Grid DBA

I just had the arduous task of sifting through numerous documents on My Oracle Support (formerly Metalink) to determine whether or not my Grid Control infrastructure needs to be patched for DST change on November 1, 2009 in the US. Global Support could have done a better job at consolidating the documents since it's a pretty common task. Instead, I had to be going back and forth between six or so documents in order to try and figure out what I need to change. In the end I determined that rather apply patch sets to the management agents below 10.2.0.5, just to apply the 10.2.0.5 patch set instead to be on the safe side. The OMS Java also required DST updates. Since the OMS is running on AIX 5.3 I had to use the IBM Timezone Java Update Utility (JTZU). Steps to update OMS Java Download the JTZU utility here http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/dst/jtzu.html Follow the instructions to extract and install the utility Stop the OMS using opmnctl stopall Apply the update to the ...

I must admit it's been a long time since my last blog. It's been a year and a half since I relocated to the US so I'm pretty much settled in now. As the old saying goes - better late than never. Having launched Oracle VM over a year ago it seems like Oracle's poised to continue extending it's reach into the Cloud (no pun intended). With it's flagship Oracle Database product along with Fusion Middleware and Enterprise Manager being EC2 licensable and supported by Oracle and/or Amazon, it should provide a bit of relief for those seeking low-cost highly available and reputable database infrastructure. There's also a native cloud module for it's Secure Backup product which could be a potential cost-effective way to reduce off-site storage costs. Add to this, the mix of AMI's which include prepackaged varieties of Database Server, Enterprise Linux and Grid Control it becomes quite clear that the company is embracing the Cloud. Look out for it's p...

agentpatch_upgrade.htm Shared via AddThis

While trying to connect to one of my development Oracle 10.1.0.4 databases I kept receiving the following error message: ORA-12528: TNS:listener: all appropriate instances are blocking new connections This is a new message introduced in Oracle 10g. A quick search for the oracle error code provided the following information: Oracle Error : ORA-12528: TNS:listener: all appropriate instances are blocking new connections Cause: All instances supporting the service requested by the client reported that they were blocking the new connections. This condition may be temporary, such as at instance startup. Action: Attempt the connection again. If error persists, then contact the administrator to check the status of the instances. Since I knew that the database had not been shutdown for a long time I thought the message strange. I did a google on possible causes of the error message and all pointed to the same thing above. It turned out that the SERVICE_NAME initialization parameter wa...

In my most recent attempt to experience the new and wonderful features that Oracle 11g has to offer I needed to get myself another sandbox. Unfortunately my current employer is unable to provide such tools so it's back to the virtual environment for me. My first journey in the virtualization arena took me on a roller coaster ride in my attempt to install Oracle 10g RAC on VMWare ESX 3. That was my first blog. My first thought was to try out Oracle's VM Server since I am in all honesty attached to Oracle's products by an umbilical cord. However, having moved into a job, state and country I didn't have the necessary resources to do this - namely a machine with enough specs to do what I wanted. So armed with my HP Pavillion dv2715nr laptop with 2GB RAM and dual-core AMD x64 Turion processor running Windows Vista Home Premium and Ubuntu 8.04 I attempted to install Oracle Database 11g. My choice of virtual machine was VirtualBox 1.6.2. Previously I had installed the fr...

Since setting up our 10g RAC we have been experiencing problems connecting to the database via SQL*Plus. It would seem to work randomly and when it failed we got the error message ORA-12545 Connect failed because target host or object does not exist The following lines were added to the tnsnames.ora file: ORCL_TAF = (DESCRIPTION = (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = orcl-rac1-vip)(PORT = 1521)) (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = orcl-rac2-vip)(PORT = 1521)) (LOAD_BALANCE =yes) (CONNECT_DATA = (SERVER = DEDICATED) (SERVICE_NAME = ORCL_taf) (FAILOVER_MODE = (TYPE = SELECT) (METHOD = BASIC) (RETRIES = 180) (DELAY = 5) ) ) ) LISTENERS_ORCL = (ADDRESS_LIST = (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = orcl-rac1-vip)(PORT = 1521)) (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = orcl-rac2-vip)(PORT = 1521)) ) ORCL2 = (DESCRIPTION = (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = orcl-rac2-vip)(PORT = 1521)) (CONNECT_DATA = (SERVER = DEDICATE...

Our 2 node 10g RAC database would not startup after being shut down. The database was generating an error after trying to startup with command srvctl start database -d db1 It turns out that one of the other DBAs modified some database parameters sga_target to 1710 and forgot to add the M or convert it to bytes...ouch! Somehow one of the nodes got unregistered from the cluster. Soln: The following command was used to add back the instance to the cluster srvctl add instance -d dbname -i instance_name -n nodename