TECHNICAL WHITE PAPER Tintri VMstore with Oracle RAC Best Practice Guide For Deploying Oracle Database RAC 12c with VMware vSphere 6.0 on a Tintri VMstore Christopher Slater, Technical Marketing Engineer January 2016 www.tintri.com Contents Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................................ 4 Overview ................................................................................................................................................................... 5 Consolidated List of Practices ............................................................................................................................. 5 Intended Audience ................................................................................................................................................. 6 Assumptions ............................................................................................................................................................. 6 Vendor Guidelines .................................................................................................................................................. 7 Tintri VMstore Best Practice Guide for Oracle ............................................................................................ 7 Oracle RAC with RHEL 7 and VMware Deployment and Best Practices Guides ............................... 7 VMware vSphere 6.0 Best Practices Guides ............................................................................................... 7 Oracle RAC Deployment Architecture ............................................................................................................... 8 Oracle RAC Production Deployment Architecture ..................................................................................... 8 Oracle RAC Dev/Test Deployment Architecture ........................................................................................ 9 VMware Multi-Writer Flag and Oracle ASM ................................................................................................... 10 Shared Hard Disk Architecture for ASM ......................................................................................................... 10 VMware vSphere Limitations of the Multi-Writer Flag .............................................................................. 11 Tintri VM Supports the Multi-Writer Flag ..................................................................................................... 11 Oracle ASM and the Tintri VMstore ................................................................................................................. 12 Storage – UDEV rules ...................................................................................................................................... 12 Storage – ASMLib ............................................................................................................................................. 12 Deploying ASM with UDEV Rules ..................................................................................................................... 13 Step 1: Create the first RAC node ................................................................................................................. 13 Step 2: Create Additional RAC Nodes ........................................................................................................ 13 Step 3: Create the Oracle ASM Disk Group and RAC database .......................................................... 13 Deploying ASM with ASMLib ............................................................................................................................. 15 Step 1: Create the first RAC Node ................................................................................................................ 15 Step 2: Create Additional RAC Nodes ........................................................................................................ 15 Step 3: Create the Oracle ASM Disk Group and RAC database .......................................................... 15 Oracle RAC and Tintri Data Management Tools ........................................................................................... 16 Oracle RAC and VMware vMotion ............................................................................................................... 16 Oracle RAC and Tintri VM Management Tools .......................................................................................... 17 Tintri SnapVM .................................................................................................................................................... 18 Tintri CloneVM ................................................................................................................................................... 18 Tintri ReplicateVM ........................................................................................................................................... 20 Tintri SyncVM ..................................................................................................................................................... 21 www.tintri.com 2 Tintri VMstore Performance Dashboard .................................................................................................... 22 Using Oracle RMAN for Database Backups ............................................................................................. 24 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................. 24 References ............................................................................................................................................................. 25 Appendix A – Oracle RAC Support Statements .......................................................................................... 26 Appendix B – Example udev Rules .................................................................................................................. 27 www.tintri.com 3 Executive Summary Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) extends the performance of an Oracle database by running a single database image across multiple servers. Physical deployments of Oracle RAC require multiple separate servers to host the individual RAC nodes. But when Oracle RAC is deployed with VMware each RAC node runs as a separate virtual machine (VM). Running Oracle RAC on VMware provides deployment and manageability options that are not available in physical deployments of RAC. • Move production Oracle RAC nodes between physical hosts – perform hardware upgrades and maintenance tasks on physical hardware without incurring downtime to individual RAC nodes. • Host multiple Oracle RAC VMs on one physical host - create test and development systems that mirror the production Oracle RAC environment but use a single physical host. The power of Oracle RAC comes from multiple database servers (RAC nodes) sharing the same database files. But the power of RAC is only realized when the RAC nodes use a foundation of high- performance shared storage. Oracle RAC deployments in VMware have the additional performance challenge of requiring storage that is well suited for virtualized application workloads. The Tintri VMstore is purpose-built to handle the storage I/O requirements of high performance database workloads. Tintri storage actively adapts to demanding workloads, enabling virtualization administrators and DBAs to focus on running the database instead of managing the storage infrastructure. • Predictable Performance – Tintri storage arrays combine flash storage with VM-aware technology to oversee the performance needs of individual VMs without requiring manual tuning or configuration. VMs achieve consistent high performance and fast response times. • Eliminate VM Contention – Tintri provides VMs with dedicated performance queues to prevent rogue VMs from suffocating performance. This prevents high pressure I/O tasks - such as backups and full table scans - from affecting other applications that share the VMstore. • Monitor Performance – detailed per-VM and per-vDisk analytics provide details on the performance of individual RAC nodes and database files. Drill down into host, network and storage latency metrics for each RAC node to quickly identify sources of performance bottlenecks that were heretofore hidden in the virtualization infrastructure. • Simplify Deployment – Tintri designed the VMstore so that IT and VM administrators with a working knowledge of VMware vSphere™ can deploy and use the system in 30 minutes or less. Oracle RAC is typically employed with mission critical databases. These databases must be provided with manageability tools that support the uptime and recoverability requirements of the individual RAC nodes. However, VMware places limitations on the vSphere manageability tools that can be used with Oracle RAC. For example, there is no support for VMware clones, Storage vMotion, and limited support for VMware snapshots. The Tintri VMstore does not share this limitation and features powerful per-VM manageability tools for creating snapshots, clones and replicas that are uniquely suited to Oracle RAC. • SnapVM – create point-in-time snapshot copies of individual RAC nodes. Create a baseline, or reference copy, of the RAC node before applying OS upgrades or Oracle patches.