Oracle RACs: an overview
Oracle defines its Real Application Clusters (RAC) option as “support for the transparent deployment of a single database across a cluster of servers, providing fault tolerance from hardware failures or planned outages. Oracle RAC running on clusters provides Oracle’s highest level of capability in terms of availability, scalability, and low-cost computing. Oracle RAC supports mainstream business applications of all kinds. Support includes online transaction processing (OLTP), decision support systems (DSS), and Oracle’s unique ability to support mixed OLTP/DSS environments. Support also includes packaged products such as SAP, PeopleSoft, Siebel, and Oracle E*Business Suite, as well as custom applications.”
Plug‑in for Oracle provides support for a limited number of Oracle versions and platforms in a RAC environment. The installation, configuration, backup, and restore procedures differ in a multi-instance RAC environment. This topic offers specifics on how the plug-in operates in an Oracle RAC environment. It only points out the differences between the setup and usage of the plug-in in a multi-instance RAC environment vs. a single-instance or traditional non-RAC environment.
For a list of supported Oracle versions and platforms in a RAC environment, see the Quest NetVault Backup Compatibility Guide.
Recommended additional reading
Quest recommends that the following Oracle RAC documentation be readily available for reference when setting up and using the plug-in in a RAC environment. Use the following link to find documentation for your version of Oracle environment: https://docs.oracle.com/en/database/oracle/oracle-database/index.html. On the Oracle website, look for the following documents and topics.
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Database Administrator’s and Automatic Storage Management Guides. Review information on using Automatic Storage Management (ASM) and on using the ASM Command-Line Utility (ASMCMD). |
Defining a deployment strategy
Deploying Plug‑in for Oracle in a multi-instance database environment is almost identical to a single-instance database environment except that RMAN-based backups are the only available backup method for RAC databases. The plug-in is installed on one of the nodes that hosts one of the instances for the RAC-enabled database. All RMAN-based backups and restores are performed from this single installation of the plug-in. The following topics detail how the plug-in performs RMAN backups and restores in a RAC environment.
RMAN backup process for RAC environment
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Plug‑in for Oracle converts the job definition into the corresponding RMAN backup commands. |