Oracle 11g « Oracle DBA – Tips and Techniques

Using the oracle-validated RPM to install Oracle 11g on Linux

I recently came across this OTN article How I Simplified Oracle Database Installation on Oracle Linux.

I tried out the procedure listed by the author and thought I’d share this with those who may not be aware of this note and must say thanks to the author Ginny Henningsen.

When I have tried to install Oracle 11g on Linux, in most cases I have found that the OUI either reports that some packages are missing (typically unixODBC or libaio) or some kernel parameters are not appropriately set. In this case however, we download and install an RPM package called oracle-validated and the oracle-validated RPM does a number of things for us.

It creates the user oracle
It creates the groups oinstall and dba
It modifies the kernel parameters in /etc/sysctl.conf
It sets the hard and soft shell resource limits in /etc/security/limits.conf
And most importantly, downloads and installs number of packages which are required

Continue reading Using the oracle-validated RPM to install Oracle 11g on Linux

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

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 …..

Some more 11g Grid Control Installation and Configuration Notes

Some time back I had posted a few notes on the 11g Grid Control installation and configuration.

11g Grid Control Installation Tips and Solutions

11g Enterprise Manager Grid Control Installation Overview

I would like to highlight an extremely good resource on all things related to the 11g Grid Control setup including the WebLogic and Agent installation.

Here is the link –

How to Build a Grid Control Environment (11g)

Also, here is a very good presentation by Ray Smith “An Introduction to OEM 11g” which was also presented at the Oracle Open World 2010 recently held in San Francisco.

Ray has been kind to share this with the community and it has a lot of information on what has changed in the Oracle 11g Grid Control environment and includes both a run through of the architecture and an overview of the installation.

Presentation: An Introduction To OEM 11g

Downgrading a failed 11g Release 2 Upgrade - the easy way

One of the best practices before performing any database upgrade is to take a full backup before we start the upgrade process just in case the upgrade fails and we want to then restore the previous version.

In many cases owing to the size of the database, we are constrained both by time as well as disk space when it comes to taking a full backup of the database.

So can we just get away by taking a backup of a much smaller subset of the database and not worry about backing up all our data and index tablespaces? – just the controlfiles, redo log files and the tablespaces – SYSTEM, SYSAUX, UNDOTBS1 (or whatever you call your undo tablespace) and TEMP (or whatever you call your temporary tablespace/tablespaces).

Let us see a test case where we start by performing a manual upgrade of a 10.2.0.4 database to 11g Release

Continue reading Downgrading a failed 11g Upgrade – the easy way

Purging trace and dump files with 11g ADRCI

In previous versions of Oracle prior to 11g, we had to use our own housekeeping scripts to purge the udump, cdump and bdump directories.

In Oracle 11g, we now have the ADR (Automatic Diagnostic Repository) which is defined by the diagnostic_dest parameter.

So how are unwanted trace and core dump files cleaned out in 11g automatically?

This is done by the MMON background process.

There are two time attributes which are used to manage the retention of information in ADR. Both attributes correspond to a number of hours after which the MMON background process purges the expired ADR data.

LONGP_POLICY (long term) defaults to 365 days and relates to things like Incidents and Health Monitor warnings.

SHORTP_POLICY (short term) defaults to 30 days and relates to things like trace and core dump files

The ADRCI command show control will show us what the current purge settings are as shown below.

adrci> show control

ADR Home = /u01/app/oracle/diag/rdbms/ttrlwiki/ttrlwiki:
*************************************************************************
ADRID

Continue reading Purging trace and dump files with 11g ADRCI

Cloning an 11g Oracle Home

This note describes the process of cloning an Oracle Home – in this case we are cloning a 11g Release 2 Oracle Home from source machine linux01 to target machine linux02.

On source (linux01)

ORACLE_HOME location is : /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1

Go to directory on source machine one level higher and tar the db_home1 directory and all sub-directories

linux01:$ pwd

linux01:$ /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0

linux01:$ tar -cvf 11gr2.tar dbhome_1

On Target (linux02)

Read the rest of this post …

How to clone the Oracle software

11g Data Guard Broker DGMGRL Configuration quick steps

This note describes the commands used to create a Data Guard broker configuration using the command line dgmgrl interface. This can also be done via the Enterprise Manager Grid Control GUI as well and the assumption is that there is a Physical Standby database in place and redo transport and redo apply have already been configured and that both the Primary and Standby database are in sync.

Primary Database: genoa1_js

Standby Database: genoa1_fc

On both Primary as well as Standby database start the Data Guard Broker process

SQL> ALTER SYSTEM SET DG_BROKER_START=TRUE SCOPE=BOTH;

System altered.

Edit the listener.ora on both nodes to add a static entry for DGMGRL

This is to prevent the ORA-12154 error which can be observed on startup of the standby database after performing a switchover.

Ensure that the GLOBAL_DBNAME is set to db_unique_name_DGMGRL.db_domain

SID_LIST_LISTENER =
(SID_LIST =
(SID_DESC =
(GLOBAL_DBNAME = genoa1_js_dgmgrl)

Continue reading 11g Data Guard Broker DGMGRL Configuration quick steps

Create Standby Database using 11g DUPLICATE FROM ACTIVE DATABASE

Purpose

This note explains the procedure of creating a Physical Standby database using 11g RMAN DUPLICATE FROM ACTIVE DATABASE feature which is now available in 11g Release 1 onwards. This enables us to create a physical standby database without having to take a backup of the primary database as a prerequisite step.

Environment

Primary Database DB_UNIQUE_NAME: genoa1_js
Standby Database DB_UNIQUE_NAME: genoa1_fc

ORACLE_SID: genoa1

Primary hostname: oatu037
Standby hostname: drou037

Oracle software version: Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.1.0.7.0 – 64bit

Enable Force Logging on the Primary database

SQL> alter database force logging;

Database altered.

Download the note ….

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