RE: Varitas Cluster Software + Oracle Clusterware Installation

If you're building an Oracle RAC cluster, you'll install VCS (actually, SFOR) first and then install Oracle Clusterware. You *must* have Oracle Clusterware--it is not optional. However, the "magic" is that when Oracle Clusterware is installed "on top" of VCS, it detects VCS and integrates with it by delegating cluster membership duties and authority to VCS.

Short answer: for RAC, yes, you need both. For failover, VCS is fine by itself.  

...the original post didn't specify platform. It turns out that SFRAC is now certified for all 3 Linux distros (EOL,RHEL,SLES). So if this is Linux RAC, then SFRAC will ***not*** integrate with VCS. They run in parallel in that situation just as did RAC on PolyServe.    

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