5 Cluster Environment Installations

A cluster installation uses Oracle Universal Installer to install software on the nodes of a cluster that are network reachable and bound together by Oracle clusterware. You can use OUI to extend the Oracle home of a product installation to include additional nodes on the cluster.

This chapter includes the following sections:

Installing Clusterware
Pre-Installation Tasks
Installing Product Software on a Cluster
Adding Nodes to a Cluster Installation
Command Line Options for Cluster Installs (UNIX Only)

Installing Clusterware

Clusterware contains components to control the operating system and clusterware services required for managing the nodes on the cluster. In order to create the cluster, you must install Oracle Clusterware software (for example, CRS) before you can install the product software (for example, RAC). During the clusterware installation, OUI prompts you to enter the nodes you wish to include in the cluster in the Cluster Configuration Information page.

After the cluster is formed, you can install cluster-ready Oracle products on the cluster; for instance, an Oracle Real Application Clusters Database or Oracle Application Server infrastructure.

See Also:

For details, refer to your clusterware documentation and the installation guide for the cluster-ready product you wish to install. These documents may be found at:

http://otn.oracle.com/documentation

Pre-Installation Tasks

Before you can install in a cluster environment, you may need to perform the following pre-installation tasks on each node that is part of the cluster:

Create the osdba group.
Create the oracle user.
Set up user equivalence (for example, rsh and rcp on UNIX, net use on Windows). Users must be able to perform remote operations without requiring credentials information.
Make sure all nodes are network reachable.
If vendor clusterware is installed, check if the cluster is configured properly by running lsnodes. Type lsnodes -help at the command line for details.

See Also:
Refer to the specific pre-installation requirements for your product. For RAC installs, refer to the Real Application Clusters Installation and Configuration guide.

Installing Product Software on a Cluster

Once clusterware has been installed and pre-installation tasks have been completed, you are ready to install the cluster-ready product on the cluster. To do this, you may use OUI in interactive mode, command line mode, or silent mode using a response file.

See Also:

Refer to "Modes of Installation" for more information on the different modes.

Cluster Detection

When OUI detects that the destination you entered on the File Locations page is part of a cluster, one of two dialogs will appear:

If the Oracle home name entered is new, the Specify Hardware Installation Mode page appears. Use this page to select between cluster and non-cluster installation:
- Cluster installation: Select the nodes for your installation from the list of nodes on which clusterware has been installed.
- Non-cluster installation: Install on a single-node only, even though that node is part of a cluster.

If the Oracle home name entered is a pre-existing home, the Selected Nodes page appears. This is an information-only page that displays the nodes associated with the Oracle home. The installation will be performed on all nodes selected. If any of the selected nodes are down, then the installation will not be allowed to proceed.

Note:

In OUI, click Installed Products to display the Inventory panel, which lists all installed Oracle homes. Clustered Oracle homes, homes installed on multiple cluster nodes, have an attribute called Cluster Nodes, which lists all the nodes associated with that home.

Availability Checking

When the user clicks Next on the Specify Hardware Installation Mode page or Selected Nodes page, OUI performs the following availability checks on the nodes:

Network reachability: Tests whether the remote cluster nodes are up and running.
Network configuration: Tests whether the remote cluster nodes are properly network configured.
Inventory setup: Tests whether the inventory is set up on the remote nodes. If not set up, on UNIX, OUI prompts the user to run root scripts on the remote nodes to set up inventory. On Windows, OUI sets up the inventory location in the Windows registry.
Inventory permission: Tests whether the central inventory location is writable by the user.
Oracle home permission: Tests whether the Oracle home is writable by the user.

If all selected nodes are available, the installation process continues to the next step. If a node (or nodes) is not available, the page is re-displayed with a Status column indicating the results of the check. The user must fix the problem or choose another set of nodes in order to proceed.

If any of the remote nodes is unreachable, check if those nodes are up and running and if they are properly network configured. If either the inventory or the Oracle home is not writable, check for the appropriate permissions on the remote nodes for these directories.

Cluster Installation

In a typical cluster installation, when clusterware is present, Universal Installer installs the Oracle software onto the node on which OUI is running, then propagates the Oracle home from the local node installation to the other nodes that are part of the installation.

If the cluster is Cluster File System (CFS) or Network File System (NFS) mounted, then OUI does not propagate the Oracle home to other nodes, as files are shared across nodes and the installation will exist on the shared disk.

Note:

For cluster installations, you must run oraInstRoot.sh on each node of the cluster to set up the inventory.

Cluster Deinstallation

When deinstalling a clustered Oracle home, OUI first removes software from the node from which you are deinstalling, then removes software from the other cluster nodes associated with the Oracle home.

Adding Nodes to a Cluster Installation

Use OUI to extend the Oracle home of a product installation to include additional nodes on the cluster. Extending an Oracle home to include new nodes is a two-step process:

First, add the new nodes to the clusterware Oracle home.
Next, add the new nodes to the product Oracle home.

To add new nodes to either the clusterware or product Oracle home, invoke the addNode script from the Oracle home of an existing node you wish to extend. Do not invoke OUI from the CD when adding nodes. At the command line, run the addNode script as follows:

addNode.sh (UNIX)
addNode.bat (Windows)

Adding a node copies the necessary software to the new node and configures the new Oracle home. You can invoke the addNode script in silent installations using the -addNode flag.

If you have already installed the Oracle home in the correct location on the remote nodes and wish to group that home with an existing cluster Oracle home in the inventory without copying software from one node to the others, invoke the addNode script with the -noCopy option.

addNode.sh -noCopy (UNIX)
addNode.bat -noCopy (Windows)

Command Line Options for Cluster Installs (UNIX Only)

When using OUI in suppressed or silent mode, specify the path to the remote copy or shell program on the local node to use for cluster installs using the following optional flags:

-remoteShell <path to program>
-remoteCopy <path to program>

The default for remoteShell is /usr/local/bin/ssh. The default for remoteCopy is /usr/local/bin/scp. If these are not present, OUI defaults to rsh and rcp respectively.