Thanks to all who replied John Phillips Joe Fletcher Harald Husemann Mark Hargrave Richard Place Eliezer Ramm Gene Beaird Cal Wooten Dave Weis Jessie Trucks Eric Clark Doug Otto Jed Dobson Most people suggested the use of something like Sun or Veritas's cluster software and an external stirage device. However, while those would ensure the databse was always(ish) available i.e. if one server fails data on external storage can be accessed via other server giving instant fail over. It would not fulfill the requirement to have a second physical copy of the data that can be used for reporting and investigation purposes, which is currently a greater operational requirement then instant recovery. A few people suggested using an Oracle standby database (one of options already being investigated and mentioned original positing). In this situation the master oracle database automatically sends its completed transactions to nominated standby databases, those database then apply those transactions to themselves result in synchronisation with the master database. The standby database can be placed in read only mode at any time and then reconnected or simply disconnected to become a master in its own right. Implementation of this option should allow two synchronised copies of the data to exist on two physicaly seperate Sun boxes without using shared storage. Ideally if the primary server failed we would have little or no data loss. This option would also cut the costs involved e.g. due to existing resources would only need to buy one server, not one server and external storage. By request have included all recieved replies below. Craig Scott IT Development Officer South Tyneside College -----Original Message----- From: Phillips, John [ <mailto:john.phillips@calanais.com> mailto:john.phillips@calanais.com] Sent: 15 January 2002 10:43 To: 'Craig Scott' Subject: RE: Solaris 8 Clustering / High Availability Hi Craig, you could do this using Sun or Veritas cluster and Oracle Parallel server, mighty expensive solution imho for what you want. Sun/Veritas cluster normally operates with a shared disk set which is passed between the servers so there is only one copy of the database, this gives high availability at lower costs (although the software licenses are expensive) Oracle has a snapshot facility which could keep another database up to date which can be used without clustering etc, you could manually bring up an ethernet interface to take the identity of the failed server. Finally the q&d solution would be just to copy the database files across the wire every night.. Sounds like your manager is thinging of some of the novell products like standby server etc, which are fine in a file and print environment... Cheers John (John.Phillips@calanais.com) Unix Support, Calanais Ltd Internal Phone: 700 2643 External Phone: 0141 568 2643 -----Original Message----- From: Fletcher, Joe [ <mailto:joe.fletcher@Metapack.com> mailto:joe.fletcher@Metapack.com] Sent: 15 January 2002 10:41 To: 'Craig Scott' Subject: RE: Solaris 8 Clustering / High Availability You might also consider some kind of SAN solution for your disk miroring. We run a failover rig here using shared A1000 arrays dual hosted between servers and RSF-1 software to handle the failover. See <outbind://3/www.high-availability.com> www.high-availability.com for details on this. -----Original Message----- From: harald.husemann@Materna.DE [ <mailto:harald.husemann@Materna.DE> mailto:harald.husemann@Materna.DE] Sent: 15 January 2002 11:37 To: craig.scott@stc.ac.uk Cc: michael.schulte@Materna.DE Subject: AW: Solaris 8 Clustering / High Availability Hi Craig, in my opinion, SUN Cluster 3.0 would be the best solution.... We have such a system running here, including an Oracle Database. You would need two E420 or similiar, and at least one D1000 Storage as shared storage. Clustering without a shared storage is in my opinion impossible.... For "real" High Availibility you would of course need two storage devices. I would not suggest to run it without the storages, even if it's possible, because restoring a database could take many, many time (several hours downtime, if you have BIG tables) best regards, hope you get it running, Harald Husemann System Administrator Materna GmbH -----Original Message----- From: Mark Hargrave [ <mailto:hargrme@wisdom.maf.nasa.gov> mailto:hargrme@wisdom.maf.nasa.gov] Sent: 15 January 2002 12:15 To: craig.scott@stc.ac.uk Subject: Re: Solaris 8 Clustering / High Availability Craig, Checkout ORACLE RMAN! Our DBA people use this type of backup of the database. I believe you can do full and incremental backups of the database to one file and use this file to recover. Thanks, Mark -----Original Message----- From: Place, Richard [ <mailto:rplace@uslec.com> mailto:rplace@uslec.com] Sent: 15 January 2002 13:42 To: 'Craig Scott' Subject: RE: Solaris 8 Clustering / High Availability Wow, seems as if you have a daunting task, with some specific requirements to meet. The first thing that really jumps out at me is that you are not using shared storage (storage accessible by both servers) This seems a bad idea in that if your primary server goes down you'll have no access to it's data from your secondary server. If cost is an issue with regards to this implementation there are alternatives to putting in a SAN and having an expensive array. A simple Sun A5200 would do the trick and perform as well as your internal disks. Secondly, will someone be performing a manual failover of these systems in the event of failure (software or hardware) or are you looking into a packaged clustering solution? Again this depends on your budget, but here is my recommendation for a great solution: Connect your servers (two channels each) to an external disk array. Use Veritas Cluster Server and Veritas Foundation Suite (cluster server has a clustered volume manager which will handle the interaction of your two systems to the external array) And you may want to look into Oracle Parallel Server. Your budget is the key here. There are cheaper ways to accomplish this but I really would invest in shared storage for these two machines. If you lose one, you could very possible lose a significant amount of data. Let me know if this helps, Rick Place Sr. Unix Systems Administrator US LEC of North Carolina -----Original Message----- From: Eliezer Ramm [ <mailto:eramm@omnisky.com> mailto:eramm@omnisky.com] Sent: 15 January 2002 14:23 To: 'Craig Scott' Subject: Solaris 8 Clustering / High Availability just MHO, but the way to do this is 2 setup 2 oracle machines connected to an external storage device. many of these devices come w/ internal mirroring systems that will make your life easier. on the server side you just need identical installs of the OS and Oracle. your table space is on the external disks. if one server fails, the other server can pick up w/ the data in place. you can use veritas cluster for HA if needed. i know your boss doesn't like this but i think it's the correct way to do what you need. there was a relevent article in sysadmin September 2001 Volume 10 Number 9 "Creating a Cold Standby E250 " unfortunatly the article is not online. anyway it seems that since you are willing to use cold backups what is the problem w/ creating scripts to dump the DB and have your standby server import them via a few scripts and scp. i don't know why you need the gigabyte direct connection to do this. anyway just a few thoughts. eramm -----Original Message----- From: gene.g.beaird@mail.sprint.com [ <mailto:gene.g.beaird@mail.sprint.com> mailto:gene.g.beaird@mail.sprint.com] Sent: 15 January 2002 14:39 To: craig.scott@stc.ac.uk Subject: RE: sunmanagers digest, Vol 1 #972 - 18 msgs Craig, You will probably want a pair of servers, a pair of SANs or RAID arrays arranged in a cluster pair, and use Oracle Parallel server (Oracle 8i) or Oracle RAC (Oracle 9i) and Sun Cluster Server 3.0. We were going to configure a similar system until our budget (or lack thereof) hit us. You can use some of the tools that comes with the Oracle suite to make archives of your database and move them to either another server, or replicate them to the other clustered array. The hardware will allow the servers/arrays to talk back and forth to one another via fiber, and you can set up the systems to automatically handle fail-overs. For your testing, you can probably manually-fail-over a server, and work with it offline. Veritas also has a package called Database Edition for Oracle, but it is relatively new, and not certified on a lot of Sun hardware yet. HTH. Gene Beaird Systems Integrator V Sprint E|Solutions Houston, Texas -----Original Message----- From: Cal Wooten [ <mailto:cwooten7@attbi.com> mailto:cwooten7@attbi.com] Sent: 15 January 2002 14:46 To: Craig Scott Subject: RE: Solaris 8 Clustering / High Availability Craig, All you need to do is add a few initialization parameters and set up a standby database. The hot database transfers redo logs across the network and applies them. The standby database is running in essentially recovery mode. If the primary fails then just start the standby up as normal. It will finish its recovery and will be current as of the last transfer. Feel free to contact me for more information. This is a very simple solution and easy to maintain and doesn't require clustering. Avoid parallel server like the plague (clustering). Cal Wooten -----Original Message----- From: Dave Weis [ <mailto:djweis@sjdjweis.com> mailto:djweis@sjdjweis.com] Sent: 15 January 2002 14:06 To: Craig Scott Subject: Re: Solaris 8 Clustering / High Availability Hello We do something similar with Oracle, but using standard edition instead of enterprise edition. The main database server uses archive logging and the logs are scp'ed over to the secondary server. The secondary server is set up as a standby database in manual recovery mode. Oracle has a good pdf/book on it at their site. The title is "Standby Database Concepts and Administration". It's listed as being for version 8.1.6, but it should be applicable to 8.1.5-8.1.7 at the least. You can run the standby database in read only mode without breaking the standby setup for reporting, etc. Once you activate the standby, it's no longer a standby and you have to basically recopy the data files back and forth, etc. If you want to spend the money on enterprise edition, it will automate a lot of this for you, but based on your requirements, I wouldn't use it. Good luck dave -----Original Message----- From: TRUCKS, JESSE (AIT) [ <mailto:jt9873@sbc.com> mailto:jt9873@sbc.com] Sent: 15 January 2002 15:38 To: 'Craig Scott' Subject: RE: Solaris 8 Clustering / High Availability This depends on your budget. If it works for your budget, just get Veritas Cluster Server. You can have it up and running via GUI in a few minutes for a simple database failover. You can use it to manually fail over or automatically. All it takes for hardware is an extra couple Ethernet ports on each machine for a private network. Since you will not be sharing disks, you don't even need the Veritas Volume Manager software to make working with the disks easier. <http://www.veritas.com> http://www.veritas.com -----Original Message----- From: Eric Clark [ <mailto:eclark@virtual.com> mailto:eclark@virtual.com] Sent: 15 January 2002 15:41 To: Craig Scott Subject: RE: Solaris 8 Clustering / High Availability Craig - The basic problem with that type of setup is how will you replicate data from System A to System B. There are several ways to do this. You can do this with a cold backup in Oracle, Oracle replication, or by sending your archive logs to the other machine, which has an inactive database that you restore to. Other methods are to use some type of filesystem or volume replication. Storage hardware vendors like EMC & HDS have hardware-specific replication software that is really good, but requires like storage hardware on either end (EMC --> EMC). Veritas makes a product called Veritas Volume Replicator which I also really like & it will work with any storage hardware. VVR sends changed block info to the standby system. The rdist command in Solaris may be another method, but it replicates files, not data blocks & it has to be in crontab to run. This could be painful with large data files. If you want automatic failover, then you're looking at shared storage (which can be as simple as a multipack) & either SunCluster, Veritas Cluster Server or Integratus. VCS is generally considered to be the best & they have the market share. I'd recommend you take a very close look at VVR. You may also want to re-evaluate your need for a cluster (SunCluster, Veritas Cluster Server or integratus). You shared disks can be as simple as a multipack... A good book to check out is "Oracle Distributed Systems" by Charles Dye, O'reilly & Associates. It has butterflies on the cover. This book discusses distributed systems from Oracle's perspective. Hope this was helpful - let me know if you have more questions...I work for a consulting firm that does LOTS of this sort of thing... Good luck! -Eric Clark -----Original Message----- From: Doug Otto [ <mailto:doug.otto@govstor.com> mailto:doug.otto@govstor.com] Sent: 15 January 2002 16:29 To: 'Craig Scott' Subject: RE: Solaris 8 Clustering / High Availability Take a look at Sun's SNDR & Instant Image products. They can do what you're requesting. -----Original Message----- From: Jed Dobson [ <mailto:jed@wgtech.com> mailto:jed@wgtech.com] Sent: 15 January 2002 16:52 To: Craig Scott Subject: Re: Solaris 8 Clustering / High Availability Use local storage, thats fine. SNDR and II can copy these data files over the network to the other machine. Other options include NFS to mount filesystems, dump the files to the other hosts storage then start up. A real nice setup would be storage attached via FC switches to both hosts. You can have a two initiators per zone which would be perfect for you. T3 + FC switches would do that. -jed _______________________________________________ sunmanagers mailing list sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org http://www.sunmanagers.org/mailman/listinfo/sunmanagersReceived on Wed Jan 16 10:57:24 2002
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