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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 installations in conjunction with Oracle Database 10g Release 2 Standard and Enterprise Edition or Oracle 11g. The Stand-Alone Database must not run on the same server as the RHN Satellite.

Note

Migration from an embedded to an external database is not currently supported.
A single 12 GB tablespace is recommended for most installations, although many customers will find it possible to function with a smaller tablespace. Have an experienced Oracle database administrator (DBA) assess your sizing requirements. Use the following formula to determine the required size of your database:
  • 250 KiB per client system
  • 500 KiB per channel, plus 230 KiB per package in the channel (so a channel with 5000 packages would require 1.1 Gib)
For instance, an RHN Satellite containing four channels and serving 10,000 systems would require 2.5 GiB for its clients and 11 GiB 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 that 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.