Oracle RAC Interview Question & Answers (Part-1)

1. Where are the Clusterware files stored on a RAC environment?

The Clusterware is installed on each node (on an Oracle Home) and on the shared disks (the voting disks and the CSR file)

2. Where are the database software files stored on a RAC environment?

The base software is installed on each node of the cluster and the

database storage on the shared disks.

3. What kind of storage we can use for the shared Clusterware files?

- OCFS (Release 1 or 2)

- raw devices

- third party cluster file system such as GPFS or Veritas

4. What kind of storage we can use for the RAC database storage?

- OCFS (Release 1 or 2)

- ASM

- raw devices

- third party cluster file system such as GPFS or Veritas

5. What is a CFS?

A cluster File System (CFS) is a file system that may be accessed (read and write) by all members in a cluster at the same time. This implies that all members of a cluster have the same view.

6. What is an OCFS2?

The OCFS2 is the Oracle (version 2) Cluster File System which can be used for the Oracle Real Application Cluster.

7. Which files can be placed on an Oracle Cluster File System?

- Oracle Software installation (Windows only)

- Oracle files (controlfiles, datafiles, redologs, files described by the bfile datatype)

- Shared configuration files (spfile)

- OCR and voting disk

- Files created by Oracle during runtime

Note: There are some platform specific limitations.

8. Do you know another Cluster Vendor?

HP Tru64 Unix, Veritas, Microsoft

9. How is possible to install a RAC if we don’t have a CFS?

This is possible by using a raw device.

10. What is a raw device?

A raw device is a disk drive that does not yet have a file system set up. Raw devices are used for Real Application Clusters since they enable the sharing of disks.

11. What is a raw partition?

A raw partition is a portion of a physical disk that is accessed at the lowest possible level. A raw partition is created when an extended partition is created and logical partitions are assigned to it without any formatting. Once formatting is complete, it is called cooked partition.

12. When to use CFS over raw?

A CFS offers:

- Simpler management

- Use of Oracle Managed Files with RAC

- Single Oracle Software installation

- Autoextend enabled on Oracle datafiles

- Uniform accessibility to archive logs in case of physical node failure

- With Oracle_Home on CFS, when you apply Oracle patches CFS guarantees that the updated Oracle_Home is visible to all nodes in the cluster.

Note: This option is very dependent on the availability of a CFS on your platform.