The document describes how to convert a single instance Oracle database to Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) using RMAN. The key steps include: 1. Duplicating the single instance database to an auxiliary instance on the RAC nodes using RMAN DUPLICATE. 2. Configuring the RAC-specific initialization parameters and creating the necessary redo logs and undo tablespaces. 3. Starting instances on each RAC node and registering them with the Cluster Ready Services framework.

1.  17+ Years of Experience in Oracle, SQLServer Database Technologies
 Have experience on wide range of products such as Oracle Agile, Hyperion, SAP Basis, MySQL,
SQLServer, BOXI ,DS, HANA, Tableau,…etc.
Written articles for major publications
Oracle Certified Professional Oracle 8i,9i,10g
Oracle Certified Expert Oracle 10g RAC
Oracle ACE
http://www.oracleracexpert.com
http://www.sqlserver-expert.com
Presented by
Satishbabu Gunukula

2. Disclaimer
 This content/views in this slides are those of the author and do
not reflect that of Oracle corporation and/or its affiliates,
employer, ex-employer, clients. The material in this document
is for information purpose only and is published with no
warranty, guarantee or implied.
 This material should not be reproduced or used with out the
author’s written permission.

3. Agenda
 Oracle RAC and its Benefits
 Overview of different RAC conversion methods
 Overview of different Storage options
 Convert Single instance to Oracle RAC Using RMAN
 Overview
 Prerequisites
 Demonstration
 Check the logs
 Post Conversion Steps
 References
 Contact Info
 Q&A

4. Why Oracle RAC & Benefits?
The Oracle RAC removes the ability of a single point of failure of server
in any database application environment.
 Scalability
 High Availability
 Reliability
 Recoverability
 Continue Operations
 Error Detection
 Lower in Cost
 Ease of Administration
 Grid Computing

5.  Oracle Provides different conversion methods
1. DBCA
2. RCONFIG (From 10g R2)
3. Enterprise Manager
4. Manual (Using RMAN)
Different RAC Conversion Methods

6.  Different storage options available in Oracle RAC
 ASM – Automatic Storage Management
 RAW – Raw devices
 CFS – Vendor Cluster file System (OCFS,QFS,GXFs…Etc.)
 NFS - Network File system (Certificated NAS)
Refer Oracle documentation for more information
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/server.112/e18951/toc.htm
Different Storage Options

7. RMAN is one of the best practice to convert single instance to RAC
We are using two phase approach for conversion
1. Duplicate single instance Non-ASM database to ASM - Using RMAN
DUPLICATE command copy the single instance database to RAC Server
2. Manually Convert single-instance to RAC – Create undo, redo, init.ora with
cluster parameters and start the instances on all the nodes in the cluster
Overview: Convert Single instance to RAC

8. RMAN is a command-line and Enterprise Manager based tool
 Advantages
 Full control over the conversion process
 Optimize the performance of Database duplication
 Ability to migration Non-ASM to ASM storage
 Disadvantages
 Database downtime required.
 Manual conversion process
Overview: Advantages/Disadvantages

9.  Oracle RAC
 Hardware and Operating System architecture must be same.
 Clustware is installed & configured on all the nodes in the cluster.
 Same Oracle version installed as source (Single instance).
 ASM is installed & configured with required ASM Diskgroups
Note: If you want to upgrade to higher version, then the preferred
method is fist upgrade your existing single instance database to
higher version, test and migrate to RAC.
Pre-requisites:

10. Hostname Database Name Instance Name Database Storage
orasrv DBORA DBORA ext3
Demonstration:
Overview of Non-RAC environment
Overview of RAC environment
Hostname Database Name Instance Name Database Storage
orarac1 RACDB RACDB1 ASM
orarac2 RACDB RACDB2 ASM
Oracle Version: 11.2.0. 1
O/S: REHL: 5.4
ASM Disk Groups: +DATA, +FLASH

11. Estimate used space for Non-RAC Database
Run the Query on Non-RAC instance to estimate the used space
Select DF.TOTAL/1073741824 "DataFile Size GB",
LOG.TOTAL/1073741824 "Redo Log Size GB",
CONTROL.TOTAL/1073741824 "Control File Size GB",
(DF.TOTAL + LOG.TOTAL + CONTROL.TOTAL)/ 1073741824 "Total Size GB"
from dual, (select sum(a.bytes) TOTAL from dba_data_files a) DF,
(select sum(b.bytes) TOTAL from v$log b) LOG,
(select sum((cffsz+1)*cfbsz) TOTAL from x$kcccf c) CONTROL;

12. Create init.ora and password file for RAC
Take a copy of init.ora parameter from single instance to Node1 on RAC and add update
the ASM Disk group information as per your requirement
For ex:-
# set the location of the duplicate clone control file.
control_files =‘+DATA’, ‘+FLASH’
#set the below parameters for default location of data files
db_create_file_dest='+DATA'
#set the below parameters for default location of recovery area
db_recovery_file_dest='+FLASH'
# set below parameter to create two members for each redo
db_create_online_dest_1=’+DATA’
db_create_online_dest_2=’+FLASH’
# set two destinations if you want to multiplex the archive logs
log_archive_dest_1='location=+DATA'
log_archive_dest_2='location=+FLASH'

13. Note: Here we are not using e are not using DB_FILE_NAME_CONVERT,
LOG_FILE_NAME_CONVERT parameters. If your data/redo files are not spread
across multiple directories then I would recommend to use this option.
Create password file
[oracle@orarac1]$ export ORACLE_SID=RACDB
[oracle@orarac1]$ export ORACLE_HOME=/home/oracle/product/v11201
[oracle@orarac1]$ orapwd file= $ORACLE_HOME/dbs/orapwRACDB
password=xxxxxxx
Create init.ora and password file for RAC

14. Create a static listener for on RAC node1 under $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin
and reload, because auxiliary database will not register itself with the listener.
[oracle@orarac1]$ cat $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin/listener.ora
SID_LIST_LISTENER =
(SID_LIST =
(SID_DESC =
(GLOBAL_DBNAME = RACDB)
(ORACLE_HOME = /home/oracle/product/v11201)
(SID_NAME = RACDB)
)
)
Configure listener on RAC node1

15. Add TNS entry in $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin/tnsnames.ora file on Non-
RAC Server to connect to Auxiliary instance.
[oracle@orasrv]$ cat $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin/tnsnames.ora
RACDB=
(DESCRIPTION =
(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = orarac1)(PORT = 1521))
(CONNECT_DATA =
(SERVER = DEDICATED)
(SERVICE_NAME = RACDB)
)
)
Add TNS Entry on Non-RAC

16. Take a backup of Non-RAC Database
Take a backup of Non-RAC database and archive logs.
[oracle@orasrv]$ rman TARGET / CATALOG rman/xxxxx@rmancat
RMAN> run{
allocate channel d1 type disk;
allocate channel d2 type disk;
backup
tag 'full_online_backup'
database format
'/backup/rman/ORADB/dbsdf_online_%d_t%t_s%s_p%p.rmn';
sql "alter system archive log current";
backup archivelog all delete input format
'/backup/rman/ORADB/archdf_%d_t%t_s%s_p%p.rmn';
release channel d1;
release channel d2;
}
Here we are backing the database to a NFS file system/ backup/rman/ORADB.
Mount this file system on RAC node1 for duplication process.

17. Start the auxiliary database in NOMOUNT mode on RAC node1
[oracle@orarac1]$ export ORACLE_SID=RACDB
[oracle@orarac1]$ exportORACLE_HOME=/home/oracle/product/v11201
[orcle@orarac1] $ sqlplus /nolog
SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.1.0 Production on Tue Mar 3 12:59:28 2012
Copyright (c) 1982, 2007, Oracle. All Rights Reserved.
SQL> connect / as sysdba
Connected to an idle instance.
SQL> startup nomount
Start the Database in NOMOUNT on RAC

18. Duplicate Database to RAC Server
In order to duplicate you should connect to target database and auxiliary database
started in NOMOUNT mode and also RMAN catalog, if using.
RMAN restores the data files and performs the recovery using all available backups and
archive logs . After recovery is completed RMAN restarts the duplicate database
(auxiliary database) and opens with the RESETLOGS option and generates a new DBID
for duplicate database.

19. Duplicate Database to RAC Server
Duplicate Database script contents
connect catalog rman/xxxxxxxx@rmancat
connect target /
connect auxiliary sys/xxxxxxx@RACDB
run{
allocate channel d1 device type disk;
allocate channel d2 device type disk;
allocate auxiliary channel a1 device type disk;
allocate auxiliary channel a2 device type disk;
duplicate target database to RACDB
pfile=/home/oracle/product/v11201/dbs/initRACDB.ora
logfile
group 1 ('+DATA','+FLASH') SIZE 50M reuse,
group 2 ('+DATA','+FLASH') SIZE 50M reuse;
release channel d1;
release channel d2; }

20. Convert Single Instance to RAC
We have duplicated single instance Non-ASM database to ASM on
RAC Server. Review Database alert_RACDB.log on RAC node1
We need to Convert single-instance to RAC

21. Create redo and undo for second instance
Create second thread of online redo logs in order to start instance 2
SYS@RACDB> alter database add logfile thread 2 group 3 ('+DATA’,'+FLASH’) size 50m;
SYS@RACDB > alter database add logfile thread 2 group 4 ('+DATA’,'+FLASH’) size 50m;
enable thread 2
SYS@RACDB > alter database enable public thread 2;
Create undo tablesapce for second instance.
SYS@RACDB> create undo tablespace UNDOTBS2 datafile '+DATA' size 500M;

22. Add cluster parameters
Add Cluster related parameters based on your configuration to parameter file
*.cluster_database_instances=2
*.cluster_database=true
*.remote_listener='LISTENERS_RACDB’
RACDB1.instance_number=1
RACDB2.instance_number=2
RACDB1.thread=1
RACDB2.thread=2
RACDB1.undo_tablespace='UNDOTBS1'
RACDB2.undo_tablespace='UNDOTBS2‘
update the actual controlfile path
*.control_files='+DATA/RACDB/controlfile/current.256.654542941','+FLASH/RACDB/c
ontrolfile/current.256.6232312941'

23. Starts instances on all the nodes in RAC
Set the environment variable for each instance, recreate the password & parameter file
and start the instances individually on two different nodes
[oracle@orarac1]$ export ORACLE_SID=RACDB1
[oracle@orarac1]$ export ORACLE_HOME=/home/oracle/product/v11201
[oracle@orarac1]$ orapwd file= $ORACLE_HOME/dbs/orapwRACDB1 password=xxxxx
[oracle@orarac1]$ sqlplus /nolog
SQL> Startup
[oracle@orarac2]$ export ORACLE_SID=RACDB2
[oracle@orarac2]$ export ORACLE_HOME=/home/oracle/product/v11201
[oracle@orarac2]$ orapwd file= $ORACLE_HOME/dbs/orapwRACDB2 password=xxxxx
oracle@orarac2]$ sqlplus /nolog
SQL> Startup

24. Register the RAC instances with CRS
Register the database instances with CRS framework
[oracle@orarac1]$ srvctl add database -d RACDB -o /home/oracle/product/v11201
[oracle@orarac1]$ srvctl add instance -d RACDB -i RACDB1 -n orarac1
[oracle@orarac1]$ srvctl add instance -d RACDB -i RACDB2 -n orarac2
CRS should able to manage the instances and also it should automatically startup
the instances when the servers are rebooted

25. Start/ Stop database using srvctl
After registering the database/instances with CRS, we should able to
manage using srvctl.
Stop the database
[oracle@orarac1]$ srvctl stop database -d RACDB
Start the database
[oracle@orarac1]$ srvctl start database -d RACDB

26. Check the logs
Check the log files to see the issues/errors, if any.
Database
ADR_BASE/diag/product_type/product_id/instance_id/alert_RACDB1.log
ADR_BASE/diag/product_type/product_id/instance_id/alert_RACDB2.log
Cluster
CRS_HOME/log/hostname/crsd/ - The log files for the CRS daemon
CRS_HOME/log/hostname/cssd/ - The log files for the CSS daemon
CRS_HOME/log/hostname/evmd/ - The log files for the EVM daemon
CRS_HOME/log/hostname/client/ - The log files for the Oracle Cluster Registry
CRS_HOME/log/hostname/racg/ - The log files for the Oracle RAC high availability
CRS_HOME/log/hostname/racg - The log files for the Oracle RAC high availability
CRS_HOME/log/hostanme/alert.log – The alert.log for Clusterware issues.
Note:- CRS_HOME is the directory in which the Oracle Clusterware software was installed
and hostname is the name of the node.

27. Post conversion Steps
 Drop the static listener and used for duplication
 Configure the listener and tnsnames using NETCA, refer below link
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/network.112/e10836/listenercfg.htm
 Configure TAF & Load balancing according to application requiement
 Setup Database Backup and OCR Backup
 More SGA recommended for RAC and size according to work load

28. Best Practices, Tips & Hints
 If you install software in shared Oracle home you cannot able to perform rolling
upgrade, So avoid using shared Oracle home
 For redundancy Multiplex controlfile, redo logs and archive logs across the disk groups
 Use RMAN incrementally updated feature to reduce restoration time especially when
Recovery time Objective (RTO) is set for mission critical database.
 Prior to installing oracle software validate the cluster infrastructure, it will save
considerable time and potential headaches.
 Avoid a cross-over cable and use Fastest possible interconnect
 Auto backup feature will enable RMAN to recover the database even if the controlfile,
catalog and spfile are lost.

29. References
Oracle RAC & ASM
1. Oracle high availability Solutions
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/features/availability/index.html
2. Oracle Documentation for OS specific Installation and Configuration
http://www.oracle.com/pls/db1112/portal.portal_db?selected=16
3. Oracle Documentation on Convert single instance to RAC
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/install.112/e24660/cvrt2rac.htm#RILIN1137
4. Oracle Documentation on ASM
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/server.112/e18951/toc.htm
5. ASM Technical Best Practices Metalink Note ID: 265633.1

30. References
Oracle RMAN
1. Oracle Documentation on Oracle Recovery Manager
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/rac.112/e16795/rman.htm
2. Oracle RMAN New Features in Oracle 11g
http://www.oracleracexpert.com/2011/12/oracle-recovery-managerrman-new.html
3. Understand Oracle RMAN Reporting
http://www.oracleracexpert.com/2011/06/understand-oracle-rman-reporting.html

31. Contact info
Thanks for attending the Webinar
You can reach me at SatishbabuGunukula@gmail.com
Visit MyBlog http://www.oracleracexpert.com

33. Thank you.