A pictorial representation of the environment used in this reference environment is shown in Figure 2.1, “Reference Architecture Overview”

Figure 2.1. Reference Architecture Overview

The network topology in this reference environment consists of two public switches using link aggregation to connect the two switches together (Public Switch A and Public Switch B), creating a single logical switch. A similar link aggregation is done for private switches (Private Switch A and Private Switch B), creating a single logical switch. Ethernet device em1 on the server connects to Public Switch A, while Ethernet device em2 on the server connects to Public Switch B. Ethernet devices em1 and em2 are bonded together as a bond device, bond0, providing high availability for the public network traffic. Ethernet device em3 on each server connects to Private Switch A, while Ethernet device em4 on each server connects to Private Switch B. Ethernet devices em3 and em4 take advantage of Oracle’s Highly Available Internet Protocol (HAIP) for Oracle’s private interconnect. HAIP can load balance Ethernet traffic for up to four Ethernet devices. Due to the use of Oracle’s HAIP, no bond device is created for private Ethernet devices em3 and em4 on each node within the Oracle RAC Database cluster. Figure 2.2, “Network Bonding” shows the pictorial representation of the network topology.

Figure 2.2. Network Bonding

The following are the hardware requirements to properly install Oracle RAC Database 12c Release 2 on a x86_64 system:

Table 2.1, “Server Details” specifies the hardware for the server within this reference environment. This hardware meets the minimum requirements for properly installing Oracle RAC Database 12c Release 2 on a x86_64 system.

Table 2.2, “Switch Details” specifies the switches within this reference environment.

Table 2.3, “Storage Details” specifies the storage within this reference environment.

The following is the disk space requirements for properly installing Oracle RAC Database 12c Release 2 software for this reference environment.

Table 2.5, “File System Layout” specifies the file system layout for the server used in this reference environment. The layout ensures the disk space requirements to properly install the Oracle Grid Infrastructure and Oracle Database software for Oracle RAC Database 12c Release 2

While the size of the Oracle data files varies for each solution, the following are the Oracle data file sizes for this reference environment.

Oracle RAC Database 12c Release 2 recommends three volumes each of at least 4 GB in size to store the Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR) and voting disks using normal redundancy. The OCR manages the Oracle Clusterware and Oracle RAC Database configuration information. The voting disk manages any information pertaining to the node membership.

Starting with Oracle Database 12c Release 2, the GIMR database has its own disk group typically labeled MGMT. GIMR is a mandatory installation with the release of Oracle Grid Infrsatructure 12c Release 2. Via Oracle’s documentation, it enables the Cluster Health Monitor, Oracle Database QoS Management, Rapid Home Provisioning, and provides a historical metric repository that simplifies viewing of past performance and diagnosis issues. Due to this, an additional volume must be created for proper allocation during the Oracle Grid Installation process. For the purposes of this reference environment, an external redundancy volume is used for the GIMR volume to keep the size of volume relatively small.

Swap space is determined by the amount of RAM found within the system. The following table displays the swap space recommendation. This reference environment allocates 16 GB of RAM for swap space.

Starting with Oracle 11g Release 2 version 11.2.0.3, SELinux is supported for Oracle database environments. The system in this reference environment runs with SELinux enabled and set to ENFORCING mode.