1 Oracle Database Installation Overview

1.1 Planning Your Installation

The Oracle Database installation process consists of five steps:

1. Planning your installation: This overview chapter describes the Oracle products that you can install and issues that you must consider before starting the installation.

2. Completing preinstallation tasks: Chapter 2 describes preinstallation tasks that you must complete before installing the product.

3. Installing software: Chapter 3 describes how to use the Oracle Universal Installer to install this product.

4. Completing postinstallation tasks: Chapter 4 describes recommended and required postinstallation tasks.

5. Reviewing the starter database: Chapter 5 describes the contents of the default starter database, including information about Oracle database accounts, passwords, and file locations.

1.2 Installation Considerations

This section provides information about Oracle Universal Installer and others concepts you should be aware of in planning an installation.

• Licensing Information

• Installation Differences Between Windows and UNIX

• Oracle Cluster Synchronization Services (CSS)

• Oracle Universal Installer Overview

• Oracle Base Directory

• Oracle Home Directory

• Multiple Oracle Home Support

http://metalink.oracle.com/

1.3 Oracle Database Installation Types

You can choose one of the following installation types when installing Oracle Database:

• Enterprise Edition: Installs licensable Oracle Database options, and database configuration and management tools in addition to all of the products that are installed during a Standard Edition installation. It also installs products most commonly used for data warehousing and transaction processing.

• Standard Edition: Installs an integrated set of management tools, full distribution, replication, Web features, and facilities for building business-critical applications.

  
  

  Note: If you purchased a Standard Edition license, and you perform a Custom installation, ensure that you install only the components covered by the Standard Edition license.

• Personal Edition: Installs the same software as the Enterprise Edition installation type, but supports only a single user development and deployment environment that requires full compatibility with Enterprise Edition and Standard Edition. Oracle Real Application Clusters is not installed with Personal Edition.

  
  

  Note: Oracle9i release 1 (9.0.1.1.1) was the terminal release for Personal Edition on Windows 98.

• Custom: Enables you to select the individual components that you want to install from the list of all available components.

  
  

  Note: Oracle Database Client is installed separately. You cannot install Oracle Database Client during an Oracle Database installation.

  
  

  See Also: Oracle Database Client Installation Guide for Windows for Oracle Database Client installation instructions Oracle Database Licensing Information for more information about the features available with each Oracle Database edition and for information about licensing

1.4 Additional Software Installations

The following components require separate installations. These components are not available from the Oracle Database 10g Release 1 (10.1.0.2.0) installation media:

• Cluster Ready Services

• Oracle Database Client

• Oracle Database Companion CD Components

• Oracle Database Examples

• Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control Framework

• Oracle HTTP Server

• Oracle Migration Workbench

Oracle Cluster Ready Services (CRS) are key subcomponents required by Oracle Real Application Clusters installations. It performs workload management and component restart. For example, when an instance supporting a particular service fails, CRS restarts the service on the next available instance that you have configured for that service.

You must install CRS before installing Oracle Real Application Clusters. The software is available on the Cluster Ready Services installation media.

Beginning with the release, Oracle Database Client software is available on the Oracle Database Client installation media.

The following components are available on the Oracle Database Companion CD installation media:

• JPublisher

• Legato Single Server Version

• Natively Compiled Java Libraries

• Oracle Database Examples

• Oracle HTML DB

• Oracle HTTP Server

• Oracle Text Supplied Knowledge Bases

Oracle Database Examples, formerly known as Oracle Demos, are available on the Oracle Database Companion CD installation media.

Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control framework includes the Oracle Management Agent, Oracle Management Service, and Oracle Management Repository, as well as Grid Control, a browser-based central console through which administrators can perform all monitoring, administration, and configuration tasks for the enterprise.

Beginning with this release, Oracle HTTP Server is available on the Oracle Database Companion CD installation media.

Oracle Migration Workbench software and documentation are available at

http://otn.oracle.com/tech/migration/

1.5 Database Configuration Options

During the installation, you can choose whether you want to create an Oracle database as part of the installation. If you choose to create an Oracle database, Oracle Universal Installer uses the Database Configuration Assistant to create it. You can choose to create one of the preconfigured database types, which are designed for a variety of different applications, modify one of the preconfigured database types, or create a customized database to suit your own requirements.

Oracle provides the following preconfigured database types that you can create or customize during the installation:

• General Purpose

• Transaction Processing

• Data Warehouse

See the online help provided by either Oracle Universal Installer or Database Configuration Assistant for a description of these preconfigured database types.

Oracle Universal Installer runs Database Configuration Assistant in one of two modes, depending on the choices that you make during the installation:

• Non-interactive mode

  If you choose either the Enterprise Edition, Standard Edition, or Personal Edition installation type, then choose a preconfigured database type, Oracle Universal Installer prompts you for the minimum amount of information required to create a database of the type you choose. It then runs Database Configuration Assistant in non-interactive mode to create the database after it installs the software.

  
  

  Note: Oracle recommends that you use this method to create a database if you have not previously created one.

• Interactive mode

  If you choose the Custom installation type or choose the Advanced database configuration option, then Oracle Universal Installer does not prompt you for database information. Instead, it installs the software and then runs Database Configuration Assistant in interactive mode. Using the screens in Database Configuration Assistant, you can either modify one of the preconfigured database types or create a custom database and specify precisely how you want to configure it.

  
  

  Note: If you choose this method to create a database, click Help on any of the Database Configuration Assistant screens for a description of the information that you must specify on that screen.

If you decide not to create a database during the installation, you can use Database Configuration Assistant to create one after you have installed the software.

1.6 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 (ASM)

• Raw Devices

If you choose the file system option, Database Configuration Assistant creates the database files in a directory on a file system 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 B 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.

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, Database Configuration Assistant 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.

1.7 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 on the Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control installation media.

• Deploy Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control locally on the database system.

  Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control software is installed by default with every Oracle Database installation except Custom. During a Custom installation, you can choose not to install Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control software. However, Oracle recommends that you do install it. 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 central database management.

  This option is available only if an Oracle Management Agent is installed on the system. When Oracle Universal Installer detects Oracle Management Agent on the system, you can 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 local 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, Oracle Universal Installer does not display the options listed in the previous section. Instead, it runs Database Configuration Assistant in interactive mode, which enables you to create a custom database.

Database Configuration Assistant also enables you to specify the Oracle Enterprise Manager interface that you want to use. Furthermore, you can also use Database Configuration Assistant 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

1.8 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 username and password for the backup job.

  Oracle Enterprise Manager uses the operating system credentials that you specify when running the backup job. The username that you specify must belong to the Windows group that identifies database administrators (the ORA_DBA group).

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 Database Configuration Assistant, 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.

1.9 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.

1.10 Upgrade Considerations

Oracle recommends installing Oracle Database 10g release 1 (10.1) into a new Oracle home directory. If you must install Oracle Database 10g release 1 (10.1) into an Oracle home directory that contains previously installed Oracle8i or Oracle9i components, then use Oracle Universal Installer to remove these components before beginning a new installation.

Refer to Oracle Database Upgrade Guide before deciding to upgrade an existing database. Upgrade procedures on Windows are covered in Oracle Database Upgrade Guide. However, this section describes several Windows-specific issues to understand before following the instructions in Oracle Database Upgrade Guide.

This section contains these topics:

• AL24UTFFSS Character Set

• Policies for Linking and Relinking Applications

• Oracle Real Application Clusters Upgrade Requirements

• Downgrading a Database