Following are the supported versions of HP Serviceguard:•A.11.19•A.11.20

Oracle versions supported with ASM are 10.2.0.4, 11.1.0.6, and 11.1.0.7 with interim patches 7330611 and 7225720 installed. Before these patches were released by Oracle, ASM kept descriptors open on ASM disk group member volumes even after the ASM disk group had been dismounted. This prevented the deactivation of the LVM volume groups. These two patches address the ASM descriptor issue and meets the Serviceguard requirement for supporting ASM. Oracle version 11gR2 is also supported but does not require interim patches to be installed.

NOTE: For information on the proposed framework for ASM integration with Serviceguard, please refer to the whitepaper High Availability Support for Oracle ASM with Serviceguard available at: www.hp.com/go/hpux-serviceguard-docs —> HP Enterprise Cluster Master Toolkit

.

The Oracle toolkit uses Multi-Node Package (MNP) and the package dependency feature to integrate Oracle ASM with HP Serviceguard. An MNP is used to encapsulate the per-node ASM instances with one or more Oracle single-instance failover packages that are dependent on this MNP. This configuration enables database instance to start up in the right order in relation to the ASM instance, and in the event of a failover, to relocate to a node where an ASM instance is available.

The Oracle toolkit scripts for ASM support with Serviceguard consists of a set of shell scripts that are used to start, stop, and monitor an Oracle ASM and database instance and the configured listeners. To use these scripts, the scripts must be integrated into the Serviceguard package control script in case of legacy packages. In the case of modular packages, the scripts must be integrated with the Serviceguard master control script. Subsequent sections provide guidelines for integrating these scripts with the Serviceguard package control script and the master control script.

In a Serviceguard cluster, packages created using the Oracle toolkit can co-exist with packages created using the SGeRAC toolkit. In such an environment where the Oracle toolkit and the SGeRAC toolkit coexist, the ASM MNP package need not be created using the Oracle toolkit. The single-instance database failover packages must be made dependent on the SGeRAC Clusterware multi-node package (OC MNP package). Also, the package should be created using the command line interface and Serviceguard Manager must not be used to create the packages.

A major advantage of ASM is the ease of management it provides for database files:

•The system administrator has only to specify the set of raw devices to be used in an ASM disk group; the tasks of configuring and administering volume/disk groups and file systems are eliminated. Oracle ASM makes use of the Oracle feature called Oracle-Managed Files and performs the tasks of creating, deleting, and extending files on behalf of database instances; additionally, it manages their mirroring and striping.

•If a device is added to, or deleted from, an ASM disk group, ASM automatically rebalances database file striping based on the new disk layout.

Figure 1, contrasts the Oracle storage hierarchy as it appears when platform or 3rd party volume managers and file systems are used for Oracle data files, compared to when ASM is used. The layers corresponding to file systems and volume managers are absorbed into ASM. The files and directories in the storage hierarchy are not visible using standard operating system commands; to display them the customer must use Oracle utilities.

Supporting Oracle ASM instance and Oracle database with ASM 27