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2.3. Database Requirements

This section applies only to RHN Satellite with Stand-Alone Database as the requirements for the Embedded Database are included in the Satellite machine's hardware requirements. Red Hat supports RHN Satellite 5.2.0 installations in conjunction with Oracle Database 10g Release 2, Standard or Enterprise Edition. The Stand-Alone Database must not run on the same server as the RHN Satellite.
A single 6 GB tablespace is recommended as more than sufficient for most installations. It is possible for many customers to function with a smaller tablespace. An experienced Oracle database administrator (DBA) will be necessary to assess sizing issues. The following formula should be used to determine the required size of your database:
  • 192 KB per client system
  • 64 MB per channel
For instance, an RHN Satellite containing 10 channels serving 10,000 systems would require 1.92 GB for its clients and 640 MB for its channels. If custom channels are to be established for testing and staging of packages, they must be included in this formula.
Keep in mind, the database storage needs may grow rapidly, depending upon the variance of the following factors:
  • The number of public Red Hat packages imported (typical: 5000)
  • The number of private packages to be managed (typical: 500)
  • The number of systems to be managed (typical: 1000)
  • The number of packages installed on the average system (typical: 500)
Although you should be generous in your database sizing estimates, you must consider that size affects the time to conduct backups and adds load to other system resources. If the database is shared, its hardware and spacing are entirely dependent on what else is using it.
Additionally, block sizes must be a minimum of 8 KB for RHN Satellite to install properly.
The Oracle database should have a user assigned to RHN Satellite with full DDL and DML access to that user's default tablespace. The user needs standard connection information for the database at the time of installation.
The precise access levels required by the Oracle user are as follows:
  • ALTER SESSION
  • CREATE SEQUENCE
  • CREATE SYNONYM
  • CREATE TABLE
  • CREATE VIEW
  • CREATE PROCEDURE
  • CREATE TRIGGER
  • CREATE TYPE
  • CREATE SESSION
Additional database requirements include:
  • Security Identifier (SID)
  • Listener Port
  • Username
  • UTF-8 character set
Two additional suggested recommendation for user's default tablespace include:
  • Uniform Extent Size
  • Auto Segment Space Management

Note

Ensure that the NLS/charset setting is set to "UTF8"' when using an external database, not 'AL32UTF8' or other charsets. Using other charsets may lead to problems later.
The disk layout on the database machine is independent of the RHN Satellite and entirely up to the customer.