Oracle: OFA Part 7

Dear Readers,

My name is Franz Devantier, creator of this blog.  I am an Oracle Certified Professional (OCP DBA 11g) Security DBA.  I will be sharing with you the basic duties of an Oracle DBA, and also some of the undocumented, and not so well known tasks. 

OFA – Optimal Flexible Architecture

(Part 7, Oracle Software and Administrative Data)

In Unix/Linux; All Oracle software, and administrative data should reside in a subtree of the Oracle Owner’s login home directory.

You can set this directory to the environment variable $ORACLE_BASE.

OFA Standard  8:

·         You must be able to execute multiple versions of the applications software simultaneously.

·         Upgrading must be simple for the administrator and as transparent as possible.

You need to configure the directory structure in such a way, that Standard 8 is possible.  You can achieve this by creating a directory structure something like this:

/Oracle_software_user/product/version

For example:

/u02/oracle/product/10.1.0

and

/u02/oracle/product/10.2.0

So in this way the different versions are logically separated.  To describe this in another way is to say that the $ORACLE_BASE stays the same, but the $ORACLE_HOME changes.

In an OFA compliant site, you can install a new version of the Oracle software, by simply creating a new $ORACLE_HOME.  The installation wizard will prompt you for these values.

After an upgrade, you need to update the oratab file, and make sure that the .oraenv call in a users profile, points them to the new instance.

You should now be able to remove the old $ORACLE_HOME from the box.  Again you can manage this through Universal installer.

OFA Standard 9

• The only files in the product/version sub-tree, should be derived from the Oracle Distribution Media.
• Administrative information or files about one database, must be separated from other databases.

The lifespan of these files will match the lifespan of the version of Oracle.  Make sure that you don’t put any files in this structure that could potentially outlive the version of Oracle that you are running.

You can fulfil the administrative files requirement, by storing the administrative files in either $ORACLE_BASE/admin/<db_name>/admin_subdirectories

Or

$ORACLE_HOME/admin/<db_name>/admin_subdirectories

Admin subdirectories are:

• ./adhoc                                ad-hoc SQL scripts for the database

• ./adump              Audit trail trace files

• ./arch                    Archived redo log files,  only if you are not using a flash recovery area, and there is nowhere else to hose these files.  Preferably the archive logs, should be housed on a separate drive or mount point.

• ./bdump              alert<sid>.log is housed here, as well as your background trace files.  Of course in 11g it is housed in a subdirectory of $ORACLE_BASE/diag

• ./cdump               core dump files

• ./create                                programs used to create the database.  Universal installer will often dump its create files here as well.

• ./exp                     Your export dump files. Good practice to connect with symbolic links to mount points setup for this purpose.

• ./dpump              datapump dump files

• ./logbook            files recording the status and history of the database

• ./pfile                    instance parameter files, you can have a link from $ORACLE_HOME/dbs or $ORACLE_HOME/database, to these files.

• ./udump              user SQL trace files

You may also like to create a Service_request sub-directory, to record all the details of the service_requests that you have submitted.

Franz Devantier,

Need a database health check?

devantierf@gmail.com

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