to perform a data pump export of SH schema in parallel in a RAC database. I proceeded as follows:

Current scenario:
Name of the cluster: cluster01
Number of nodes : 3 (host01, host02, host03)
RAC Database version: 11.2.0.3
Name of RAC database : orcl
Number of instances : 3

  • Created a directory object  pointing to shared storage which is accessible by all the three instances of the database
SQL>drop directory dp_shared_dir;
SQL>create directory DP_SHARED_DIR as '+DATA/orcl/';
SQL>grant read, write on directory dp_shared_dir to public;
  • Issued the command to export SH schema in parallel across all active Oracle RAC instances with parallelism = 6 which resulted in error ORA-39070
[oracle@host01 root]$ expdp system/oracle@orcl schemas=sh directory=dp_shared_dir parallel=6 cluster=y dumpfile='expsh%U.dmp' reuse_dumpfiles=y

Export: Release 11.2.0.3.0 - Production on Tue Dec 8 14:45:39 2015
Copyright (c) 1982, 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Connected to: Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.3.0 - Production
 With the Partitioning, Real Application Clusters, Automatic Storage Management, OLAP,
 Data Mining and Real Application Testing options
 ORA-39002: invalid operation
 ORA-39070: Unable to open the log file.
 ORA-29283: invalid file operation
 ORA-06512: at "SYS.UTL_FILE", line 536
 ORA-29283: invalid file operation

Cause:
The error message indicates that Log file cannot be opened. Since directory parameter points to a shared location on an ASM disk group and log file is not supported on it, I received the above error.

Solution:
I modified my command and explicitly specified log file to be created on  local file system pointed to by the directory object DATA_PUMP_DIR. Subsequently, export was performed successfully.

[oracle@host01 root]$ expdp system/oracle@orcl schemas=sh directory=dp_shared_dir parallel=6 cluster=y logfile=data_pump_dir:expsh.log dumpfile='expsh%U.dmp' reuse_dumpfiles=y

Export: Release 11.2.0.3.0 - Production on Tue Dec 8 15:14:11 2015

Copyright (c) 1982, 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Connected to: Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.3.0 - Production
With the Partitioning, Real Application Clusters, Automatic Storage Management, OLAP,
Data Mining and Real Application Testing options
Starting "SYSTEM"."SYS_EXPORT_SCHEMA_10": system/********@orcl schemas=sh directory=dp_shared_dir parallel=6 cluster=y logfile=data_pump_dir:expsh.log dumpfile=expsh%U.dmp reuse_dumpfiles=y
Estimate in progress using BLOCKS method...
Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/TABLE/TABLE_DATA
Total estimation using BLOCKS method: 273.8 MB
Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/USER
Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/SYSTEM_GRANT
Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/ROLE_GRANT
.....
.....
Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/TABLE/STATISTICS/TABLE_STATISTICS
Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/TABLE/INDEX/DOMAIN_INDEX/INDEX
Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/MATERIALIZED_VIEW
Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/DIMENSION
Master table "SYSTEM"."SYS_EXPORT_SCHEMA_10" successfully loaded/unloaded
******************************************************************************
Dump file set for SYSTEM.SYS_EXPORT_SCHEMA_10 is:
+DATA/orcl/expsh01.dmp
+DATA/orcl/expsh02.dmp
+DATA/orcl/expsh03.dmp
+DATA/orcl/expsh04.dmp
+DATA/orcl/expsh05.dmp
+DATA/orcl/expsh06.dmp
Job "SYSTEM"."SYS_EXPORT_SCHEMA_10" successfully completed at 15:20:49

I hope it helps!!!

—————————————————————————————————————-

Related links: