NIC ROUTER requirement for 10g RAC database

Question

I need to know what hardware to order in setting up an 10g RAC database without a single-point-of-failure. My question centers on the networks. If each server has one NIC for the public interface and one NIC for the private interconnect, aren't the routers these NICs are attached to a single point of failure? If each server has two NICs bonded together for the public interface and two NICs bonded together for the private interconnect, does each NIC attach to a different router?

Answer 1

sayantan chakraborty wrote:
is RDMA and infiband ar same??Infiniband is a switched fabric layer for high speed communication. RDMA is a protocol for "+remote direct memory access+".
Infiniband supports the Internet Protocol suite over Infiniband, or IPoIB. It also supports RDMA over Infiniband.
so do we need only infiband SDR / QDR switch to set infiband OR what else??You need an Infiniband switch - Cisco and Voltaire are two companies that supply this type of hardware. The latter is used by Oracle in its Exadata database machines. Unsure about Cisco's commitment to Infiniband switches as they have discontinued their Infiniband switches with integrated fibre channel gateways. A sore point with us after we bought into this technology about 2 years ago, in part on their very own recommendations - and now own very expensive, somewhat buggy and totally unsupported hardware. Seems like the new Cisco California servers are GigE and not Infiniband, which perhaps explain this (flawed) decision of theirs...
For each cluster node, you need an Infiniband PCI card (typically has 2 ports). If you are going to use bonding, you will need a pair of Infiniband cables per server. Also remember to get spares - both PCI cards and cables.
If you want redundancy at the switch, you need to get yourself 2 Infiniband switches.
But if you're planning to invest this into a RAC cluster, then surely you should also invest money in RAC licensing and support - and with that gain access to very useful documentation like the RAC Starter Kit and so on.