Re: Oracle Standard Edition & RAC

Alex,

> Just a thought about another scenario - I know some sites are using
> Extended Distance Clusters with RAC. In this case it supposed to
> protect in site disaster scenarios. I'm personally very careful and
> even skeptical about that and don't have experience with such
> clusters. Does someone have any first hands experience to share?

Just in time.....

I have just finished deploying an extended clusters on a Sunfire server with EMC Storage with ASM mirroring for the the data centers at 500 yards apart connected by dark fiber. It requires careful planning and execution. Contact me offline if you need any specific details. Also I have lot of customer using extended RAC configuration. I guess one of our listmember is running extended RAC for over an year and I have not heard any complaints from him either.

BTw I do have an entire chapter dedicated to 'Extended RAC' in my RAC book where I discuss concepts and working principles behind the extended RAC clusters. However I didnot get in to the implementation details as they are rapidly changing in current/next versions. Also in version 11g, we can ask the ASM to read the local disks (asm_prefered_local_instance? or something similar to that, I can not remember that in the Friday evening while waiting for my delayed flight ) and some additional enhancements like support for partial resilvering after failures.etc.

Bottom line, It works great. It requires dedicated high speed dark fiber (read $$$$$)network and careful planning/testing/execution..

Have a good weekend !

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Best Regards,
K Gopalakrishnan
Co-Author: Oracle Wait Interface, Oracle Press 2004
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/007222729X/

Author: Oracle Database 10g RAC Handbook, Oracle Press 2006
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/007146509X/
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