Oracle RAC 10g/11g on Solaris 10 OS

Question

Hi Experts et all
I am now pretty sure I am confusing my self a lot and probably this solution exist.. or may be not ..
When we have an ACTIVE - PASSIVE Clustering of, say Veritas Cluster 5.0 on Solaris 10 OS running on SPARC Platform, could we configure an ACTIVE - ACTIVE Oracle database cluster on top of this?
In other words , I will configrue Node A and Node B in ACTIVE-PASSIVE Configuration using VERITAS Cluster. Then I will want to configure many oracle database on it in such a way that its running on Node A as well as on Node B. Is this possible ? How does the Oracle configuration change here if it is possible?
I understand that for a database to be ACTIVE, its instance needs to be accessing data files, control files and redo log files continuously.
So if the Oracle database is to be in ACTIVE-ACTIVE Cluster, all its instances should also be accessing necessary filesystems which have these files.
When OS Admin says that it is ACTIVE - PASSIVE Clustering from Veritas, I understand the Filesystems are not accessible from Passive node. So I am not able to understand how can the database be active on that node. Is it possible?
Please share your thoughts, ideas, experiences.. etc.
Regards!
Sarat

Answer 1

Yes.. I absolutely agree with you.. If I need to run ACTIVE - ACTIVE Databases, I must have all these resources available on all clustered nodes. In other words, the OS cluster Solution should also be an ACTIVE - ACTIVE. At least, I will need to use oracle clusterware and configure database on ASM and to make sure we have hardware to support this functionality before hand, if the cluster filesystems are not available.
When I modify this approach a little bit, I could go ahead configure ACTIVE - ACTIVE Solaris or Veritas Clusters (if thats okay with the clients in terms of cost), and use clusterware additonally before configuring ACTIVE - ACTIVE RAC databases. I will have all databases required by the application to run multiple instances on the cluster. In other words ACTIVE - ACTIVE every thing until the database layer and let the application use them as it would require.
JDBC Drivers could be a worry factor. I believe the JDBC used by websphere applications behave like thin clients and hence will not be able to utilize the features like load balencing, TAF which are fascinating features Oracle 10g RAC has provided. Perhaps, if I could try get these websphere app behave just like an oracle client/thick client, would be a better answer but these questions will need to go to websphere folks ..
just in case if one of you have seen this happening?
I learned some time ago... "Administrators should never leave their hope ..there could always be a new learning round the corner" :-)
Heartfelt thanks.
Sarat