3.29.2008

Oracle 10g Admin I - 5 day course.

Now-a-day I am busy delivering Oracle University 5 days courses at various places (oracle onsite and customer site). Last week I have delivered a 5 day course on 'Oracle 10g: programming with PL/SQL' and starting with today, I am teaching 'Oracle 10g: Admin I' here at Oracle faclities in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I always felt that teaching is a tough job, however, I am loving it.

Happy Reading,

Jaffar

3.22.2008

Fun in teaching 'Oracle Programming with PL/SQL'

I am currently teaching a 5 day Oracle training course 'Oracle 10g: Programming with PL/SQL' and its been pleasure refreshing the basic concepts once again.

There were 12 atendees on the day 1 for this class, all of them have ample of programming experience in VB and .NET technologies. Though, not many serious questions have been asked on day 1, but, I loved teaching the Programming concepts.

Today day was the first day and still 4 days to go.

Happy Reading,

Jaffar

3.14.2008

100,000 HITS!!!

This morning my blog got 100,000 hits and its glad to see the magical number (100,000) despite the fact that my blog is not so much familiar like other Oracle Gurus blog.


Regards,

Jaffar

3.12.2008

Now my articles appears on SSWUG.org web site - WITHOUT MY PERMISSION!!

If I remember correctly, sometime back couple of people complained that their articles appeared / published on SSWUG.ORG web site without their knowledge and permissions.

Today, I was shocked and surprised to see couple of my articles (which were written on blog) appeared on this site. I don't remember that they have ever taken my permissions to publish at their site.

Following is the link of few articles published on their web site:

Simulating 11g Snapshot Standby Database feature on Oracle 10g?
http://www.sswug.org/see/37089

Change behavior of GROUP BY clause in 10g
http://www.sswug.org/see/34897


I don't mind publishing my articles on their web site if they would have taken my permission.

Happy Reading,

Jaffar

Ad - Looking for some consulting work (specially in Saudi Arabia)

Currently I am looking for any Oracle database consultancy work or any training offer here in Saudi Arabia (even out side Saudi Arabia).

Following are my specialized ares for consultancy work:

Database installation/configuration
RAC Setup
Database Migration
Data Guard/Physical Standby Setup (Disaster Recovery)
Performance Tuning
RMAN Policies and Setup

Following are my expertise for Oracle Technology Training:

Advanced RMAN concepts - 1 day
Automatic Storage Management (ASM) - 1 day
Data Guard - 2 days
Database Concepts

Feel free to contact me on sjaffarhussain@gmail.com for further enquirers.

Happy Reading,


Jaffar

3.11.2008

ocrconfig 11g improvement

Starting in 11g, the ocrconfig command now supports manual backup option which enables you to perform ocr file backup at any time, rather than waiting for the default automatic backup (i.e. every 4 or more hrs) interval.

Using the ocrconfig -manualbackup option, you can perform the manual (binary) backup on demand.

The -showbackup option now includes auto and manual flags that you can optionally specify to view the auto/manual existing backup information.

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B28359_01/rac.111/b28255/votocr.htm#i1012456


Happy Reading,

Jaffar

3.09.2008

Wow! I am able to change my email ID on OTN forums.

It was a known fact that once you setup an email id on the OTN forums, it was not possible to change the email id again and many people were just surprised about this behaviour.

I don't know, how many of you aware that the changing of email id on OTN forums is possible now. I knew that many of you are least bothered about this, however, if anybody wants to change the email id, now you can do that easily and get rid off your legay email id.

How to change the profile information on OTN forums:

Once you log in on OTN forums, click 'Your Control Panel' option on right top corner which gives the facility to change the profile information, including your email id.

Happy Reading,

Jaffar

3.06.2008

Complete Checklist for Manual Upgrades to 11gR1 - ML Note:429825.1

I am really not sure how many of you aware of the newly published Metalink Note about step-by-step manual upgrade to 11gR1.

Metalink Note : Note:429825.1. (latest revision on 05-MAR-2008)

Jaffar

Does ASM has controlfile?


SELECT * FROM V$VERSION;
BANNER
----------------------------------------------------------------
Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.1.0 - Prod
PL/SQL Release 10.2.0.1.0 - Production
CORE 10.2.0.1.0 Production
TNS for 32-bit Windows: Version 10.2.0.1.0 - Production
NLSRTL Version 10.2.0.1.0 - Production

SQL> select instance_name from v$instance;

INSTANCE_NAME
----------------
+asm

SQL> show parameter control_files

NAME TYPE VALUE
------------------------------------ ----------- ------------------------------
control_files string D:\ORACLE\PRODUCT\10.2.0\DB_1\DATABASE
\CTL1+ASM.ORA


Probably we all know that ASM consist of an Instance, doesn't have database, i.e. physical structure. Therefore, the above definitely misleads.

According to the ASM book, the control_files parameters point to a dummy (nonexistent) file. This is the default internal value for this parameter and it is a meaningless value in the ASM instance.


Happy Reading,

Jaffar

3.01.2008

Oracle Automatic Storage Management - Book Review

I have borrowed this book from my colleague to read during the week-end and at the same time, thought of writing a summary/review. When I told my idea, I knew that my family disliked this, specially during week-end.

The book started with the ‘Foreword’ page consists of ‘History of ASM’ headline which is written by Bill Bridge (an architect in Oracle over 18 yrs and the creator of ASM).

He revealed few interesting points about ASM history, like when did he get an Idea about ASM, how it can be useful with Oracle technology and the total time which took to build ASM technology.

Chapter 1 – Storage Stack Overview

This chapter starts explaining an overview about Disk drive technology, disk layouts, Disk Drive performance, different class of storage system architectures (such as SAN, NAS, DAS and SCSI) .

RAID levels also been discussed, and storage arrays concepts too.

Conclusion:

It might look interesting, but, I have skipped this chapter in order to read more about ASM concepts.


Chapter 2 – ASM Instances

This chapter starts on a note about ASM introduction, managing ASM (startup/shutdown) instances, few important ASM Instance parameters (such as instance_type, asm_diskstring & asm_diskgroups), ASM instance new background processes, V$ ASM views, ASM installation, upgrade and patching concepts.

It also talk about the significance of two ASM files, the ‘ab_.dat ‘ and the ‘hc_.dat’ that are present under $ORACLE_HOME/dbs directory.

These files are used by the RDBMS instances for env. Information and health check monitoring.

Note : Beware, these files should not be deleted.

Conclusion:

Nothing new has been offered in this chapter. This information is already available in the Oracle documents.

Chapter 3 – ASM disk

This chapter starts explaining about logical term LUN and explained about creating LUNs, LUN optimal sizes and what is the minimum disk size (4mb) and maximum (2 power 32 MB). Also, explained disks discovery(asm_disktring init parameter) and explained the meaning of disk header status (Former, Candidate, Member & Provisioned).

It also talks about the disk preparation/configuration on different OS, such as, Solaris, AIX and Windows and how to use the asmtool & asmtoolg utilities.

Conclusion:

Nothing new offered in this chapter as well.

Chapter 4 – Diskgroups and Failure Groups.

This chapter started explaining about ASM diskgroup concepts and why ASM diskgroups are differ from typical LVM (logical volume manager). Also discussed ASM diskgroups redundancy types (normal, high and external) and their practice.

In the next segment of this chapter, it talk about Creating Diskgroups, default ASM Disk Names & how to change default disk naming convention and Diskgroup Numbers. An interesting point was made, i.e., “you are not restricted to having two failure groups for normal redundancy and three for high redundancy”.

Couple of new feature of v11g ASM, ASM Preferred Read, Diskgroups Attributes and Fast Disk Resync have been discussed.

In the last segment of this chapter, it explained I/O concepts and I/O failures. The chapter finished explaining about the Space Management Views and important columns that need to consult for space management.

Conclusion:

This chapter gave some good inputs about I/O errors, 11g new features, ASM extent management , understanding of redundancy level and etc.

Chapter 5 – ASM Space Allocation and Rebalance

I particularly liked this chapter, it presented deeper insights about ASM Space allocation, operations, such as ASM AU (Allocation Units), ASM Extents distribution evenly among existing disks, how ASM Strips works, and difference between coarse and fine-grained striping types and which type of striping is good for what type of database files.

It also discussed when to change the default values of _asm_ausize (deault 1m) & _asm_stripesize (128k/1M) and how to set/change values for VLDs databases.

I also like the way author explained about ASM Rebalance operation concepts and the impact of setting various values to the ASM_POWER_LIMIT init parameters.

I really like the point “It is commonly believed that adding and dropping a disk against the same diskgroup required two separate rebalance activities. In fact, disks can be dropped and then added and a single rebalance command can be evenly distribute the I/O”. It shows how to avoid two rebalancing operations on this occasion.

A 11g new feature Fast Rebalancing which overhead of ASM-to-ASM and ASM-toRDBMS messaging also been discussed.

Conclusion:

I really enjoyed reading this chapter which gave me great insight of ASM extent mechanism, rebalancing and striping internals. It also provides few very useful scripts.

Chapter 6 – ASMLIB Concepts and Overview:

Since I have not worked much on Linux, I have quickly reviewed this chapter about ASMLIB API which is currently available on Linux OS.

This chapter explains the benefits of ASMLIB API, and the following functionality of ASMLIB:

  • Device Discovery
  • I/O processing
  • Performance and reliability

Explained ASMLIB configuring, Managing disk in ASMLIB, Upgrading ASMLIB, Migrating to ASMLIB and troubleshooting ASMLIB.


Chapter 7 – ASM Files, Alias and Templates

This chapter explains about the default ASM Filenames, creating tablespaces, ASM Alias and Templates.

Conclusion:

Nothing new offer in this chapter.

Chapter 8 – ASM Command-Line

This chapter explained about the ASMCMD (unix based) utility and its usage. It starts explaining existing means to manage and access ASM and its components.

I really liked the following 11g new features:

Bad Block Remapping in ASMCMD. Starting with 11g, when ASM redundancy is used, it is possible to recover bad sot by restoring the data from their mirror copy using the ‘remap’ command.

Note : ‘remap’ don’t fix logical errors or corruptions detected by the RDBMS.

ASMCMD Copy:

Starting with 11g, moving datafiles in and out of ASM made easy with “copy” command introduced in ASM.

Conclusion:

11g couple of new features about ASMCMD utility worth to know.


Chapter 9 – Managing Databases in ASM

This chapter started on a note on how to use ASM while creating databases and covered some good points about the internal functionality of CSS (Cluster Synchronize Services) daemon/process, how RDBMS interacts with ASM, important background process (role of RBAL, ASMB & 00nn b/g), few vital parameters that influence ASM performance (like, processes + add 16, large_pool add additional 60k and shared_pool size additional memory to store extent maps and concluded with good examples of converting ASM no non-ASM and vice-versa.

Conclusion:

Explained well about CSS internal behavior, how RDBMS communicates with ASM instance, converting instances from ASM-to-Non ASM and vice versa.


Chapter 10 – ASM Persistent Data Structures

Stars explaining about MEATADATA and where does ASM stores the metadata, and different types of metadata. ASM has two main classes of metadata, physical and virtual metadata.

Physical metadata which located at fixed locations on disk contains the following:

  • Disk Header
  • Allocation Table(AT)
  • Free Space Table (FST)
  • Partnership Status Table (PST)

Virtual Metadata stored in ASM files and contains the following:

  • File Directory
  • Disk Directory
  • Active Change Directory (ACD)
  • Continuing Operations Directory (COD)
  • Template Directory
  • Alias Directory
  • Attribute Directory
  • Staleness Directory
  • Staleness Registry


Chapter 11 – ASM Operations

This chapter is one of those chapters I liked in this book. It really explains how ASM works internally on the following condition:

  • First time when RDBMS instance tries to access an ASM file.
  • Operations on ASM Files
  • File creation
  • File open
  • File input/output (I/O)
  • File close
  • File delete

It also talk about the variable sized extents and Striping types (such as Coarse and fine-grind), Resync, Rebalancing and ASM Instance Recovery & Crash Recovery concepts.

Conclusion:

This is one of interesting chapters present in this book which offers an internal mechanism of ASM functionality on the above mentioned operations.


On APPENDIX

Appendix A: explained about ASM and Storage Array Configurations.

Appendix B : Troubleshooting – In page, it discussed about ASM startup issues, Diskgroup mounting issues, Space related Issues and a walkthrough of an ASM alert log.

Appendix C: Scripts and Tips - Automatically Starting up and Shutting down ASM instance in Non-RAC env.

Migrating Individual Non-ASM datafiles to ASM.


Overall thoughts:

This book is recommended for someone who serious wants to study about ASM technology and its in & outs.

Having a copy of this book is better than scanning 100th of Oracle documents.

This book is summarized and explained all ASM contents to a great extent.

For me, I liked 4 chapters in this books and might need another read.

Happy Reading


Jaffar