Lets me show you a short example how to do it:

First we create a simple (and imcomplete) script with the following content:

connect target /
backup &1;

The variable “&1″ will be replaced with the first command line argument supplied on the command line. “&2″ is the second argument and so on.

Suppose we want to backup our database we start RMAN with:

-bash-3.2$ rman target / @test.scr USING \"database\"

The resulting output will be:

Recovery Manager: Release 11.2.0.1.0 - Production on Mon Aug 2 08:16:07 2010
Copyright (c) 1982, 2009, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.
connected to target database: ORA11R2P (DBID=2658288218)
RMAN> backup database;
2>
Starting backup at 02-AUG-10
using target database control file instead of recovery catalog
allocated channel: ORA_DISK_1
channel ORA_DISK_1: SID=148 device type=DISK
channel ORA_DISK_1: starting full datafile backup set
channel ORA_DISK_1: specifying datafile(s) in backup set
input datafile file number=00001 name=/u01/oradata/ORA11R2P/system01.dbf
input datafile file number=00002 name=/u01/oradata/ORA11R2P/sysaux01.dbf
input datafile file number=00003 name=/u01/oradata/ORA11R2P/undotbs01.dbf
input datafile file number=00005 name=/u01/oradata/ORA11R2P/testneu.dbf
input datafile file number=00004 name=/u01/oradata/ORA11R2P/users01.dbf
channel ORA_DISK_1: starting piece 1 at 02-AUG-10

As you can see in the bold line RMAN replaced the variable with the first argument specified on the command line (“database”).

With this method you can create powerful and yet simple scripts for backing up your database.

It wont cover the background directly but i am trying to give some links with further informations.

I am planning to improve it over the time.

Currently this article covers:

• Partition Alignment
• Choosing a file system
• Optimizing ext3
• Enable Huge Pages
• Using Async and Direct IO
• Tune Swapping Priority

Align Partitions

What it is? When creating partitions you have to ensure your file system blocks match exactly with your storage block layout. There are some further information here (esp. for running VMWARE with any operating system) or this great article here.

On Linux checking for alignment is quite easy when using fdisk. Instead of using “fdisk -l” for querying all partitions use “fdisk -lu” for querying partitions. This will show partitions start SECTOR (remember every sector equals to 512 bytes and 4 KB on some recent disks) as well:

# fdisk -lu

Disk /dev/sde: 2199.0 GB, 2199023255552 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 267349 cylinders, total 4294967296 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

 Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sde1              63  4294961684  2147480811   83  Linux

Disk /dev/sdf: 53.6 GB, 53687091200 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 51200 cylinders, total 104857600 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

 Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdf1             128   104857599    52428736   83  Linux

As you can see the first partitions on disk /dev/sde starts at sector 63 which is no way aligned. Partitions /dev/sdf1 is aligned cause it starts at sector 128 which is fine for all stripe configurations up to 64 KB stripe width.

Generally speaking  i strongly recommend to align your partitions. If you dont have stripe widths larger than 64 KB starting at sector 128 is fine.

When using ASM you need to align at 1 MB, i.e. 2048 sectors.

The following shows how to implement it with fdisk AFTER creating a partitions and BEFORE creating a file system:

[root@moloch oradata]# fdisk /dev/sde

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sde: 2199.0 GB, 2199023255552 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 267349 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

 Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sde1               1      267349  2147480811   83  Linux

Command (m for help): x

Expert command (m for help): b
Partition number (1-4): 1
New beginning of data (63-4294961684, default 63): 128

# fdisk -lu

Disk /dev/sde: 2199.0 GB, 2199023255552 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 267349 cylinders, total 4294967296 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

 Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sde1             128  4294961684  2147480811   83  Linux

Choose a file system

There are tremenous discussions which file system is the “best” on Linux. For running Oracle on Linux there is only one: ext3. This equals to Oracles recommendations (and my options as well).

Another options is – of course – ASM.

Creating the ext3 file system

When creating the file system for storing your database files you might want to change the ratio of created inodes per bytes. This is especially useful for shorten the periodic full file system check in ext3 (i outlined it in this post).

You can safely create a ext3 file system with only one inode per 1 MB space with:

mkfs.ext3 -T largefile <device>

Or even one inode per 4 MB with:

mkfs.ext3 -T largefile4 <device>

Remember you will need one inode per created file or directory. So i recommend this options only on file systems intended for usage by data files (this includes redo logs and even archive logs).

Creating a file system with fewer number of inodes will shorten your fsck times extemely. I did some tests with an 8 TB ext3 file system created normally, with “-T largefile” and with “-T largefile4″ options. The standard created file system creates one inode per every 4 KB. fsck’ing an 8 TB file system filled to 50% with data files (all of 32 GB size) takes approx 7 hours! Checking the same file system created with “-T largefile” only takes 10 minutes. The “-T largefile4″ needs approx 5 minutes.

Disable atime-Updates on ext3

When accessing a file or directory ext3 file system updates the file or directories last accessed timestamp. It does to for every read to every file. This has a unnecessary performance impact. To avoid this impact you can turn off these updates by adding

noatime,nodiratime

to your /etc/fstab or remounting the file system with:

mount  -o remount,noatime,nodiratime,rw  <path or device>

According to oracles recommendations you can safely turn this off in non-RAC environments. In RAC environments you need to check.

Enable Huge Pages

For using your memory optimally i recommend to enable and use Huge Pages as outlined in this post.

You can enable Huge Pages by adding the following to your /etc/sysctl.conf

vm.nr_hugepages = <number>

The <number> are the requested Huge Page to allocate. Note that each page is 2 MB in size. So for a 2 GB SGA you need approx 1000 Huge Pages.

More details can be found here.

Enable DirectIO and Asynchronous IO

By setting the parameter “filesystemio_options” in your init.ora you can enable either DirectIO, Asynchronous IO or both.

For enabling both (which i recommend on Linux) set:

filesystemio_options=setall

in your init.ora (or spfile).

Note that not all file systems support DirectIO or even Asynchronous IO. ext3 does support both.

Tune Swapping Priority

Linux does swap unused pages even if there is plenty of memory free. It does so by checking if a memory page (which is 4 kb in size) was accessed recently. If they were not accessed for some time the page gets swapped out to disk. The memory freed is used for other purposes – most often for the file system cache.

You can adjust the time a memory page gets swapped out by adjusting the “swappiness” value. The valid range is 0…100. “0″ means: no swapping unless neccessaey; 100 means: if a page is not very frequently used/visited swap it out; default is 60.

I recommend to set this value quite low on a database server… e.g. 5 or even 1 by adding to your “/etc/sysctl.conf”:

vm.swappiness=5

Note that Huge Pages are not swappable thus remain always in memory.

Update: I was told the first year of Extended Support is free of charge (Thanks Martin!). So customers have a little bit more time to test and upgrade.

See the following picture for the support end dates:

So if you start with new projects i´d strongly recommend to use Oracle 11g Release 2 at best or if 11g R2 is not an options 11g R1.

• Linux x86_64
• Linux x86

See Doc ID 1088172.1 for a list of fixed problems.

This errors prevents the import of tables with lob columns when using traditional import, deferred segment creation and an altered tablespace name.

For this i created a test case in which we

1. In the source database (10.2.0.4.0 on 64-bit Linux):
   1. create a user named TEST1 having a default tablespace named TEST1
   2. create a small table with a CLOB in it
   3. export the schema with traditional import
   4. transfer the dump to the destination database
2. In the destination database (11.2.0.1.0 on 64-bit Linux)
   1. create a user names TESTNEU with a default tablespace TESTNEU
      NOTE: There is no tablespace TEST1 in the destination database; this is important
   2. trying to import the table… hitting a bug documented below in detail

Note: While blogging this for a fried i was in hurry; i will rewrite some paragraphs with evening… but the problem should become clear while reading…

In the source database (10.2.0.4.0)

Create user and tablespace

-bash-3.2$ sqlplus / as sysdba

SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.4.0 - Production on Fri May 7 15:25:27 2010
Copyright (c) 1982, 2007, Oracle.  All Rights Reserved.

Connected to:
Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.4.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

SQL> create tablespace test1 datafile '/u01/oradata/ORA10P/test1.dbf' size 100M;
Tablespace created.

SQL> create user test1 identified by test1 default tablespace test1 quota unlimited on test1;
User created.

SQL> grant create session to test1;
Grant succeeded.

SQL> grant create table to test1;
Grant succeeded.

SQL> exit

Disconnected from Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.4.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

Create a table with a clob column and insert one row

-bash-3.2$ sqlplus test1/test1
SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.4.0 - Production on Fri May 7 15:17:51 2010
Copyright (c) 1982, 2007, Oracle.  All Rights Reserved.

Connected to:
Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.4.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

SQL> create table testtab (col1 varchar2(100), col2 clob);
Table created.

SQL> insert into testtab values ('x','clob text');
1 row created.

SQL> commit;
Commit complete.

SQL> exit

Export the schema for migration

-bash-3.2$ exp system/manager file=test1.dmp log=test1.log owner=test1 consistent=y buffer=100000

Export: Release 10.2.0.4.0 - Production on Fri May 7 15:18:34 2010

Copyright (c) 1982, 2007, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Connected to: Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.4.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options
Export done in WE8MSWIN1252 character set and AL16UTF16 NCHAR character set
server uses WE8ISO8859P1 character set (possible charset conversion)

About to export specified users ...
. exporting pre-schema procedural objects and actions
. exporting foreign function library names for user TEST1
. exporting PUBLIC type synonyms
. exporting private type synonyms
. exporting object type definitions for user TEST1
About to export TEST1's objects ...
. exporting database links
. exporting sequence numbers
. exporting cluster definitions
. about to export TEST1's tables via Conventional Path ...
. . exporting table                        TESTTAB          1 rows exported
. exporting synonyms
. exporting views
. exporting stored procedures
. exporting operators
. exporting referential integrity constraints
. exporting triggers
. exporting indextypes
. exporting bitmap, functional and extensible indexes
. exporting posttables actions
. exporting materialized views
. exporting snapshot logs
. exporting job queues
. exporting refresh groups and children
. exporting dimensions
. exporting post-schema procedural objects and actions
. exporting statistics
Export terminated successfully without warnings.

Migrate to 11g R2

Create tablespace and user

NOTE: Instead of creating the same user and same tablespace we ALTER username and tablespace name. If you do not alter username and tablespace name you will not hit this bug.

-bash-3.2$ sqlplus / as sysdba

SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.1.0 Production on Fri May 7 15:20:50 2010

Copyright (c) 1982, 2009, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Connected to:
Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.1.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

SQL> create tablespace testneu datafile '/u01/oradata/ORA11R2P/testneu.dbf' size 100M;

Tablespace created.

SQL>create user testneu identified by testneu default tablespace testneu quota unlimited on testneu;
User created.

SQL>grant create session to testneu;
Grant succeeded.

SQL>grant create table to testneu;
Grant succeeded.

SQL> SQL> exit
Disconnected from Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.1.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

Import the data

bash-3.2$ imp system/manager file=test1.dmp fromuser=test1 touser=testneu

Import: Release 11.2.0.1.0 - Production on Fri May 7 15:27:44 2010

Copyright (c) 1982, 2009, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.

Connected to: Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.1.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

Export file created by EXPORT:V10.02.01 via conventional path
import done in WE8MSWIN1252 character set and UTF8 NCHAR character set
export server uses AL16UTF16 NCHAR character set (possible ncharset conversion)
. importing TEST1's objects into TESTNEU
IMP-00017: following statement failed with ORACLE error 959:
"CREATE TABLE "TESTTAB" ("COL1" VARCHAR2(100), "COL2" CLOB)  PCTFREE 10 PCTU"
"SED 40 INITRANS 1 MAXTRANS 255 STORAGE(INITIAL 65536 FREELISTS 1 FREELIST G"
"ROUPS 1 BUFFER_POOL DEFAULT) TABLESPACE "TEST1" LOGGING NOCOMPRESS LOB ("CO"
"L2") STORE AS  (TABLESPACE "TEST1" ENABLE STORAGE IN ROW CHUNK 8192 RETENTI"
"ON NOCACHE LOGGING  STORAGE(INITIAL 65536 FREELISTS 1 FREELIST GROUPS 1 BUF"
"FER_POOL DEFAULT))"
IMP-00003: ORACLE error 959 encountered
ORA-00959: tablespace 'TEST1' does not exist
Import terminated successfully with warnings.

Well, this error is in import/export utilities since 9i. When importing tables containing lob columns into a database with different tablespace names import still tries to create the table in the same tablespace as in the source database. A workaround for this is to create the table prior doing the import and appending “ignore=y” to the import command. So lets do it:

Importing the data by pre-creating the table and appending “ignore=y” to import command

-bash-3.2$ sqlplus testneu/testneu

SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.1.0 Production on Fri May 7 15:28:07 2010

Copyright (c) 1982, 2009, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Connected to:
Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.1.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

SQL> desc testtab;
ERROR:
ORA-04043: object testtab does not exist

SQL> create table testtab (col1 varchar2(100), col2 clob);

Table created.

SQL> exit
Disconnected from Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.1.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

ssssssssssssssssss

-bash-3.2$ imp system/manager file=test1.dmp fromuser=test1 touser=testneu ignore=y

Import: Release 11.2.0.1.0 - Production on Fri May 7 15:28:41 2010

Copyright (c) 1982, 2009, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.

Connected to: Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.1.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

Export file created by EXPORT:V10.02.01 via conventional path
import done in WE8MSWIN1252 character set and UTF8 NCHAR character set
export server uses AL16UTF16 NCHAR character set (possible ncharset conversion)
. importing TEST1's objects into TESTNEU
IMP-00017: following statement failed with ORACLE error 959:
"CREATE TABLE "TESTTAB" ("COL1" VARCHAR2(100), "COL2" CLOB)  PCTFREE 10 PCTU"
"SED 40 INITRANS 1 MAXTRANS 255 STORAGE(INITIAL 65536 FREELISTS 1 FREELIST G"
"ROUPS 1 BUFFER_POOL DEFAULT) TABLESPACE "TEST1" LOGGING NOCOMPRESS LOB ("CO"
"L2") STORE AS  (TABLESPACE "TEST1" ENABLE STORAGE IN ROW CHUNK 8192 RETENTI"
"ON NOCACHE LOGGING  STORAGE(INITIAL 65536 FREELISTS 1 FREELIST GROUPS 1 BUF"
"FER_POOL DEFAULT))"
IMP-00003: ORACLE error 959 encountered
ORA-00959: tablespace 'TEST1' does not exist
Import terminated successfully with warnings.

Importing the data by pre-creating the table and appending “ignore=y” to import command and inserting at least ONE row prior the import

-bash-3.2$ sqlplus testneu/testneu

SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.1.0 Production on Fri May 7 15:29:53 2010

Copyright (c) 1982, 2009, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Connected to:
Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.1.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

SQL> select * from testtab;

no rows selected

SQL> insert into testtab values ('x','xx');

1 row created.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

SQL> exit
Disconnected from Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.1.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

-bash-3.2$ imp system/manager file=test1.dmp fromuser=test1 touser=testneu ignore=y

Import: Release 11.2.0.1.0 - Production on Fri May 7 15:30:19 2010

Copyright (c) 1982, 2009, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.

Connected to: Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.1.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

Export file created by EXPORT:V10.02.01 via conventional path
import done in WE8MSWIN1252 character set and UTF8 NCHAR character set
export server uses AL16UTF16 NCHAR character set (possible ncharset conversion)
. importing TEST1's objects into TESTNEU
. . importing table                      "TESTTAB"          1 rows imported
Import terminated successfully without warnings.

CAUSE: DEFERRED SEGMENT CREATION

So lets turn if off….

-bash-3.2$ sqlplus / as sysdba

SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.1.0 Production on Fri May 7 15:30:43 2010

Copyright (c) 1982, 2009, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Connected to:
Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.1.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

SQL> drop user test1 cascade;
drop user test1 cascade
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-01918: user 'TEST1' does not exist

SQL> drop user testneu cascade;

User dropped.

SQL> show parameter deferred;

NAME                                 TYPE        VALUE
------------------------------------ ----------- ------------------------------
deferred_segment_creation            boolean     TRUE
SQL> alter system set deferred_segment_creation=false;

System altered.

SQL> create user testneu identified by testneu default tablespace testneu quota unlimited on testneu;
grant create session to testneu;
grant create table to testneu;

User created.

SQL>
Grant succeeded.

SQL>
Grant succeeded.

SQL>
SQL> exit
Disconnected from Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.1.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

And do the import once again (without pre-creating the table)

-bash-3.2$ imp system/manager file=test1.dmp fromuser=test1 touser=testneu

Import: Release 11.2.0.1.0 - Production on Fri May 7 15:31:41 2010

Copyright (c) 1982, 2009, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.

Connected to: Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.1.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

Export file created by EXPORT:V10.02.01 via conventional path
import done in WE8MSWIN1252 character set and UTF8 NCHAR character set
export server uses AL16UTF16 NCHAR character set (possible ncharset conversion)
. importing TEST1's objects into TESTNEU
IMP-00017: following statement failed with ORACLE error 959:
"CREATE TABLE "TESTTAB" ("COL1" VARCHAR2(100), "COL2" CLOB)  PCTFREE 10 PCTU"
"SED 40 INITRANS 1 MAXTRANS 255 STORAGE(INITIAL 65536 FREELISTS 1 FREELIST G"
"ROUPS 1 BUFFER_POOL DEFAULT) TABLESPACE "TEST1" LOGGING NOCOMPRESS LOB ("CO"
"L2") STORE AS  (TABLESPACE "TEST1" ENABLE STORAGE IN ROW CHUNK 8192 RETENTI"
"ON NOCACHE LOGGING  STORAGE(INITIAL 65536 FREELISTS 1 FREELIST GROUPS 1 BUF"
"FER_POOL DEFAULT))"
IMP-00003: ORACLE error 959 encountered
ORA-00959: tablespace 'TEST1' does not exist
Import terminated successfully with warnings.

–> not working,ok

And do the import once again (WITH pre-creating the table)

-bash-3.2$ sqlplus testneu/testneu
SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.1.0 Production on Fri May 7 15:32:05 2010
Copyright (c) 1982, 2009, Oracle.  All rights reserved.
Connected to:
Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.1.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options
SQL> desc testtab;
ERROR:
ORA-04043: object testtab does not exist
SQL> create table testtab (col1 varchar2(100), col2 clob);
Table created.
SQL> exit

-bash-3.2$ imp system/manager file=test1.dmp fromuser=test1 touser=testneu ignore=y
Import: Release 11.2.0.1.0 - Production on Fri May 7 15:32:44 2010
Copyright (c) 1982, 2009, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.
Connected to: Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.1.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options
Export file created by EXPORT:V10.02.01 via conventional path
import done in WE8MSWIN1252 character set and UTF8 NCHAR character set
export server uses AL16UTF16 NCHAR character set (possible ncharset conversion)
. importing TEST1's objects into TESTNEU
. . importing table                      "TESTTAB"          1 rows imported
Import terminated successfully without warnings.

Hi there, sorry for the x-post from database-general but it was suggested that I do so.
Anyhow, we've got 11g (11.1.0.7 with the 6851110 ASM patch recently applied) running on
OEL 5 x86_64, with ASM connected to a raw, thin-provisioned ISCSI volume partitioned for
+DATA and +FRA, and in every case where we do so, the SAN device reports within a few
weeks that the whole volume has been allocated even though the DB (configured with
autoextend on) is only holding about one tenth of the amount of available space on the
device. What this means in systems terms is that somehow ASM is marking writes to nearly
every block on the drive if only momentarily.

In the original thread, there was speculation that a process of indexing AUs has led to
the dirtying of the whole volume, but this would make more sense if the whole disk had been
allocated immediately rather than over the course of a few weeks. My question is: what else
could account for this behavior, and what steps can I take to help ensure that ASM behaves
correctly in a thin-provisioned volume? (by "correctly" I mean writes contiguous blocks of
data and doesn't dirty the whole thing)

Yesterday i had some spare time available to dig a little bit deeper. I had a Windows-based system at hand and performed some smaller tests.

As storage i used an Opensolaris with ZFS thin provisioning. On database and asm site i used a 11g R2 database with 11g R2 ASM running on Windows. I created two LUNs and exported them via iSCSI. On the ASM side i formed a disk group with external redundancy and created one bigfile tablespace and put a tablespace with approx 15 GB total size in it.

After disk group and tablespace creation the storage systems shows the LUNs as follows:

NAME                       PROPERTY       VALUE    SOURCE
pool1/iscsi-racwin-temp05  volsize        15G      local
pool1/iscsi-racwin-temp05  usedbydataset  7.45G    -
pool1/iscsi-racwin-temp06  volsize        15G      local
pool1/iscsi-racwin-temp06  usedbydataset  7.45G    -

The total reported size (“volsize”) is 15 GB while 7.45 GB are currently used (“usedbydataset”). Thats the expected result of creating a tablespace with 15 gb size in the disk group.

During the past day and night i ran a simple test script which imported a schema (approx 12 gb total size) and dropped it afterwards intinitely.

After running for more than 24 hours the thin provisioned disks look like this:

NAME                       PROPERTY       VALUE    SOURCE
pool1/iscsi-racwin-temp05  volsize        15G      local
pool1/iscsi-racwin-temp05  usedbydataset  7.47G    -
pool1/iscsi-racwin-temp06  volsize        15G      local
pool1/iscsi-racwin-temp06  usedbydataset  7.47G    -

As you can see there is a extremely small growth in size (from 7.45 GB to 7.47 GB). I observed this growth shortly after starting the very first import. Subsequent imports did not increased the actual allocated volume size.

At this point of my investigation i cannot conclude the posters claim but i admit i changed several aspects of this test case. If we exclude the storage as a source for this behavior there might be the fact that ASM behaves different in 11g R2 and 11g R1. Even the patch applied by the poster and the different operating systems might change the behavior.

If i have again some amount of time  i will try to reproduce the posters environment en detail….

Before installing the database you can optionally install grid infrastructure which offers some nice feature – for instance Oracle Restart and ASM. The install guide for grid infrastructure can be found here.

After installation succeeded you can continue to configure a Listener and create a database. Database creation steps are outlined here (the guide itself is for Linux but Windows steps do not differ).

Requirements

Windows

Note there is no grid infrastructure or ASM for 32-bit Windows!

According to the documentation the following Windows versions are certified for Oracle 11g Release 2:

• Windows Server 2003 x64 with service pack 1 or higher.
• Windows Server 2003 R2 x64
• Windows Server 2008 x64 Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter, Web, and Foundation editions.
• Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter, Web, and Foundation editions

Windows Core Editions are NOT supported!

Storage

For storing your database you can use the following storage options:

• plain file system (NTFS recommended or FAT)
• ASM
• Oracle NFS for Windows

In this guide we are using ASM for storing our data files.

Installation Slides

If no ASM disk show up you most probably have to mark disks for ASM usage first as shown in the next two slides:

Until now i was unable to install it successfully. It always failed with:

[INS-20802] Grid Infrastructure Configuration failed

This is a short blog post about my findinds. Maybe someone else experience this issue as well  and leaves a comment.

After the installation ran for some time it failed on the second node. Some debugging and re-installation hours later i guess the grid installation is buggy at least on Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 R2. Hows that? Well: Look at the following pictures all taken from the SECOND node. The services on the first (= installation node) are fine and running. All log files look fine. On the second node i am completely unable to find any error messages in the log files. Everything looks fine… but the windows event log shows some failed services which are most probably causing the error.

During installation on the second node some services are created by the oracle installer. The first service to be created is names OracleOUIVC8Service which seems to install some kind of VC libraries:

Picture #1: Oracle seems to install some VC++ Runtime libraries during cluster installation. For doing so a service is created and then started. Starting this service shall install the VC runtime library.  But unfortunately the service seems to be unable to start within 30 seconds, causing the following error:

Picture #1: A timeout was reached (30000 milliseconds) while waiting for
the OracleOUIVC8Service service to connect

Picture #2: Note that ONE second after the OracleOUIVC8Service failed to start the windows installer entered the running state. What was installed then? The answer is in picture #3.

Picture #3: According to the windows installer the Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable was installed. It took 3 seconds from the windows installer to enter the running start (= start of the installation at 07:27:24 show in the picture above) to the end of the installation which was successful. This is shown in the following pictures:

Picture #4 shows the failing installation service for the grid infrastructure home and/or configuration which fails with:

A timeout was reached (30000 milliseconds) while waiting for the OracleOUIOraCrs11g_home1Service service to connect

This does not surprise me at all. If there are some libraries missing the installer will most probably fail. But i guess the point is here that the service are created in a incorrect way. I DO see the java.exe from the installer in the process list – but only AFTER the start of the service failed….

For debugging i tried several thing:

• Install on Windows 2008 R2 64-bit
• Install on Windows 2008 64-bit
• Pre-Install the VC Runtime
• Increase the allowed time to start for a service to 180 seconds

Increasing the service start timeout value

Trying to increase the maximum allowed time for a service to start from 30 to 180 seconds didn’t even help. The node itself was completely idle during the service start. But the VC installation started RIGHT AFTER the service start time out after 180 seconds and was completed within 4 seconds. This makes me believe in some kind of error. And so i decided to blog about this problem because i have not yet found anything on the web.

In the following picture you can see the service OracleOUIVC8Service trying to start.

The command line being used for that was:

D:\Temp\2\OraInstall2010-04-17_02-20-52AM\ext\bin\vcredist_x64.exe
/q:a /c:"VCREDI~1.EXE /q:a /c:""msiexec /i vcredist.msi  /qn"" "

As you can see the system was completely idle during service startup with plenty of free memory.

An except from the windows event log shows the service failed to start after 180 seconds (the value specified in milliseconds was increased by adding ServicesPipeTimeout to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control; so 180000 means 180 seconds):

Right after the service failed to start the windows installer entered the running state and installed the VC redistributable:

So this also leads me to the assumtion there is some bug in the grid infrastructure installer.

Another possibility is that this error is caused by using VMWARE virtualization. But at the moment i dont have a reason to think so.