RAC Attack! 12c is back to Geneva!

ninja-suisseVersion française ici.

After a great success in 2014, RAC Attack! comes back to Geneva!
Set up an Oracle Real Application Clusters 12c environment on your laptop, try advanced configurations or simply take the opportunity to discuss about Oracle technology with the best experts in Suisse Romande!
Experienced volunteers (ninjas) will help you  address any related issues and guide you through the setup process.

Where? Trivadis office, Chemin Château-Bloch 11, CH1219 Geneva

When? Thursday September 17th, 2015, from 17h00 onwards

Cost? It is a FREE event! It is a community based, informal and enjoyable workshop. You just need to bring your own laptop and your desire to have fun!

Confirmed Ninjas:
Ludovico Caldara
– Oracle ACE, RAC SIG Chair & co-auteur RAC Attack
Eric Grancher – Membre OAK Table & Senior DBA
Jacques Kostic – OCM 11g & Senior Consultant chez Trivadis

Limited places! Reserve your seat and T-shirt now!

tshirt_racattack_2015Agenda:
17.00 – Welcome and T-shirt distribution
17.30 – RAC Attack 12c part I
19.30 – Pizza and Beers! (sponsored by Trivadis)
20.00 – RAC Attack 12c part II
22.00 – Group photo and wrap-up!!

Still undecided? Look at what we did last year!

This event is sold out. No more seats available, sorry! Would you be interested in joining the event next year? Drop me an email!

#C15LV RAC Attack wrap

Did I say in some of my previous posts that I love RAC Attack? I love it more during Collaborate conference, because doing it as a pre-conference workshop is just the right way the get people involved and go straight to the goal: learning while having fun together.

We had way less people than expected but it still has been a great success!

The t-shirts have been great for coloring the room: as soon as people finished the installation of the first Linux VM, they’ve got one t-shirt.
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Look at the room at the beginning of the workshop:

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after a few hours, the room looked better! New ninjas, red stack, happy participants 🙂

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We had a very special guest today. Mr. RAC PM in person has tried and validated our installation instructions 😉
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We got pizza again, but because of restrictions at the convention center, it has been a beer-free afternoon 🙁

Thank you anyway to the OTN for sponsoring almost everything!!

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Looking forward to organize the next RAC Attack, Thank you guys!! 🙂

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Ludo

 

It’s time to Collaborate again!!

Collaborate15_Horizontal_LogoIn a little more than a couple of weeks, the great Collaborate conference will start again.

My agenda will be quite packed again, as speaker, panelist and workshop organizer:

Date/Time Event
08/04/2015
3:15 pm - 4:15 pm
Oracle RAC, Data Guard, and Pluggable Databases: When MAA Meets Oracle Multitenant
IOUG Collaborate 15, Las Vegas NV
08/04/2015
4:30 pm - 5:30 pm
Panel: Nothing to BLOG About - Think Again
IOUG Collaborate 15, Las Vegas NV
12/04/2015
9:00 am - 4:00 pm
RAC Attack! 12c
IOUG Collaborate 15, Las Vegas NV
15/04/2015
5:30 pm - 6:00 pm
IOUG RAC SIG Meeting
IOUG Collaborate 15, Las Vegas NV

 

RAC Attack! 12c

This technical workshop and networking event (never forget it’s a project created several years ago thanks to an intuition of Jeremy Schneider), confirms to be one of the best, long-living projects in the Oracle Community. It certainly boosted my Community involvement up to becoming an Oracle ACE. This year I’m the coordinator of the organization of the workshop, it’s a double satisfaction and it will certainly be a lot of fun again. Did I said that it’s already full booked? I’ve already blogged about it (and about what the lucky participants will get) here.

 

Oracle RAC, Data Guard, and Pluggable Databases: When MAA Meets Oracle Multitenant 

One of my favorite presentations, I’ve presented it already at OOW14 and UKOUG Tech14, but it’s still a very new topic for most people, even the most experienced DBAs. You’ll learn how Multitenant, RAC and Data Guard work together. Expect colorful architecture schemas and a live demo!  You can read more about it in this post.

 

Panel: Nothing to BLOG About – Think Again

My friend Michael Abbey (Pythian) invited me to participate in his panel about blogging. It’s my first time as panelist, so I’m very excited!

 

IOUG RAC SIG Meeting

Missing this great networking event is not an option! I’m organizing this session as RAC SIG board member (Thanks to the IOUG for this opportunity!). We’ll focus on Real Application Clusters role in the private cloud and infrastructure optimization. We’ll have many special guests, including Oracle RAC PM Markus Michalewicz, Oracle QoS PM Mark Scardina and Oracle ASM PM James Williams.

Can you ever miss it???

 

A good Trivadis representative!!

trivadis.com

This year I’m not going to Las Vegas alone. My Trivadis colleague Markus Flechtner , one of the most expert RAC technologists I have the chance to know, will also come and present a session about RAC diagnostics:

615: RAC Clinics- Starring Dr. ORACHK, Dr CHM and Dr. TFA

Mon. April 13| 9:15 AM – 10:15 AM | Room Palm D

If you speak German you can follow his nice blog: http://oracle.markusflechtner.de/

Looking forward to meet you there

Ludovico

Moving Clusterware Interconnect from single NIC/Bond to HAIP

Very recently I had to configure a customer’s RAC private interconnect from bonding to HAIP to get benefit of both NICs.

So I would like to recap here what the hypothetic steps would be if you need to do the same.

In this example I’ll switch from a single-NIC interconnect (eth1) rather than from a bond configuration, so if you are familiar with the RAC Attack! environment you can try to put everything in place on your own.

First, you need to plan the new network configuration in advance, keeping in mind that there are a couple of important restrictions:

  1. Your interconnect interface naming must be uniform on all nodes in the cluster. The interconnect uses the interface name in its configuration and it doesn’t support different names on different hosts
  2. You must bind the different private interconnect interfaces in different subnets (see Note: 1481481.1 – 11gR2 CSS Terminates/Node Eviction After Unplugging one Network Cable in Redundant Interconnect Environment if you need an explanation)

 

Implementation 

The RAC Attack book uses one interface per node for the interconnect (eth1, using network 172.16.100.0)

To make things a little more complex, we’ll not use the eth1 in the new HAIP configuration, so we’ll test also the deletion of the old interface.

What you need to do is add two new interfaces (host only in your virtualbox) and configure them as eth2 and eth3, e.g. in networks 172.16.101.0 and 172.16.102.0)

 

modify /var/named/racattack in order to use the new addresses (RAC doesn’t care about logical names, it’s just for our convenience):

add also the reverse lookup in  in-addr.arpa:

 

restart  named on the first node and check that both nodes can ping all the names correctly:

check the nodes that compose the cluster:

on all nodes, make a copy of the gpnp profile.xml (just in case, the oifcfg tool does the copy automatically)

List the available networks:

Get the current ip configuration for the interconnect:

one one node only, set the new interconnect interfaces:

check that the other nodes has received the new configuration:

Before deleting the old interface, it would be sensible to stop your cluster resources (in some cases, one of the nodes may be evicted), in any case the cluster must be restarted completely in order to get the new interfaces working.

Note: having three interfaces in a HAIP interconnect is perfectly working, HAIP works from 2 to 4 interfaces. I’m showing how to delete eth1 just for information!! 🙂

on all nodes, shutdown the CRS:

Now you can disable the old interface:

and modify the parameter ONBOOT=no inside the configuration script of eth1 interface.

Start the cluster again:

And check that the resources are up & running:

 

 Testing the high availability

Disconnect cable from one of the two interfaces (virtually if you’re in virtualbox 🙂 )

Pay attention at the NO-CARRIER status (in eth2 in this example):

check that the CRS is still up & running:

 

The virtual interface eth2:1 as failed over on the second interface as eth3:2

 

After the cable is reconnected, the virtual interface is back on eth2:

 

Further information

For this post I’ve used a RAC version 11.2, but RAC 12c use the very same procedure.

You can discover more here about HAIP:

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/server.112/e10803/config_cw.htm#HABPT5279 

And here about how to set it (beside this post!):

https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/rac.112/e41959/admin.htm#CWADD90980

https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/rac.112/e41959/oifcfg.htm#BCGGEFEI

 

Cheers

Ludo

RAC Attack at IOUG Collaborate 2015

Once again this year the RAC Attack will be a pre-conference workshop at Collaborate.

Whether you’re a sysadmin, a developer or a DBA, I’m sure you will really enjoy this workshop. Why?

First, you get the opportunity to install a RAC 12c using Virtualbox on your laptop and get coached by many RAC experts, Oracle ACEs and ACE Directors, OCMs and famous bloggers and technologists.

If you’ve never installed it, it will be very challenging because you get hands on network components, shared disks, udev, DNS, Virtual Machine cloning, OS install and so on, and being super-user (root) of your own cluster!! If your a developer, you can then start developing your applications by testing the failover features of RAC and their scalability by checking for global cache wait events.

If you’re already used to RAC, this year we have not one or two, but three deals for you:

  1. Try the semi-automated RAC installation using Vagrant: you’ll be able to have your RAC up and running in minutes and concentrate on advanced features.
  2. Implement advanced labs such as Flex Cluster and Flex ASM or Policy Managed Databases, and discover Hub and Leaf nodes, Server Pools and other features
  3. Ask the ninjas to show you other advanced scenarios or just discuss about other RAC related topics

 

Isn’t enough?

The participants that will complete at least the Linux install (very first stage of the workshop) will get an OTN-sponsored T-shirt of the event, with the very new RAC SIG Logo (the image is purely indicative, the actual design may change):

t-shirt-c15lv

 

Still not enough?

We’ll have free pizza (at lunch) and beer (in the afternoon), again sponsored by the Oracle Technology Network. Can’t believe it? Look at a few images from last year’s edition:

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RACAttackC14LV

Check the pre-conference workshops on the IOUG Collaborate 15 website and don’t forget to full-fill the requirements before attending the workshop:

To participate in the workshop, participants need to bring their own laptop. Recommended specification: a) any 64 bit OS that supports Oracle Virtual Box b) 8GB RAM, 45GB free HDD space, SSD recommended.

Important: it’s required to pre-download Oracle Database 12c and Oracle Grid Infrastructure 12c for Linux x86-64 from the Oracle Website http://tinyurl.com/rac12c-dl (four files: linuxamd64_12c_database_1of2.zip linuxamd64_12c_database_2of2.zip linuxamd64_12c_grid_1of2.zip linuxamd64_12c_grid_2of2.zip). Due to license restrictions it’s not be possible to distribute Oracle Sofware.

Looking forward to meet you there!!!

— 

Ludovico

RAC Attack 12c arrive en Suisse en Septembre!

carte_suisse - CopieAprès Oracle Open World, IOUG Collaborate et d’autres grandes conférencesRAC Attack arrive également à Genève! Installez l’environnement Oracle 12c RAC sur votre laptop. Des volontaires expérimentés (ninjas) vous aideront à résoudre
toutes les énigmes apparentés et vous guideront à travers le processus
d’installation.

Ninjas
Ludovico Caldara – Oracle ACE, RAC SIG European Chair & RAC Attack co-writer
Luca Canali – OAK Table Member & frequent speaker
Eric Grancher – OAK Table member
Jacques Kostic – OCM 11g & Senior Consultant at Trivadis

Où? nouveaux bureaux Trivadis, Chemin Château-Bloch 11, CH1219 Geneva
Quand? Mercredi 17 September 2014, dès 17h00
Coût? C’est un évènement GRATUIT! C’est un atelier communautaire, plaisant et
informel. Vous n’avez qu’à apporter votre laptop et votre bonne humeur!
Inscription: TVD_LS_ADMIN@trivadis.com

Places limitées! Réservez votre place & votre T-shirt dès à présent: TVD_LS_ADMIN@trivadis.com

NinjaaaAgenda:
17.00 – Bienvenue
17.30 – RAC Attack 12c – 1ere partie
19.30 – Pizza et Bières! (sponsorisés par Trivadis)
20.00 – RAC Attack 12c – 2eme partie
22.00 – distribution des T-shirt et photo de groupe!!

TRES IMPORTANT: La participation à cet évènement requière l’apport de votre propre laptop!
Spécifications requises:
a) 64 bit OS qui supporte Oracle Virtual Box
b) 8GB RAM, 50GB free HDD space.
En raison de contraintes juridiques, merci de télécharger à l’avance Oracle Database 12c ainsi que Grid Infrastructure pour Linux x86-64 depuis https://edelivery.oracle.com/ (et pour
plus d’informations : http://goo.gl/pqavYh).

RAC Attack comes to Switzerland in September!!

carte_suisse - CopieAfter Oracle Open World, IOUG Collaborate and all major conferences, RAC Attack comes to Geneva! Set up Oracle 12c RAC environment on your laptop. Experienced volunteers (ninjas) will help you address any related issues and guide you through the setup process.

Ninjas
Ludovico Caldara – Oracle ACE, RAC SIG European Chair & RAC Attack co-writer
Luca Canali – OAK Table Member and frequent speaker
Eric Grancher – OAK Table member
Jacques Kostic – OCM 11g & Senior Consultant at Trivadis

Where? new Trivadis office, Chemin Château-Bloch 11, CH1219 Geneva
When? Wednesday September 17th 2014, from 17h00 onwards
Cost? It is a FREE event! It is a community based, informal and enjoyable workshop.
You just need to bring your laptop and your desire to have fun!
Registration: TVD_LS_ADMIN@trivadis.com

Limited places! Reserve your seat and T-shirt now: TVD_LS_ADMIN@trivadis.com

NinjaaaAgenda:
17.00 – Welcome
17.30 – RAC Attack 12c part I
19.30 – Pizza and Beers! (kindly sponsored by Trivadis)
20.00 – RAC Attack 12c part II
22.00 – T-shirt distribution and group photo!!

 

VERY IMPORTANT: To participate in the workshop, you need to bring your own laptop.
Required specification:
a) any 64 bit OS that supports Oracle Virtual Box
b) 8GB RAM, 50GB free HDD space.
Due to legal constraints, please pre-download Oracle Database 12c and Grid Infrastructure for Linux x86-64 from https://edelivery.oracle.com/ web site (further
information here: http://goo.gl/pqavYh).

RAC Attack 12c at Collaborate 14 and advanced labs

I’ve just published an advanced lab on SlideShare that RAC Attack attendees may do at Collaborate this year, instead of just doing the basic 2-node RAC installation on their laptop.

We’ll offer also an advanced lab about Flex Clusters and Flex ASM (written by Maaz Anjum). Moreover, I’m working on an additional lab that allows to implement a multi-node RAC by using Virtual Box linked clones and GI Home clones like I’ve shown in my previous post.

RAC Attack at #C14LV will be like fun again. We’ll have a few t-shirts for the attendants, designed by me and Chet “Oraclenerd” Justice, kindly sponsored by OTN.

The workshop will end up with beers and snaks (again, thank you OTN for sponsoring this :-)).

2014_03_27_23_46_49_OraclenerdNinjasFINAL

 

If you’re planning to attend Collaborate, join us and start your conference week in a good mood 🙂

 

Speaker and Ninja at Collaborate14 – #C14LV

COLLABORATE 14 IOUG Forum

This year I will have the honor to present at Collaborate14, from April 7th to 11th. First of all, many thanks to Trivadis that has kindly agreed to send me to the conference.

My session (#603):
Oracle Data Guard 12c: Real-Time Cascade, Far Sync Instances and other goodies
has been accepted, so if you plan to attend Collaborate, I will be glad to see you there!
My paper and presentation are ready, but I’ll wait the post-conference before publishing them. Meanwhile, you can get a little sneak peak of my live demo (I’ll cut something, somewhere, but my new SSD disk should reduce the time elapsed, I have to do it again with the new hardware to get correct timings 🙂 ). There’s no audio, since it’s supposed to be my failover demo if I’ll have problems during my session.

Part I


Part II

I’ve submitted another abstract about Policy Managed Databases, but it has been put in the waiting list, assuming that Data Guard has a lot more users and the interest in new Data Guard 12c features will be higher than PMDBs that are rarely used in production environments (and I’m sad about it, keep in touch if you want to know more about this great technology).

 

RAC Attack 12c!

I’ll be organizing the RAC Attack again, along with Seth Miller, Yury Velikanov and Kamran Agayev. Sharing this exciting role with an Oracle ACE and two ACE Directors makes me  proud of what I’m doing, but more than this, I’m happy to repeat another exciting experience like I had at OOW13.

This Year RAC Attack will be an official pre-conference workshop. We have been contacted directly by the IOUG, and we’re making improvements. We’ll install RAC 12c and discuss about advanced topics, have a lot of fun, drink a beer together and jump a lot! 🙂

Other mentors at the workshop will be Leighton Nelson, Maaz Anjum, Biju Thomas. You should know them already, so join us!

And don’t forget, register before February 12th, so you take benefit of the early bird discount!


Ludovico

My Agenda at Oracle Open World 2013

183033-oow-tlkt-joinme-250x250-1951091For truth’s sake, I wasn’t planning to head at Oracle Open World this year. I’ve never had this opportunity, and the same days my company is planning it’s great internal conference (Trivadis Tech Event) that I always enjoy and I hope will be made public soon.

But this summer I’ve started contributing heavily to the rewriting of the RAC Attack project, now focusing on Oracle RAC 12c.

So I’ve seized the opportunity and asked my managers to send me at OOW (with partial success). The final result is that I’m attending Oracle Open World and I’ll be glad to meet everyone of you! 🙂 I’ll also mentor the RAC Attack (Operation Ninja) event, so make sure you come at the OTN Lounge, lobby of Moscone South, Tuesday and Wednesday between 10:00AM and 2:00PM and meet the whole team of RAC experts.

operation_ninja

 

My Agenda

I’m very struggled with timing conflicts between the many sessions I would like to attend. It’s a unique opportunity to meet and listen to all my favorite bloggers, technologists and tweeps,  and will be a pity to miss many of their sessions.

However, I’ve ended up with this Agenda, it’s a semi-definitive one, but I reserve the right to change things the last minute, so follow me on twitter during these days.

OOW_agenda_2013

You may notice the two huge slots I’ve reserved for the RAC Attack, and many sessions I’ll follow at the Oak Table World 2013. Most of my favorite technologists will head there.

I’ll also attend to two fitness events on Sunday and Monday, if you’re brave enough you can join us! 🙂

And as Yury says…

“If YOU or any of YOUR team‘s members participate in Oracle OpenWorld 2013 conference please please reach me. I would love to MEET UP.”

Ludovico