Oracle 11g release 2 « Oracle DBA

Building a test 11gR2 RAC environment in minutes using Oracle Virtual Machine templates

This note illustrates how we can set up an Orace 11g Release 2 Real Application Clusters environment for test purposes using the Oracle VM templates which are currently available in under 30 minutes!

The templates are available from the Oracle E-Delivery web site and are available in both OEL 32bit Linux as well as 64bit Linux.

While we are demonstrating a test or development RAC setup where a single Oracle VM server is hosting both the guest nodes, a ‘Production’ type envrionment is also supported using the Oracle VM Templates where we have multiple OVM Servers and the shared disks are configured as ‘phy’ devices which are then passed on to the guest Oracle VM’s. So there are a number of Oracle VM Servers in this case.

In this test environment, however, the shared disk is configured as ‘file’ devices and both guests can run on the same Oracle VM Server.

In other words

Continue reading Building a test 11gR2 RAC environment in minutes using Oracle Virtual Machine templates

Oracle 11g Cross platform Active Standby - Windows Primary database and Linux Active Standby

This note describes the procedure of configuring a cross platform using the 11g RMAN Active Duplicate as well as an Active Standby Database setup over a Windows and Linux platform.

The Metalink note Data Guard Support for Heterogeneous Primary and Physical Standbys in Same Data Guard Configuration [ID 413484.1] describes the supported cross platform combinations between a primary and standby database.

In Oracle 10g, we could have a 32 bit and 64 bit Primary/Standby combination on some supported platforms and in 11g this has been extended to cover heterogenous platforms for the Primary and Standby database.

The environment used is as follows:

Primary

Windows 7 64 bit
11g Release 2
DB_UNIQUE_NAME=orcl

Active Standby

Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.7 64 bit
11g Release 2
DB_UNIUE_NAME=orcl_dr

Read the rest of the note Oracle 11g Cross platform Active Standby – Windows Primary database and Linux Active Standby

Upgrading to 11g Release 2 and DST Updates

When performing an upgrade to Oracle 11g Release 2, we would need to take into consideration if there are any DST (Daylight Saving Time) implications which could be the vase in case we have application tables using the datatypes TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE and TIMESTAMP WITH LOCAL TIME ZONE.

Oracle 11.2.0.2 uses Time Zone version 14 and 11.2.0.1 use Time Zone version 11. In Oracle 10.2.0.4 the Time Zone is 4 and if we are planning to upgrade from 10.2.0.1 to 11g Release 2, then we need to first patch the database to at least version 10.2.0.2 before we can attempt a direct upgrade to 11g Release 2.

One of the good new features in 11.2.0.2 Database Upgrade Assistant (DBUA) is that DBUA would automatically upgrade Time Zone to version 14 if you checked “Upgrade Timezone Version and TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE data” box as shown below.

If we are using

Continue reading Upgrading to 11g Release 2 and DST Updates

Upgrading 10g ASM to 11gR2 ASM

This note describes the procedure of upgrading the 10g ASM to 11g Release 2 ASM on an HP UX 64 bit platform.

The procedure of upgrading the ASM in 11g R2 is a bit different to the procedure used to upgrade ASM to 11.1.0.6 or 11.1.0.7.

In 11g R2, ASM is now included as part of the 11gR2 Grid Infrastructure software and we use ASMCA GUI tool to administer ASM and not the DBCA which we used in 10g.

Also, it should be noted that an Oracle 10g database can still connect to and use the 11g ASM disk groups.

We can define the ASM as well as database compatibility levels via attributes of the ASM disk groups as we see in the note.

Download the note ……

Creating a 11g Data Guard Physical Standby Database using Enterprise Manager Grid Control 10.2.0.5

In one of my earlier posts, I had discussed the process of setting up a 11g Standby Database using the DUPLICATE FROM ACTIVE method where we do not use any RMAN backup to create the standby database, but copy the datafiles from an active running database over the network.

Let us now have a look at some of the screenshots of creating a 11g Data Guard physical standby database using Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control version 10.2.0.5.

Download ….

Passing the 11g Oracle Certified Master (OCM) Exam - some thoughts

I recently passed the 11g Oracle Certified Masters Upgrade Exam and am now an 11g OCM in addition to the 10g OCM. I had to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) while taking the exam, so unfortunately I will not be able to divulge too many details about the exam, but would like to share a few pointers which should hopefully help others who are planning to give this exam in the near future.

The 11g OCM upgrade exam is a one day exam while the 11g OCM is a two day exam like the 10g exam. It can be a long day between 8-10 hours, so be prepared for it.
I have listed the exam topics here which can be also obtained from the OTN site related to Oracle Certification. While preparing, try and cover each and every topic as the exam will basically cover pretty much every exam

Continue reading Passing the 11g Oracle Certified Master (OCM) Exam – some thoughts

Upgrade to 11g and ensure Optimizer Plan Stability using SQL Plan Baselines

One of the major concerns a DBA has related to performing a database upgrade to Oracle 11g is ‘Are Execution Plans Going To Change Post-Upgrade?’

I am quite sure we would have experienced some queries having different execution plans when we did earlier upgrades to both 9i as well as 10g. This is due to optimizer and kernel differences in every Oracle version which causes the execution plan of some SQL statements to change.

It is not as if all SQL statements have different execution plans after a database upgrade is performed. It maybe just a case where only SQL statement is now performing a full table scan or sub-optimal join as compared to the pre-upgrade plan and that query is one is which is used a great deal by the application.

So we may have taken all steps to perform an upgrade with just a few hours of application downtime, but

Continue reading Upgrade to 11g and ensure Optimizer Plan Stability using SQL Plan Baselines

11g Upgrade Workshop and some upgrade lessons learnt

As a large number of the Oracle community would I guess be in the process of upgrading to 11g (Release 2 and its patch is already available), I am including some presentations taken from the 11g Upgrade Workshop which was conducted by Oracle Corp staff members Roy Swonger & Mike Dietrich.

The workshop was highly detailed but very practical in nature and is a must read for anyone who has not attended these workshops, but are considering upgrading to 11g in the near future.

Here are the workshop slides:

upgrade11gr1_workshop1
upgrade11gr1_workshop2

Here are some other upgrade tips which I have picked up along the way.

Upgrade of the database is NOT dependent of size of the database. It depends on options installed in the database like Spatial, Text, Java, Intermedia etd.

Upgrade typically can take between 90-180 minutes on a machine with fairly standard specifications.

Compilation of INVALID objects is where a majority of the time is

Continue reading 11g Upgrade Workshop and some upgrade lessons learnt

Upgrading from 10g to 11g Release 2 with a physical standby database

This note details the procedure for upgrading a 10.2.0.2 database running on a Windows 2003 Server platform to an Oracle 11g Release 2 database on the same platform using the Database Upgrade Assistant.

Addtional steps are shown in this note which deals with how to perform the upgrade of the Data Guard Physical Standby database at the same time as when the upgrade of the Primary Database is in progress.

The notes on Oracle Metalink related to performing a database upgrade of the standby database are not very clear and point us to the official Oracle documentation whch is also not very clear. Hope this note of mine makes things more clear and would like some feedbcak from the community after attempting the same.

Read the note …..

11g Active Standby Database Automatic Block Corruption Repair

In addition to the real time query capability of the 11g Active Data Guard feature, we can also add to our high availability capability by using the Automatic Block Media Repair feature whereby data block corruptions on the Primary database can be repaired by obtaining those blocks from the standby site – all performed by a background process (ABMR) transparent to the application.

The same functionality can be used to repair block corruptions on the Active Standby site by applying blocks which are conversely now received from the Primary site.

Let us see a test case of the same.

We create a test table and assign it to the USERS tablespace.

SQL> create table myobjects
2 tablespace users
3 as select * from all_objects;

Table created.

Using DBMS_ROWID, we determine the blocks which this table occupies (if you like, just restrict the query to the first 5 blocks in case the

Continue reading 11g Active Standby Database Automatic Block Corruption Repair

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