1 Installation Overview

Database Storage Options

If you choose to create a database during the installation, you can specify one of three storage options for database files:

• File System

• Automatic Storage Management

• Raw Devices

If you choose the file system option, the Database Configuration Assistant creates the database files in a directory on a file system mounted on your computer. Oracle recommends that the file system you choose be separate from the file systems used by the operating system or the Oracle software. The file system that you choose can be any of the following:

• A file system on a disk that is physically attached to the system

  If you are creating a database on basic disks that are not logical volumes or RAID devices, Oracle recommends that you follow the Optimal Flexible Architecture (OFA) recommendations described in Appendix D and distribute the database files over more than one disk.

• A file system on a logical volume manager (LVM) volume or a RAID device

  If you are using multiple disks in an LVM or RAID configuration, Oracle recommends that you use the stripe and mirror everything (SAME) methodology to increase performance and reliability. Using this methodology, you do not need to specify more than one file system mount point for database storage.

• A network file system (NFS) mounted from a certified network attached storage (NAS) device

  You can store database files on NAS devices provided that the NAS device is certified by Oracle. See the "Using Network Attached Storage or NFS File Systems" section for more information about certified NAS and NFS devices.

If you choose the Custom installation type or the Advanced database creation option, you can also choose to use the Oracle-managed files feature with the new database. If you use this feature, you need only specify the database object name instead of file names when creating or deleting database files.

Automatic Storage Management (ASM) is a new feature introduced with this release of Oracle Database. It is a high-performance storage management solution for Oracle database files that is consistent across all supported platforms. Designed specifically to simplify the job of the database administrator (DBA), ASM provides you with a flexible storage solution that simplifies the management of a dynamic database environment. The features provided by ASM make most manual I/O performance tuning tasks unnecessary.

To use ASM for database storage, you must create one or more ASM disk groups. A disk group is a set of disk devices that ASM manages as a single unit. ASM spreads data evenly across all of the devices in the disk group to optimize performance and utilization. To protect against disk failure, you can choose one of three redundancy levels when you create a disk group. The redundancy level defines how files are mirrored within a disk group, as follows:

In addition to the manageability, performance, and reliability benefits provided by ASM, it can also increase database availability. You can add or remove disk devices from disk groups without shutting down the database. ASM automatically rebalances the files across the disk group after disks have been added or removed.

Disk groups are managed by a special Oracle instance, called an ASM instance. This instance must be running before you can start a database instance that uses ASM for storage management. If you choose ASM as the storage mechanism for your database, DBCA creates and starts this instance if necessary.

Raw devices are disk partitions or logical volumes that have not been formatted with a file system. When you use raw devices for database file storage, Oracle writes data directly to the partition or volume, bypassing the operating system file system layer. For this reason, you can sometimes achieve performance gains by using raw devices. However, because raw devices can be difficult to create and administer, and because the performance gains over modern file systems are minimal, Oracle recommends that you choose ASM or file system storage in preference to raw devices.

Database Management Options

To simplify database administration, Oracle provides a Web-based management tool called Oracle Enterprise Manager. There are two ways that you can deploy Oracle Enterprise Manager, as follows:

• Deploy Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g centrally in your environment

  To deploy Oracle Enterprise Manager centrally, you must install at least one Oracle Management Repository and one Oracle Management Service within your environment, then install an Oracle Management Agent on every computer that you want to manage. You can then use a single Web-based interface to manage and monitor software and hardware targets on all of those systems. Targets can include Oracle databases, application servers, Net listeners, and third-party software. This single interface is called Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control (or simply Grid Control).

  
  

  Note: Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g is available separately in the Oracle Database media pack. For more information about Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g, see the Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Concepts manual and the Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Installation and Basic Configuration manual.

  
  

• Deploy Oracle Enterprise Manager locally on the database system

  Oracle Enterprise Manager software is installed by default^Foot 1  with every Oracle Database installation. This local installation provides a Web-based interface called Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control. The Database Control is similar in function to the Grid Control, but it can manage only a single database. If you want to administer more than one database on this system, you must either configure a separate Database Control for each one, or install Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g.

When you choose to create a preconfigured database during the installation, you must select the Oracle Enterprise Manager interface that you want to use to manage the database. The following options are available:

• Use Grid Control for database management

  This option is available only if an Oracle Management Agent is installed on the system. When the Installer detects Oracle Management Agent on the system, it allows you to choose this option and specify the Oracle Management Service that you want to use to manage the database.

  If an Oracle Management Agent is not installed, you must choose to use Database Control to manage the database. However, if you install Oracle Management Agent after you install Oracle Database, you can then use Grid Control to manage this database.

• Use Database Control for database management

  This option is selected by default if an Oracle Management Agent is not installed on the system. However, even if a Management Agent is installed, you can still choose to configure Database Control to manage the database.

If you choose the Custom installation type or the Advanced database configuration option during the installation, the Installer does not display the options listed in the previous section. Instead, it runs Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA) in interactive mode, which enables you to create a custom database.

DBCA also enables you to specify the Oracle Enterprise Manager interface that you want to use. Furthermore, you can also use DBCA after the installation to configure Database Control for a database that was not previously configured to use it.

Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control provides a Web-based user interface that enables you to monitor, administer, and maintain an Oracle database. You can use it to perform all of your database administration tasks. You can also use it to determine information about the database, such as:

• Instance name, database version, Oracle home location, media recovery options, and other instance data

• Current instance availability

• Database alert information

• Session and SQL-related performance information

• Space usage metrics

Database Backup and Recovery Options

If you choose to use Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control during the installation, you can optionally enable automated database backups that use the Oracle-suggested default backup strategy.

If you enable automated backups, Oracle Enterprise Manager schedules a daily backup job that uses Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) to back up all of the database files to an on-disk storage area called the flash recovery area. The first time the backup job runs, it creates a full backup of the database. Subsequent backup jobs perform incremental back-ups, which enable you to recover the database to its state at any point during the preceding 24 hours.

To enable automated backup jobs during installation, you must specify the following information:

• The location of the flash recovery area

  You can choose to use either a file system directory or an ASM disk group for the flash recovery area. The default disk quota configured for the flash recovery area is 2 GB. For ASM disk groups, the required disk space depends on the redundancy level of the disk group that you choose. Chapter 2 describes how to choose the location of the flash recovery area and identifies its disk space requirements.

• An operating system user name and password for the backup job

  Oracle Enterprise Manager uses the operating system credentials that you specify when running the backup job. The user name that you specify must belong to the UNIX group that identifies database administrators (the OSDBA group, typically dba). The Oracle software owner user (typically oracle) that you use to install the software is a suitable choice for this user. Chapter 2 describes the requirements for the OSDBA group and Oracle software owner user and describes how to create them.

If you enable automated backups after choosing one of the preconfigured databases during the installation, automated backup is configured with the following default settings:

• The backup job is scheduled to run nightly at 2 a.m.

• The disk quota for the flash recovery area is 2 GB.

If you enable automated backups by using DBCA, either during or after the installation, you can specify a different start time for the backup job and a different disk quota for the flash recovery area.

For information about using Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control to configure or customize automated backups or to recover a backed up database, see the Oracle Database 2 Day DBA manual.

For more detailed information about defining a back-up strategy and backing up and recovering Oracle databases, see the Oracle Database Backup and Recovery Basics manual or the Oracle Database Backup and Recovery Advanced User's Guide.

E-mail Notification Options

If you choose to use the Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control during the installation, you can configure Enterprise Manager to send e-mail when specific events occur. These events can include occurrences such as disk space reaching a critical limit (a threshold), or a database shutting down unexpectedly.

If you choose to enable e-mail notifications, you must specify the following information:

• The host name of an simple mail transport protocol (SMTP) server

• The e-mail address that should receive the alerts

  The e-mail address that you specify could belong to an individual or it could be a shared e-mail account or a distribution list.

You can use Enterprise Manager Database Control to set-up, change, or customize e-mail notifications after you have created the database.

Hardware and Software Certification

The platform-specific hardware and software requirements included in this installation guide were current at the time this guide was published. However, because new platforms and operating system software versions might be certified after this guide is published, review the certification matrix on the OracleMetaLink Web site for the most up-to-date list of certified hardware platforms and operating system versions. The OracleMetaLink Web site is available at the following URL:

http://metalink.oracle.com

If you do not have a current Oracle Support Services contract, you can access the same information from the following Web site:

http://otn.oracle.com/support/metalink/content.html

Multiple Oracle Homes

This product supports multiple Oracle homes. This means that you can install this release or previous releases of the software more than once on the same system, in different Oracle home directories.

Oracle Cluster Synchronization Services Daemon

The first time you install Oracle Database 10g on a system, the installation configures and starts a single-node version of the Oracle Cluster Synchronization Services (CSS) daemon. The CSS daemon is required to enable synchronization between an ASM instance and the database instances that rely on it for database file storage. It is configured and started even if you do not choose ASM as a storage mechanism for database files. Because it must be running before any ASM instance or database instance starts, it is configured to start automatically when the system boots.

For Oracle Real Application Clusters installations, the CSS daemon is installed with Oracle Cluster Ready Services (CRS) in a separate Oracle home directory (also called the CRS home directory). For single-node installations, the CSS daemon is installed in and runs from the same Oracle home as Oracle Database. For this reason, you must use caution when removing Oracle Database 10g software from the system. Before you remove an Oracle home directory that contains Oracle Database 10g, you must either delete the CSS daemon configuration, or if necessary, reconfigure the CSS daemon to run from another Oracle home directory.

Using Network Attached Storage or NFS File Systems

Oracle Database must be able to verify that writes to a disk are completed successfully. NFS file systems, including file systems on NAS devices, may not be able to guarantee that writes to a disk are completed successfully, and this may lead to possible datafile corruption. Oracle recommends that you do not store files on NFS mounted file systems unless the storage vendor and storage device are listed in the Oracle Storage Compatibility Program list. This list is available from the following Web site:

http://otn.oracle.com/deploy/availability/htdocs/oscp.html

If your storage device is supported, you can use it to store Oracle software files, Oracle database files, or both.

Upgrading From Oracle8 Release 8.0.6 to Oracle Database 10g Release 1 (10.1)

If you are upgrading a database from Oracle8 release 8.0.6 to Oracle Database 10g and ConText Cartridge is installed, then you cannot use the Database Upgrade Assistant to upgrade the database. You must upgrade the database manually. For information about manually upgrading ConText Cartridge to Oracle Text, see the Oracle8i interMedia Text Migration manual and the Oracle Database Upgrade Guide.

AL24UTFFSS Character Set

To upgrade an existing database that uses the AL24UTFFSS character set, upgrade the database character set to UTF8 before upgrading to Oracle Database. Oracle recommends that you use the Character Set Scanner (csscan) utility for data analysis before attempting to upgrade your existing database character set.

The Character Set Scanner utility checks all character data in the database and tests for the effects of, and problems with, changing the character set encoding. Before running the Character Set Scanner utility, set the shared library path environment variable for your platform to include the $ORACLE_HOME/lib directory. The following table lists the appropriate shared library path environment path for each platform:

Upgrading an Existing Database on AIX

The following table describes the steps that you must follow to upgrade particular Oracle Database releases running on different versions of AIX. In some cases, to complete the upgrade, you must upgrade to an intermediate Oracle Database release before upgrading to Oracle Database 10g.