Oracle 10g RAC Grid, Services & Clustering

Chapter 1 provides an overview of Oracle Grid strategy and directions. It looks at the basic Grid principles and highlights the various grid-related features introduced in Oracle Database 10g.

Chapter 2 takes an in-depth look into the RAC architecture. Starting with the discussion on the architecture of the new Clusterware, it also discusses the RAC database architecture.

Chapter 3 focuses on storage management. While starting with the fundamentals of storage management principles and the technologies that have existed for several years, the chapter takes a deeper look into
the new storage management solution from Oracle called AutomaticStorage Management (ASM), covering its internal functioning and administrative options.
Chapter 4 covers the installation and configuration steps required for RAC implementation. The chapter also covers installation of the Clusterware and Oracle RDBMS using the DBCA utility.
Chapter 5 covers the services and distributed workload management features introduced in Oracle Database 10g.
Chapter 6 describes the availability and load-balancing features of RAC, including transparent application failover (TAF) and fast connection failover (FCF). Discussions include using these features with the tnsnames file and making OCI-based calls directly from a Java application.
Chapter 7 covers the various new utilities available with Oracle Clusterware. The chapter provides a quick reference guide to the Clusterware utilities, including the framework and other utilities such as ocrconfig, srvctl, crs_start, and crs_register.
Chapter 8 covers the backup features available, including implementation and configuration of RMAN in a RAC environment, with special focus on some of the new features.
Chapter 9 starts with a single instance and discusses performance tuning. Starting with a tuning methodology, the chapter approaches tuning from the top down, tuning the application, followed by the instance, and then the database.
Chapter 10 discusses the maximum availability solutions from Oracle. Acts of nature are beyond human control, but tools such as Data Guard and Oracle Streams provide opportunities to protect data from such disasters with minimal interference to users.
Chapter 11 is the RAC best practices chapter. Kirk McGowan has provided the best practices to be followed while implementing a RAC solution.