MCService Guard and ORACLE

[Subbu Krishna]

Hello,

We are planning to implement MCServiceGuard in an ORACLE environment. Can
someone post relevant documents / lessons learnt and guidelines for implementation.

TIA.

SK.

[Rick Garland]

Oracle Parallel Server works well in the MC/SG setup.

[Subbu Krishna]

Hello Rick,

Thanks for your response. Do you know of pros and cons of using
OPS in a MC/SG environment.

SK

[Antoanetta Naghiu]

Except the cost of equipament (hardware, software) there are no contra.

[melvyn burnard]

You need to be aware that there is a separate version of MC/SG for Oracle Parallel Server, namely MC/ServiceGuard OPS Edition. It was formerly known as MC/LockManager.
It is in fairly wide use although nowhere near as much as straightforward MC/ServiceGuard.
You need to think on whether you need the OPS facilities or not before making the choice, as MC/SG OPS will support ONLY Oracle Parallel Server.
Also, as of version 11.x of MC/SG OPS, MirrorDisk/UX is unsupported, so you have to use RAID arrays.
May I suggest you go to
http://www.docs.hp.com/ha and have a good browse through this documentation. It may answer many questions you have about what you are looking to do.

[Rick Garland]

In another life, we were using the Parallel Server and had the Lock Manager as well.
We found that in the event of a failure (system, network, peripherials, etc.) this allowed for the 'true' failover of the Oracle processes and database. There wasn't much of a user impact (maybe a 2 sec delay) but they were able to continue to work without knowing what had happened. During maintenance, the same situation. Little or no user impact and the database did not stop.

[Ian K. Phillips]

Hello,

A couple of points worth considering:

What is the real requirements for availability and what period of downtime can you live with. If the answer is zero then look at OPS and ServiceGuard/OPS. If however, the answer is more like a couple of minutes then look at ServiceGuard.

What are your requrements for site resilience against server resilience - should you be looking at a campus cluster or even wider.

How many nodes are required in the cluster anf more importantly - how many applications do you need to in operate in the cluster?

[Wodisch]

Hi,
I do remember having seen "support problems" with MC/SG and Oracle (not OPS):
HP was not allowed to answer Oracle-questions, and Oracle refused to answer, if
you had not installed the Oracle-codefiles (ORACLE_HOME) individually on both/all
nodes (needing multiple Oracle licences). Switching ORACLE_HOME was working
pretty well - just not supported (at that time, at least).
HTH,
Wodisch