Storage on RAW device

Can any one suggest how to create storage mechanism to use for the database on Raw Devices

Hi,
Not quite sure what you mean but I am going to guess you mean ASM.
rgds
Alan.

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Configuring Storage for Clusterware on Raw devices

My proposed system is:
- Sun Solaris 10
- Oracle 10G RAC
- Oracle Clusterware
- Raw devices for Clusterware files
- ASM for database flies
Assume I have appropriately sized LUNs assigned on my SAN for OCR and voting disks. My question is, how do I configure the raw devices required for these Clusterware files?
I have read the Oracle RAC/Clusterware installation guide (Sun Solaris, SPARC), which goes as far as identifying the requirements but does not give the procedure. If I wish to use raw devices for ASM, it gives a procedure for creating partitions on the LUNs. Is anything like this required for the Clusterware files (OCR and voting disks)?

As far as I know, Solaris follows the traditional raw device definition, which basically says that a raw device is a disk or a partition on a disk that does not contain a file system (yet). Given your question, this would mean that any device that you can find that does not contain a file system would be a raw device.
Message edited here:
However, you need to find the right link to this device in order to use it as a raw or character device. Otherwise, the device would be used as a block device, which means it will be buffered.
On Solaris, those character devices should be listed under /dev/rdsk, while the block device would be listed under /dev/dsk. (Please, refer to: http://www.idevelopment.info/data/Unix/Solaris/SOLARIS_UnderstandingDiskDeviceFiles.shtml)
End of update.
Therefore, you have 2 options in your case. You can create LUNs in your storage that would be just suitable to host your Voting Disks and OCRs OR you can create a bigger LUN and put an OCR and a Voting Disk on this one, AFTER you have sliced the disk (LUN) using the format command.
There is only one thing to remember: If you follow Oracle's recommendation to use multiple Votings and mirrored OCRs, it would obviously be better that those devices do not all share the same LUN (for availability reasons).
Last but not least, you may want to have a look at the following forum for a similar discussion on using RAW devices under Solaris: http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=5073358&messageID=9267900
Hope that helps. Thanks.
Message was edited by:
MarkusM

Oracle rac raw device as shared storage

Hi,
i m new to oracle rac,
and i wish to instlall 11g r1 RAC on my laptop having linux 4 as platform (on vmware) ,
for that i prepare 4 partition for that (on node1)
/dev/sdb1 - for ocr
/dev/sdb2 - for voting disk
/dev/sdb3 - for asmdisk group
/dev/sda5 - fro asmdisk group
by assuming external redundacy for ocr and voting disk i kept only one disk
and i configured following in /etc/sysconfig/rawdevices
/dev/raw/raw1 /dev/sdb1 -- ocr
/dev/raw/raw2 /dev/sdb2 -- voting disk
/dev/raw/raw3 /dev/sdb3 -- asmdisk group
/dev/raw/raw4 /dev/sdb5 -- asmdisk group
and my question is how node2 can understat these raw device as shared storage?
thanks for any support

hi thanks for your suggestion ,
this may be ok for VMware , but what about for non-VMWare environment?
how can i make raw device as shared storage?
one more, all the docs that i followed on net , configured node1 partitions as shared storage.
please help me in this regards

10g ASM on Logical Volumes vs. Raw devices and SAN Virtualization

We are looking at setting up our standards for Oracle 10g non-rac systems. We are looking at the value of Oracle ASM in our environment.
As per the official Oracle documentation, raw devices are preferred to using Logical Volumes when using ASM.
From here: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b15658/appa_aix.htm#sthr
ef723
"Note: Do not add logical volumes to Automatic Storage Management disk groups. Automatic Storage Management works best when you add raw disk devices to disk groups. If you are using Automatic Storage Management, then do not use LVM for striping. Automatic Storage Management implements striping and mirroring."
Also, as per Metalink note 452924.1:
"10) Avoid using a Logical Volume Manager (LVM) because an LVM would be redundant."
The issue is: if we use raw disk devices presented to ASM, the disks don't show up as used in the unix/AIX system tools (i.e. smit, lspv, etc.). Hence, when looking for raw devices on the system to add to filesystems/volume groups/etc., it's highly possible that a UNIX admin will grab a raw device that is already in use by Oracle ASM.
Additionally, we are using a an IBM DS8300 SAN with IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) in front of it. Hence, we already have storage virtualization and I/O balancing at the SAN/hardware level.
I'm looking for a little clarification to the following questions, as my understanding of their responses seem to confict:
QUESTION #1: Can anyone clarify/provide additional detail as to why Logical volumes are not preferred when using Oracle ASM? Does the argument still hold in a SAN Virtualized environment?
QUESTION #2: Does virtualization at the software level (ASM) make sense in our environment? As we already have I/O balancing provided at the hardware level via our SVC, what do we gain by adding yet another level of I/O balancing at the ASM level? Or as in the
arguments the Oracle documentation makes against using Lvm, is this an unnecessary redundant striping (double-striped or in our case triple-striped/plaid)?
QUESTION #3: So does SAN Virtualization conflict or compliment the virtualization provided by ASM?

After more research/discussions/SR's, I've come to the following conclusion.
Basically, in an intelligent storage environment (i.e. SVC), you're not getting a 100% bang for the buck by using ASM. Which is the cat's meow in a commodity hardware/unintelligent storage environment.
Using ASM in a SVC environment potentially wastes CPU cycles having ASM balance i/o that is already balanced on the backend (sure if you shuffle a deck of cards that are already shuffled you're not doing any harm, but if they're already shuffled - then why are you shuffling them again??).
That being said, there may still be some value for using ASM from the standpoint of storage management for multiple instances on a server. For example, one could better minimize space wastage by being able to share a "pool" of storage between mulitiple instances, rather than having to manage space on an instance-by-instance (or filesystem by filesystem) level.
Also, in the case of having a unfriendly OS where one is unable to dynamically grow a filesystem (i.e. database outage required), there would be a definite benefit provided by ASM in being able to dynamically allocate disks to the "pool". Of course, with most higher-end end systems, dynamic filesystem growth is pretty much a given.
In the case of RAC, regardless of the backend, ASM with raw is a no-brainer.
In the case of a standalone instance, it's a judgement call. My vote in the case of intelligent storage where one could dynamically grow filesystems, would be to keep ASM out of the picture.
Your vote may be different....just make sure you're putting in a solution to a problem and not a solution that's looking for a problem(s).
And there's the whole culture of IT thing as well (i.e. do your storage guys know what you're doing and vice versa).....which can destroy any technological solution, regardless of how great it is.

CREATING RAW DEVICE IN LINUX

HI ALL,
in redhat linux 5 how to format the disk(ex: /opt,/u01,.....) and make it as raw device for ASM installation

DSP_863977 wrote:
HI ALL,
in redhat linux 5 how to format the disk(ex: /opt,/u01,.....) and make it as raw device for ASM installationit is not possible to change a mount /opt or /u01 for ASM storage.
for learning purpose you can learn with vmware server to create a raw device to configure/install ASM.
Refer the link:- shared storage part for linux5/rhel5
http://oracleinstance.blogspot.com/2010/03/oracle-10g-installation-in-linux-5.html
for more information refer the link:-
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B28359_01/server.111/b31107/asmprepare.htm

10.1.0.3 on RH4(Centos) + Raw devices + ASM + RAC

Hi,
I'm just wondering if anyone here tried installing a single node RAC on 2 instance using ASM on Oracle 10g (10.1.0.3)?
I am using RH4(CENTOS 4.1), Oracle 10.1.0.3 + CRS 10.1.0.3 on fake raw devices in Linux.
I have been able to install the CRS and Oracle database software successfully.
All CRS services and listener are up and running.
crs_stat command return successful results.
srvctl status nodeapps -n <node_name> also returns successful results.
However, when I attempt to startup the ASM instance, I keep encountering these errors:
ORA-00603:ORACLE server session terminated by fatal error
ORA-27504:IPC error creating OSD context
The ORA-00603 error message will appear immediately in the SQLPLUS prompt when I try to startup ASM instance.
Both errors will be logged in alert.log and trace files, no other useful error messages besides these errors.
When I attempt to create a normal database instance using datafiles on the same machine, these errors also appear again!
So, I figure its got nothing to do with the raw devices since my OCR location and Voting devices are using the same raw devices on Linux.
Anyone did the same thing like me and faced similar problems.... please help.
Cheers

You can use dbca to create ASM instance to get rid of the manual copy business.
In realease 1, you can invoke dbca, choose database instance and walk through still you reach storage clause and choose asm and DBA will create ASM instance on both nodes.
Ensure that you choose cluster install option and all the nodes at the initial stages.

Raw Device Validation Check for Name Failed..

Hi all,
I have installed Oracle Clusterware 10.2.0.4 and Oracle database software 10.2.0.4 on Solaris SPARC 10 and i using a NAS storage for the same
And when i try to create a database using DBCA i got the following error.
Raw Device Validation Check for Name /u03/oradata/spfile/spfile{SID}.ora failed. The specified file /u01/oradata/spfile/spfile{SID}.ora doesnot exit.Please a existing file.
Note: i am not using ASM., i am using RAW device for Database
Any help highly thankful
-Arun

Hi
this is how i have mounted the NAS...
10.0.0.0:/vol/prodt3_vol16/ora_dbfr_inn1s - /u07/DBFR/INS nfs - yes rw,bg,hard,nointr,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,proto=tcp,noac,forcedirectio,vers=3,suid
how do i ensure that it is not being used....we should not use ASM its an client requinment ...
Thanks

Is database using File system, RAW devices or ASM?

Hi there
Is is possible to find out if the database is using File system, RAW devices or ASM for storage?
I think for ASM, we can tell by querying the V$DATAFILE view if it has ' DATA ' or something like that (a name that has ' ' prefixed to it). Is this the only way? How about other sotrage types (RAW and Filesystem)?
Thanks in advance!

user12033597 wrote:
I think for ASM, we can tell by querying the V$DATAFILE view if it has ' DATA ' or something like that (a name that has ' ' prefixed to it). Is this the only way? How about other sotrage types (RAW and Filesystem)?V$DATAFILE or DBA_DATA_FILE
Raw depends on your OS - in *nix, likely something like /dev/sdc1
ASM depends on ASM and will include + and will follow an ASM pattern, such as described http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14200/clauses004.htm
File depends on OS - in *nix, likely start with a '/' and NOT be in /dev or /proc. In Winders start with C:\ or some other disk path.
Nicely discussed in the docs in the Administrators Guide found at http://tahiti.oracle.com

Raw Device in RAC

Hi,
I want to use Raw-Devide in RAC,
Could you Say To me That How Can We see and work with Oracle Database Files when thay are in "unformated and without letter partitions(logic part.)" in Raw-Devide ?
when Oracle begin to Format them?
Thanks a lot

If you are using raw devices, you don't see or manage files at the file system level-- you're bypassing the file system entirely. If you want to see and work with Oracle database files, you ought not be using raw devices.
Are you planning on using Oracle clustered file system or the operating system's clustering functionality for your shared storage?
Justin
Distributed Database Consulting, Inc.
http://www.ddbcinc.com/askDDBC

Root.sh failed:Raw devices for OEL 5.3 and 10.2.0.4 RAC

Hi
We have OEL 5.3 and Oracle RAC 10.2.0.4
While installing clusterware and running root.sh we are getting the error
Failed to upgrade the cluster registry.
Further the ocrconfig.log are as below:
ocrconfig_20527.log
Oracle Database 10g CRS Release 10.2.0.1.0 Production Copyright 1996, 2005 Oracle. All rights reserved.
2009-08-04 04:38:41.540: [ OCRCONF][286303376]ocrconfig starts...
2009-08-04 04:38:41.540: [ OCRCONF][286303376]Upgrading OCR data
2009-08-04 04:38:41.615: [ OCRRAW][286303376]propriogid:1: INVALID FORMAT
2009-08-04 04:38:41.616: [ OCRRAW][286303376]ibctx:1:ERROR: INVALID FORMAT
2009-08-04 04:38:41.616: [ OCRRAW][286303376]proprinit:problem reading the bootblock or superbloc 22
2009-08-04 04:38:41.616: [ default][286303376]a_init:7!: Backend init unsuccessful : [22]
2009-08-04 04:38:41.616: [ OCRCONF][286303376]Exporting OCR data to [OCRUPGRADEFILE]
2009-08-04 04:38:41.616: [ OCRAPI][286303376]a_init:7!: Backend init unsuccessful : [33]
2009-08-04 04:38:41.616: [ OCRCONF][286303376]There was no previous version of OCR. error:[PROC-33: Oracle Cluster Registry is not configured]
2009-08-04 04:38:41.619: [ OCRRAW][286303376]propriogid:1: INVALID FORMAT
2009-08-04 04:38:41.619: [ OCRRAW][286303376]ibctx:1:ERROR: INVALID FORMAT
2009-08-04 04:38:41.619: [ OCRRAW][286303376]proprinit:problem reading the bootblock or superbloc 22
2009-08-04 04:38:41.619: [ default][286303376]a_init:7!: Backend init unsuccessful : [22]
2009-08-04 04:38:41.623: [ OCRRAW][286303376]propriogid:1: INVALID FORMAT
2009-08-04 04:38:41.623: [ OCRRAW][286303376]ibctx:1:ERROR: INVALID FORMAT
2009-08-04 04:38:41.623: [ OCRRAW][286303376]proprinit:problem reading the bootblock or superbloc 22
2009-08-04 04:38:41.626: [ OCRRAW][286303376]propriogid:1: INVALID FORMAT
2009-08-04 04:38:41.641: [ OCRRAW][286303376]propriowv: Vote information on disk 0 [dev/raw/raw1] is adjusted from [0/0] to [2/2]
2009-08-04 04:38:41.646: [ OCRRAW][286303376]propriniconfig:No 92 configuration
2009-08-04 04:38:41.646: [ OCRAPI][286303376]a_init:6a: Backend init successful
2009-08-04 04:38:41.663: [ OCRCONF][286303376]Initialized DATABASE keys in OCR
2009-08-04 04:38:41.677: [ OCRCONF][286303376]csetskgfrblock0: clsfmt returned with error [4].
2009-08-04 04:38:41.677: [ OCRCONF][286303376]Failure in setting block0 [-1]
2009-08-04 04:38:41.677: [ OCRCONF][286303376]OCR block 0 is not set !
2009-08-04 04:38:41.678: [ OCRCONF][286303376]Exiting [status=failed]...
Any solution please?
Supriya Sh

There are a couple of errors that doesn't make the clusterware look fine.
There was no previous version of OCR. error:PROC-33: Oracle Cluster Registry is not configured
proprinit:problem reading the bootblock or superbloc 22
This could mean either your cluster registry file is corrupt or you don't have access to the raw devices. Check the access to the shared storage raw device is valid. If this is not true, then make sure you have all your backup files ready.
~ Madrid
http://hrivera99.blogspot.com

Question(s) related to ASM, Raw devices and performance

Good morning,
I was recently getting acquainted with ASM. Since I was doing this in "play" VM boxes, it was not possible to draw any conclusions about any performance improvements.
I'd like to know what performance improvements forum members may have experienced after migrating a production environment from a non-ASM setup to an ASM setup.
It would seem that since ASM is a "form" of raw device access that the increase in performance should be noticeable. Was that the case for those who migrated to it ? Was the performance improvement worth it or did it only make managing the database easier ?
Thank you for your contributions on the subject,
John.

ASM uses disk groups to store datafiles; an ASM disk group is a collection of disks that ASM manages as a unit. Within a disk group, ASM exposes a file system interface for Oracle database files. The content of files that are stored in a disk group are evenly distributed, or striped, to eliminate hot spots and to provide uniform performance across the disks. The performance is comparable to the performance of raw devices.
You can add or remove disks from a disk group while a database continues to access files from the disk group. When you add or remove disks from a disk group, ASM automatically redistributes the file contents and eliminates the need for downtime when redistributing the content.
I hope the links below will helps you.
refer the links:
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B28359_01/server.111/b31107/asmcon.htm
http://oracleinstance.blogspot.com/2009/12/rac-file-system-options-basic-concept.html
http://www.dbasupport.com/oracle/ora10g/ASM01.shtml
also you will get more information from book:
Oracle Automatic Storage Management: Under-the-Hood & Practical Deployment Guide (Osborne ORACLE Press Series)
Nitin Vengurlekar (Author), Murali Vallath (Author), Rich Long (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/Oracle-Automatic-Storage-Management-Under/dp/0071496076

Raw devices problem

Hello, I made a model on Vmware ESX for testing Oracle RAC, so it's two Centos 5.10 machines with shared disks. I'm using raw devices for ocr, voting disks and data, and without ASMLib library.
After installing clusterware and Oracle (10gR2), everything was OK until now, when after reboot of one node, no more shared disks exist anymore. For every raw disk related comand I got an error:
#raw -qa
Cannot open raw device '/dev/rawctl' (No such file or directory)
#service rawdevices restart
Assigning raw devices:
/dev/raw/raw1 --> /dev/sdb1
Cannot open raw device '/dev/rawctl' (No such file or directory)
Didn't find anything related to this in /var/log's. Could be glad if someone could explain how to fix it.

Yes, but keep in mind that the device tree is not only rebuild after a system restart, but also the order of devices can be different, so for instance /dev/sdc1 may not be the same after a system restart if you attach or remove another device or plug in any USB. That's why UDEV should be configured to use the unique device identifier to map storage devices which require persistent device naming.
For instance you could use the following entry to map e.g. current /dev/sdc1 to /dev/vote1
KERNEL=="sd*", BUS=="scsi", PROGRAM=="/sbin/scsi_id", RESULT=="361a98001686f6959614a453133524171", NAME="vote1", OWNER="oracle", GROUP="oinstall", MODE="0640"
Using raw devices is no longer necessary, not for Oracle, which uses the O_DIRECT flag when opening a device and it does not matter if it is a device or partition. But if you really want to map to raw device names, you could use the following:
ACTION=="add", KERNEL=="sd*", PROGRAM=="/sbin/scsi_id", RESULT=="361a98001686f6959614a453133524171", RUN+="/bin/raw /dev/raw/raw1 %N"

SPARC 64bit Clusterware 10.2.0.4 - shared raw device

Dear group,
I have been asked to install RAC 10.2.0.4 SE on Solaris 10 (SPARC). I am not a Solaris admin altough I have done many RAC installations on RHEL4/5.
Does anyone have suggestions/pointers to documentation (apart from the docs on OTN which I already consulted) on how to place OCR and vorting disk on shared raw devices? The setup is unlikely to use any multipathing but will rely on a low end SAN for shared storage. I am especially interested in the proper use of the "format" tool (I know for instance that I need to start from cyliner 1 for ASM slices).
So far all I found were documents explaining SFRAC, Sun Cluster etc which I either don't have at my disposal or can't use due to license restrictions.
On a comparable single-pathing Linux setup, we'd simply use fdisk to create partitions on the shared disk(s) which then are made available as raw devices thanks to udev.
Thanks and regards,
Martin

Hi Martin,
Take a look on this doc http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/install.102/b14205/storage.htm#sthref675
Regards,
Rodrigo Mufalani
http://mufalani.blogspot.com

Raw device support in 11gr2

We are currently running oracle 10.2.0.4 RAC using raw devices on the hpux itanium 64bit platform. We want to upgrade to 11.2.0.3 and I am wanting to know what parts of of database environment will still be able to utilize raw devices?
Can my datafiles remain on raw devices or will we need to somehow convert over to using ASM? What about the ocr and voting device? Can they remain on raw devices or do we need to configure ASM for the ocr and voting disk?
Thanks.

923395 wrote:
We are currently running oracle 10.2.0.4 RAC using raw devices on the hpux itanium 64bit platform. We want to upgrade to 11.2.0.3 and I am wanting to know what parts of of database environment will still be able to utilize raw devices?
Can my datafiles remain on raw devices or will we need to somehow convert over to using ASM? What about the ocr and voting device? Can they remain on raw devices or do we need to configure ASM for the ocr and voting disk?
Thanks.when all else fails, Read The Fine Manual
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/install.112/e24169/storage.htm#sthref558

Create raw devices for OCR & Voting Disk for Oracle 10g R2 RACLinux 64 bit)

Hi Friends,
Please let me know the Document to cretae RAW Disk for OCR and Voting Disks (like rpm's required,process tio cretae raw disks) in Oracle 10g R2 on Linux (64 bit)
Regards,
DB

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B19306_01/install.102/b14203/storage.htm#BABFFBBA
and
Configuring raw devices (singlepath) for Oracle Clusterware 10g Release 2 (10.2.0) on RHEL5/OEL5 [ID 465001.1]
Configuring raw devices (multipath) for Oracle Clusterware 10g Release 2 (10.2.0) on RHEL5/OEL5 [ID 564580.1]

Storage on RAW device

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