Why sqlplus / as sysdba create 4 connections?

Question

Hi all,
I have a 4 node rac set-up running 11.2.0.2.
If I log on to one of the 4 servers and connect to the database using sqlplus "/ as sysdba" it connects to the local database but also
creates another 4 connections (one on each instance) so I end up with 5 connections. I wanted to know
a) why it does this,
b) how it does this
c) can I stop it doing this (if I just so wanted to?)
Many thanks

Answer 1

Hi Billy,
your response made me dig a bit deeper, and I found out what it was!
My query to return sessions was from gv$session, and I was using the gv$session.module column to show the connection.
However, if I changed this from module to gv$session, it returned the oracle PZ99 process.
Looking on Metalink, I see this process is used to return data from remote nodes and was introduced in 10g RAC.
Looking at the columns together, you will see way I thought the way I did originally!
Inst   SID    SERIAL# USERNAME  MODULE                      PROGRAM
    1    35      17861 SYS      sqlplus@db01 (TNS V1-V3)    sqlplus@db01 (TNS V1-V3)
    3   324      34635 SYS      sqlplus@db01 (TNS V1-V3)    oracle@db03 (PZ99)
    2   320      46165 SYS      sqlplus@db01 (TNS V1-V3)    oracle@db02 (PZ99)
    1   641      36247 SYS      sqlplus@db01 (TNS V1-V3)    oracle@db01 (PZ99)
    4   639      39893 SYS      sqlplus@db01 (TNS V1-V3)    oracle@db04 (PZ99)Thanks