Re: Cluster file systems versus raw devices in Oracle RAC

I am currently designing a similar system for a customer right now.

In my opinion using raw disks makes your architecture more rigid than with a independant storage layer between the database and the disks. This means that you have to solve more availability issues on a higher level than I would like.

Providing your application layer (either databases or any other server) with a storage platform (/oracle is available on all nodes), gives you the flexibility you might want in an environment; every database can run from any node.

In case of GPFS; version 2.3 is said to support a 2-node configuration and no voting/quorum disks. I have been told that there is a tie-breaker construction to have the two nodes watch eachother. I have no information about directio yet (like in Polyserve ;-) .

ASM would be a solution between the storage and the nodes if only they could storage both the Clusterware files and the Oracle software inside... That we might need a third node in the cluster makes it a complex solution which in my humble opinion is likely to errors...

Robert.

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