1.what is partition pruning ?

oracle optimizes sql statements to mark the partitions or subpartitions that need
to be accessed and eliminates (prunes) unnecessary partitions or subpartitions from
access by those sql statements.
in other words, partition pruning is the skipping of unnecessary index and data
partitions or subpartitions in a query.
2.what is fencing?
i/o fencing prevents updates by failed instances, and detecting failure and
preventing split brain in cluster.
when a cluster node fails, the failed node needs to be fenced off from all the
shared disk devices or diskgroups.
this methodology is called i/o fencing, sometimes called disk fencing or failure
fencing.

3.what is grid plug and play (gpnp)?

grid plug and play (gpnp) eliminates per-node configuration data and the need for
explicit add and delete node steps.
this allows a system administrator to take a template system image and run it on a
new node with no further configuration.
this removes many manual operations, reduces the opportunity for errors, and
encourages configurations that can be changed easily.
removal of the per-node configuration makes the nodes easier to replace, because
they do not need to contain individually-managed state.

grid plug and play reduces the cost of installing, configuring, and managing
database nodes by making their per-node state disposable.
it allows nodes to be easily replaced with regenerated state.

can i use fast connection failover (fcf) and transparent application failover (taf)
together?
no, only one of them should be used at a time.

8.how do i determine the �master� node?

for the cluster synchronization service (css), the master can be found by searching
$gi_home/log/cssd/ocssd.log.for master of an enqueue resource with oracle rac, you
can select from v$ges_resource. there should be a master_node column.

10.what is the guideline on how to auto-extend data files?

when configuring a file to auto extend, the size of the extension should cover all
disks in the asm disk group to optimize balance.
for example, with a 4 mb au size and 128 disks, the size of the extension should be
a multiple of 512mb (4*128).

11.what init.ora parameters does a user need to configure for asm instances?

the default parameter settings work perfectly for asm. the only parameters needed
for 11g asm:
processes* asm_diskstring* asm_diskgroups instance_type

12.how does the database interact with the asm instance and how do i make asm go
faster? asm is not in the i/o path so asm does not impede the database file access.
since the rdbms instance is performing raw i/o, the i/o is as fast as possible.

13.do i need to define the rdbms filesystemio_options parameter when i use asm?

no, rdbms does i/o directly to the raw disk devices, the filesystemio_options
parameter is only for filesystems.
14.why oracle recommends two diskgroups?

oracle recommends two diskgroups to provide a balance of manageability,

utilization, and performance.

15.we have a 16 tb database. i�m curious about the number of disk groups we should
use; e.g. 1 large disk group, a couple of disk groups, or otherwise?
for vldbs you will probably end up with different storage tiers.

for example: some of our large customers they have tier1 (raid10 fc), tier2 (raid5
fc), tier3 (sata), etc.
each one of these is mapped to a diskgroup.

16. we have a new app and don�t know our access pattern, but assuming mostly
sequential access, what size would be a good au fit?
for 11g asm/rdbms it is recommended to use 4mb asm au for disk groups. see metalink
note 810484.1

17. would it be better to use bigfile tablespaces, or standard tablespaces for

asm? the use of bigfile tablespaces has no bearing on asm (or vice versa).
in fact most database object related decisions are transparent to asm.

18. what is the best lun size for asm?

in most cases the storage team will dictate to you based on their standardized lun
size. the asm administrator merely has to communicate the asm best practices and
application characteristics to storage:

need equally sized / performance luns

minimum of 4 luns

the capacity requirement

the workload characteristic (random r/w, sequential r/w) & any response time sla

using this info , and their standards, the storage folks should build a nice lun
group set for you.

. what is rac?

rac stands for real application cluster.

it is a clustering solution from oracle corporation that ensures high availability

of databases by providing instance failover, media failover features.

2. how is it different from non rac databases?

cluster is the key component and is a collection of servers operations as one unit.
rac is the best solution for high performance and high availability.
non-rac databases has single point of failure in case of hardware failure or server
crash.

3. what is cache fusion?

cache fusion is nothing but a mapping of remote memory of oracle buffers, which is
shared between the caches participating nodes in the cluster.
it is very easy to gain the block image from the instance that contain the block in
its sga instead of reading from the disk
this happens when the block of data is read from data file by an instance in the
cluster and when another instance require the same block.

4. what is the purpose of olr?

oracle local repository (olr) contains an information which allows the cluster
programs to initiate with the ocr, which is being in the asm storage. as until the
grid processes are started, the asm file is unavailable, then a local copy of the
data of the ocr is required, that is stored in olr.
5. what is fan?

fan stands for fast application notification, which is connected to the events
containing services, nodes and instances.
in order to describe the other processes about the service level information and
configuration which contains the changes of the service status like up or down
events.
oracle rac 12c uses this notification mechanism.

using fan events, the application gives response and can take immediate actions.

6. what is the difference between instance and crash recovery?

the crash recovery takes place during the startup, when an instance breaks up in a
single node database.
if the same recovery is performed in the rac environment by the surviving nodes, it
is called as an instance recovery.

7.what is hangcheck timer?

the hangcheck timer is used to check the health of the system regularly. the node
is restarted automatically, when the system stops or hangs.

there are two key parameters:

hangcheck margin: this shows that how much delay can be permitted before the reset
of the rac node is done by the hangcheck timer.

hangcheck tick: it is defined as the time period between system health checks. 60
seconds is the default time, but oracle recommends it to be 30 seconds.

8. what is grd?

grd is the global resource directory. the grd is used by the ges and gcs to
maintain the records of each cached block and each datafile. this process is known
as cache fusion and can be used in data integrity.
9. what is ocr file?

it is a rac configuration information repository, which maintains the information

about the

instance node mapping and cluster node.

it maintains information about the profiles of oracle clusterware resource for

customed applications.
it manages the configuration information related to any cluster database in the
cluster.

it is necessary for the ocr to reside on a shared disk, which is accessible by all
of the cluster nodes.
the command daemon ocssd maintains the configuration information in ocr and manages
the changes to cluster within the registry.

10. what is a raw partition?

it is the part of the physical disk, which is accessed on the lowest level. when an
additional partition is created, raw partition is created and without any
formatting, a logical partitions are assigned to it. it is called cooked partition,
once the formatting is completed.

11. what is load balancing advisory?

to check the workload across resources in the balancing of application, the load
balancing advisory is provided.

12. how do i enable the load balancing advisory (lba)?

to enable the load balancing advisory, use the �-b� option when creating or
modifying the service using the �srvctl� command.

13. what options are required to resolve ocr, if it is corrupted?

the backup copy of either physical or logical ocr copy is used to restore the
repository.

14. what is a voting disk?

a voting disk is a file that manages information about node membership.

15. what are the administrative tasks involved with voting disk?

following administrative tasks are performed with the voting disk :

backing up voting disks recovering voting disks adding voting disks deleting voting
disks moving voting disks

16. how many voting disks are you maintaining ?

by default oracle will create 3 voting disk files in asm.

oracle expects that you will configure at least 3 voting disks for redundancy
purposes. you should always configure an odd number of voting disks >= 3.
this is because loss of more than half your voting disks will cause the entire
cluster to fail. you should plan on allocating 280mb for each voting disk file.
if you are using asm and normal redundancy you will need 560mb.

17. ?

18. what are scan components in a cluster? scan name

scan ips (3)
scan listeners (3)

19. what is taf and taf policies?

transparent application failover (taf) is runtime failover for high availability

environments, such as real application clusters and oracle real application
clusters guard.
taf refers to the failover and re-establishment of application-to-service
connections.

it enables client applications to automatically reconnect to the database if the

connection fails, and optionally resume a select statement that was in progress.
this reconnect happens automatically from within the oracle call interface (oci)
library. 20.which enable the load balancing of applications in rac?
oracle net services enable the load balancing of application connections across all
of the instances in an oracle rac database.
.how would to find location of ocr file when crs is down?

if you need to find the location of ocr (oracle cluster registry) but your crs is
down.

look into �ocr.loc� file, location of this file changes depending on the operating
system

on linux: /etc/oracle/ocr.loc

on solaris: /var/opt/oracle/ocr.loc

if crs is up and running

set asm environment or crs environment then run the below command:

#ocrcheck

2. in 2 node rac, how many nic�s are used ? 2 network cards on each clusterware
node
network card 1 (with ip address set 1) for public network

network card 2 (with ip address set 2) for private network (for inter node
communication between rac nodes used by clusterware and rac database)
3. in 2 node rac, how many ip�s are using ? 6 ip adress are required
## eth1-public: 2

## eth0-private: 2

## vip: 2

5. what is difference between rac ip addresses ?

public ip address is the normal ip address typically used by dba and system
administrator to manage storage, system and database.
public ip addresses are reserved for the internet.

private ip address is used only for internal clustering processing (cache fusion) .
private ip addresses are reserved for private networks.
vip is used by database applications to enable fail over when one cluster node
fails.

6. where are the clusterware files stored on a rac environment?

the clusterware is installed on each node (on an oracle home) and on the shared
disks (the voting disks and the csr file)

7. where are the database software files stored on a rac environment?

the base software is installed on each node of the cluster and the database storage
on the shared disks.

8. what kind of storage we can use for the shared clusterware files? ocfs
(release 1 or 2)
raw devices

third party cluster file system such as gpfs or veritas

9. what kind of storage we can use for the rac database storage? ocfs (release 1
or 2)
asm

raw devices

third party cluster file system such as gpfs or veritas

10. what is a cfs?

a cluster file system (cfs) is a file system that may be accessed (read and write)
by all members in a cluster at the same time. this implies that all members of a
cluster have the same view.

11. what is an ocfs2?

the ocfs2 is the oracle (version 2) cluster file system which can be used for the
oracle real application cluster.

12. which files can be placed on an oracle cluster file system? oracle software
installation (windows only)
oracle files (controlfiles, datafiles, redologs, files described by the bfile
datatype) shared configuration files (spfile)
ocr and voting disk

files created by oracle during runtime

note: there are some platform specific limitations.

13. do you know another cluster vendor? hp tru64 unix
veritas microsoft

14. what is a raw device?

a raw device is a disk drive that does not yet have a file system assigned. raw
devices are used for real application clusters since they enable the sharing of
disks.

16. what is a raw partition?

a raw partition is a portion of a physical disk that is accessed at the lowest

possible level. a raw partition is created when an extended partition is created
and logical partitions are assigned to it without any formatting. once formatting
is complete, it is called cooked partition.

17. when to use raw over cfs?

always when cfs is not available or not supported by oracle. raw devices offer best
performance without any intermediate layer between oracle and the disk.

note: autoextend fails on raw devices if the space is exhausted. however the space
could be added online if needed.

18. what crs is?

oracle rac 10g release 1 introduced oracle cluster ready services (crs), a
platform- independent set of system services for cluster environments. in release
2, oracle has renamed this product to oracle clusterware.
19. do we have to have oracle rdbms on all nodes?

each node of a cluster that is being used for a clustered database will typically
have the rdbms and rac software loaded on it, but not actual data files (these need
to be available via shared disk).

20. what are the restrictions on the sid with a rac database? is it limited to 5
characters?

the sid prefix in 10g release 1 and prior versions was restricted to five
characters by install/ config tools so that an oracle_sid of up to max of 5+3=8
characters can be supported in a rac environment. the sid prefix is relaxed up to 8
characters in 10g release 2, see bug 4024251 for more information.
what is dynamic remastering? when will the dynamic remastering happens?

dynamic remastering is ability to move the ownership of resource from one instance
to another instance in rac.
dynamic resource remastering is used to implement for resource affinity for
increased performance.
resource affinity optimized the system in situation where update transactions are
being executed in one instance.
when activity shift to another instance the resource affinity correspondingly move
to another instance.
if activity is not localized then resource ownership is hashed to the instance.

2. how you check the health of your rac database?

�crsctl� command from root or oracle user can be used to check the clusterware
health ,while for starting or stopping we have to use root user or any privilege
user.

$ crsctl check crs

3. if there is some issue with virtual ip how will you troubleshoot it?how will
you change virtual ip?
to change the vip (virtual ip) on a rac node, use the command:

$ srvctl modify nodeapps -a new_address

4. give details on acms?

acms stands for atomic controlfile memory service.

in an oracle rac environment acms is an agent that ensures a distributed sga memory
update, (i.e.) sga updates are globally committed on success or globally aborted in
event of a failure.

5. what are the major rac wait events?

in a rac environment the buffer cache is global across all instances in the cluster
and hence the processing differs. the most common wait events related to this are
gc cr request and gc buffer busy
gc cr request is the time it takes to retrieve the data from the remote cache

reason: rac traffic using slow connection or inefficient queries (poorly tuned
queries will increase the amount of data blocks requested by an oracle session.

gc buffer busy is the time remote instance locally spends accessing the requested
data block.

6. give details on gtx0-j?

this process provides transparent support for xa global transactions in a rac

environment.

the database auto-tunes the number of these processes based on the workload of xa
global transactions.

7. give details on lmon?

this process monitors global enques and resources across the cluster and performs
global enqueue recovery operations.
this is called as global enqueue service monitor.
8. give details on lmd?

this process is called as global enqueue service daemon.

this process manages incoming remote resource requests within each instance.

9. give details on lms?

this process is called as global cache service process.

this process maintains statuses of datafiles and each cahed block by recording
information in a global resource dectory(grd).
this process also controls the flow of messages to remote instances and manages
global data block access and transmits block images between the buffer caches of
different instances.
this processing is a part of cache fusion feature.

10. give details on lck0?

this process is called as instance enqueue process.

this process manages non-cache fusion resource requests such as library and row
cache requests.

11. give details on rmsn?

this process is called as oracle rac management process. these processes perform
manageability tasks for oracle rac.
tasks include creation of resources related oracle rac when new instances are added
to the cluster.

12. give details on rsmn?

this process is called as remote slave monitor.

this process manages background slave process creation and communication on remote
instances.
this is a background slave process.

this process performs tasks on behalf of a co-ordinating process running in another

instance.

13. can we use crossover cables with oracle clusterware interconnects?

no, crossover cables are not supported with oracle clusterware interconnects.

14. how do users connect to database in an oracle rac environment?

users can access a rac database using a client/server configuration or through one
or more middle tiers, with or without connection pooling.
users can use oracle services feature to connect to database.

15. why should we have separate homes for asm instance?

it is a good practice to have asm home separate from the database

home(oracle_home).

this helps in upgrading and patching asm and the oracle database software
independent of each other.
also,we can deinstall the oracle database software independent of the asm instance.

16. what is the advantage of using asm?

having asm is the oracle recommended storage option for rac databases as the asm
maximizes performance by managing the storage configuration across the disks.
asm does this by distributing the database file across all of the available storage
within our cluster database environment.
17. what is rolling upgrade?

it is a new asm feature from database 11g.

asm instances in oracle database 11g release(from 11.1) can be upgraded or patched
using rolling upgrade feature.
this enables us to patch or upgrade asm nodes in a clustered environment without
affecting database availability.
during a rolling upgrade we can maintain a functional cluster while one or more of
the nodes in the cluster are running in different software versions.

18. can rolling upgrade be used to upgrade from 10g to 11g database?

no,it can be used only for oracle database 11g releases(from 11.1).

19. how do we remove asm from a oracle rac environment?

we need to stop and delete the instance in the node first in interactive or silent
mode. after that asm can be removed using srvctl tool as follows:

srvctl stop asm -n node_name

srvctl remove asm -n node_name

we can verify if asm has been removed by issuing the following command:

srvctl config asm -n node_name

.what is a diskgroup in asm?

a disk group consists of multiple disks and is the fundamental object that asm
manages.
each disk group contains the metadata that is required for the management of space
in the disk group.
the asm instance manages the metadata about the files in a disk group in the same
way that a file system manages metadata about its files.
however, the vast majority of i/o operations do not pass through the asm instance.

2. can my disks in a diskgroup can be varied size? for example one disk is of
100gb and another disk is of 50gb. if so how does asm manage the extents?
yes, disk sizes can be varied, oracle asm will manage data efficiently and
intelligent by placing the extents proportional to the size of the disk in the disk
group, bigger diskgroups have more extents than lesser ones.

3. what is the major difference between 10g and 11g rac?

well, there is not much difference between 10g and 11g (release-1) rac.

but there is a significant difference in 11gr2.

prior to 11gr1(10g) rac, the following were managed by oracle crs

databases

instances applications node monitoring event services high availability

from 11gr2 its completed ha stack managing and providing the following resources as
like the other cluster software like vcs etc.

databases instances applications

cluster management node management event services
high availability

network management (provides dns/gns/mdnsd services on behalf of other traditional

services) and scan � single access client naming method, haip
storage management (with help of asm and other new acfs filesystem) time
synchronization (rather depending upon traditional ntp)
removed os dependent hang checker etc, manages with own additional monitor process
4. what is grid naming service(gns)?

grid naming service (gns) is alternative service to domain naming service (dns) ,
which will act as a sub domain in your dns but managed by oracle, with gns the
connection is routed to the cluster ip and manages internally.

5. what are the file types that asm support and keep in disk groups? control
files

flashback logs data pump dump sets

data files db spfile data guard configuration

temporary data files rman backup sets change tracking bitmaps online redo logs
rman data file copies ocr files
archive logs transport data files asm spfile

6. list key benefits of asm?

stripes files rather than logical volumes provides redundancy on a file basis
enables online disk reconfiguration and dynamic rebalancing

reduces the time significantly to resynchronize a transient failure by tracking

changes while

disk is offline

provides adjustable rebalancing speed is cluster-aware

supports reading from mirrored copy instead of primary copy for extended clusters
is automatically installed as part of the grid infrastructure

7. list some of the background process that used in asm? process

description
rbal opens all device files as part of discovery and coordinates the rebalance
activity arbn one or more slave processes that do the rebalance activity
gmon responsible for managing the disk-level activities such as drop or offline and
advancing the asm disk group compatibility
mark marks asm allocation units as stale when needed

onnn one or more asm slave processes forming a pool of connections to the asm
instance for exchanging messages
pz9n one or more parallel slave processes used in fetching data on clustered asm
installation from gv$ views

8. what is node listener?

in 11gr2 the listeners will run from grid infrastructure software home

the node listener is a process that helps establish network connections from asm
clients to the asm instance.
runs by default from the grid $oracle_home/bin directory listens on port 1521 by
default
is the same as a database instance listener

is capable of listening for all database instances on the same machine in addition
to the asm instance
can run concurrently with separate database listeners or be replaced by a separate
database listener
is named tnslsnr on the linux platform

9. what is the difference between crsctl and srvctl? crsctl manages clusterware-
related operations:

starting and stopping oracle clusterware

enabling and disabling oracle clusterware daemons registering cluster resources

srvctl manages oracle resource�related operations:

starting and stopping database instances and services

also from 11gr2 manages the cluster resources like network,vip,disks etc
11.what are types of asm mirroring?

disk group type supported mirroringlevels default mirroring level external

redundancy unprotected (none) unprotected (none)
normal redundancy two-waythree-way unprotected (none)

two-way

high redundancy three-way three-way

12.what is asm striping?

asm can use variable size data extents to support larger files, reduce memory
requirements, and improve performance.

each data extent resides on an individual disk.

data extents consist of one or more allocation units.

the data extent size is:

equal to au for the first 20,000 extents (0�19999)

equal to 4 � au for the next 20,000 extents (20000�39999) equal to 16 � au for

extents above 40,000
asm stripes files using extents with a coarse method for load balancing or a fine
method to reduce latency.

coarse-grained striping is always equal to the effective au size. fine-grained

striping is always equal to 128 kb.

13.how many asm diskgroups can be created under one asm instance? asm imposes the
following limits:

63 disk groups in a storage system

10,000 asm disks in a storage system

two-terabyte maximum storage for each asm disk (non-exadata) four-petabyte maximum
storage for each asm disk (exadata)
40-exabyte maximum storage for each storage system 1 million files for each disk
group
asm file size limits (database limit is 128 tb):

external redundancy maximum file size is 140 pb. normal redundancy maximum file
size is 42 pb. high redundancy maximum file size is 15 pb.

14.how to find the cluster network settings?

to determine the list of interfaces available to the cluster:

$ oifcfg iflist �p -n

to determine the public and private interfaces that have been configured:

$ oifcfg getif

to determine the virtual ip (vip) host name, vip address, vip subnet mask, and vip
interface name:

$ srvctl config nodeapps -a

15.managing or modifying scan in oracle rac? to add a scan vip resource:

$ srvctl add scan -n cluster01-scan

to remove clusterware resources from scan vips:

$ srvctl remove scan [-f]

to add a scan listener resource:

$ srvctl add scan_listener

$ srvctl add scan_listener -p 1521

to remove clusterware resources from all scan listeners:

$ srvctl remove scan_listener [-f]

16.i�m going to do add disks to my asm diskgroup, how long will this rebalance
take? rebalance time is heavily driven by the three items:

amount of data currently in the diskgroup io bandwidth available on the server

asm_power_limit or rebalance power level.
17.we are migrating to a new storage array. how do i move my asm database from
storage a to storage b?
given that the new and old storage are both visible to asm, simply add the new
disks to the asm disk group and drop the old disks. asm rebalance will migrate data
online.

note 428681.1 covers how to move ocr/voting disks to the new storage array

18.is it possible to unplug an asm disk group from one platform and plug into a
server on another platform (for example, from solaris to linux)?
no, cross-platform disk group migration not supported. to move datafiles between
endian-ness platforms, you need to use xtts, datapump or streams.

19.how does asm work with multipathing software?

it works great! multipathing software is at a layer lower than asm, and thus is
transparent.
you may need to adjust asm_diskstring to specify only the path to the multipathing
pseudo devices.

12.how do i enable the load balancing advisory (lba)?

to enable the load balancing advisory, use the �-b� option when creating or
modifying the service using the �srvctl� command.