Installing Standby Multiplatform on Unix

You can follow these basic steps discussed in this section to install Standby Multiplatform.  This section covers the installation of Standby Multiplatform on a Non-RAC environment (Single Instance configuration).

The Standby installation uses approximately 250MB of disk space, but as trace files and log files will be stored in this location, 512MB free space is the recommended minimum.  

In multiplatform the default installation location is /usr/dbvisit, it is also known and referred to as the Dbvisit Base (DBVISIT_BASE) directory.

Consideration:  Dbvisit and SELINUX

For ease of use during installation and use of the product, we recommend to disable SELINUX functionality. SELINUX causes issues when you will try to start dbvagenmanager or dbvcontrol as systemctl service after installation.

If you get following result:

SELINUX is enabled and we recommend to disable it. Check with your sysadmins and ask them for disabling it.

If for any reason it’s not possible to disable SELINUX, you can try after the installation to run as root:

Step 1:  Create a "Dbvisit Base" Directory

The first step is to create the Dbvisit Base directory.  This is the directory into which Dbvisit Standby will be installed.  The default location is /usr/dbvisit

This directory should be owned by the Oracle/SQLServer Database software owner.  

The following steps can be executed as the "root" user to create the directory and set correct permission. This example shows an installation for the Oracle database:

Step 2:  Download Latest Software

The first step is to download the latest available version from the Dbvisit web site https://www.dbvisit.com 

Once the software is downloaded, you can copy it to a temporary location on your server.  

Important:

• Do not install Dbvisit Standby as the Unix "root" user.  

• When you download the installer, please make sure you download it into a temporary folder and that the installer is run from there.  Do not extract and run the installer from the location where you want the files to be installed.

In this example, we create a temporary directory called MP in /home/oracle and copy the software download into this directory. 

Now copy the installer file into the /home/oracle/MP location.

Step 3:  Extract Software Install Package

The next step is to extract the software package and then check if their permissions for agent and console installer have execute permission. First, use the gunzip utility to unzip the software and use tar -xf to extract the archive. The steps are shown below.

There are two installation packages available. install-agent-* and install-control-*. Executing install-agent-* will prompt you for installing the dbvagentmanager (aka agent). Executing install-control-* will prompt you for installing dbvcontrol (aka console, control center).

Step 4: Install standby multiplatform agent manager

The standby multiplatform agent must be installed on both primary and standby servers.

To preview the full help of the installer and the arguments (parameters) that can be passed for automated installations - run ./install-agent-v0.9.6BETA-47-g6f0eba0f -h

Example Installation:

Below is an example of standby multiplatform agent installation process.

Let's break down the steps and look at individual inputs that are required as part of the installation process

Step 4.1

By default, the installation goes to the /usr/dbvisit directory, but you could provide custom locations. It is not recommended to provide this as a users home directory(For example /home/oracle)

Step 4.2

The installation will list all the IP addresses on which Agent will Listen on port 7890. This is mainly used for file transfer between Primary and standby servers.

Step 4.3

The default agent file transfer port is used for transferring archivelogs/transaction logs and backup files between primary and standby. This value can be modified and a different port can be used.

Step 4.4

The host in which the control center is installed or will be installed. It is recommended to provide the resolvable IPAddress of the host, but a hostname can also be provided.

Step 4.5

Port 5533 is the default agent communication port with the control center.

Step 4.6

The passphrase provided must match across Agent and control center installation. This is to ensure that the control center can discover all the systems that are part of it.

Step 4.7

The installation proceeds and provides the options for starting the components and also provides a summary of the components installed along with ports used.

Step 4.8

Install and start the service. The sudo command can be used if the installed user has permission to start or run this

Step 4.9

Once the service is started, below are the processes that run.

Step 5: Install Standby Multiplatform Control Center

The control center must be installed only on one server. This can be either in your standby server or as per recommendations in a separate server.

To preview the full help of the installer and the arguments (parameters) that can be passed for automated installations - run ././install-control-v0.9.6BETA-47-g6f0eba0f -h

Example Installation:

Let's break down the steps and look at individual inputs that are required as part of the installation process

Step 5.1

By default, the installation goes to the /usr/dbvisit directory, but you could provide custom locations. It is not recommended to provide this as a users home directory(For example /home/oracle)

Step 5.2

The installation executable will list all the IP addresses that it will listen on

Step 5.3

The control center webserver port by default is 4433 and the Agent communication port is 5533. The agent communication port must match the port provided during the agent installation.

Step 5.4

The passphrase must be the same as the one provided during the agent installation. This is to ensure that the control center discovers all the hosts that are part of the configuration.

Step 5.5

The installation proceeds further after the configuration is complete and it also provides an option to change any provided value during the configuration process.

Step 5.6

Start the dbvcontrol service and add the service to the system services. This is done to ensure that the services are started automatically during server restarts.

Step 5.7

Once the service is started, below are the processes that run.

Installing Standby Multiplatform on Windows

Step 1: Windows Installation Pre-requisites

If installing Dbvisit Standby onto a Windows Based environment (Microsoft Windows 2008 and above - 64bit) the following pre-requisite checks should be performed:

• The user installing Dbvisit Standby may be a Local or a Domain user.

• The user must be part of the following Local Groups

  • Local Administrators

  • ORA_DBA

  • Users

  • If using Oracle 12c - Oracle Home DBA group 

• It is recommended that User Account Control be turned off - not strictly required, but highly recommended.

• The user will be granted the "Log On As Service" policy to allow the user to run the Dbvisit Standby Services

• When the Installer asks for the user that will be running the Dbvisit Services (Dbvnet, Dbvserver and Dbvagent) it is important that this user is in the Local Administrators and ORA_DBA Groups.  

  • If you are using Oracle 12c and during the Oracle Software installation you selected the option for Oracle to create a local account to own the Oracle Home and run the services - do not specify this user as the user to run the Dbvisit Standby services.  Rather create a new local account with the above-mentioned permission and use it to then run Dbvisit Standby services.

• When using temporary backup directories (example d:\temp) during the Create Standby Database (CSD) or Synchronize Standby Database (SYNC) options, you need to make sure that these directories allow for FULL read/write permission for the user running Dbvisit Services as well as for the user that is running the Oracle Database services.  

Log on as a Service

Important - when you install Dbvisit Standby and you specify the Windows user and password that will be used to run the Dbvisit Services, this user must have "Log on as a service" permission.  Otherwise, you might end up with an error message "specify valid username and password".   You can double-check the permission as follow:

Open

Directory Permissions

It is important to make sure that the directories used to store temporary backups - an example where the backups are stored during Create Standby Database (CSD) and Synchronise Standby Database (SYNC) have the Windows Oracle Homeowner added to have full read/write permission. Ensure, correct permissions are provided to custom backup locations for source and target transaction logs for SQL Server.

This also counts for the source dbvisit archivelog destination and target archivelog destinations.  If these directories do not have correct permission, the CSD, SYNC or Graceful Switchover processes could fail with errors.

Step 2: Windows agentmanager Installation

The steps for Installing Standby Multiplatform on Windows are easy and no outage is required.

We do recommend that before you install software into a production environment, you always test it first in your development or test environment to make sure you are familiar with the process and required pre-requisite steps.

In this section, we will now review the installation process.

Before you start the installer it is again important to make sure that the user account you are running the installer as and that will be used to run the Dbvisit Standby software must be in the Local Administrators, Users and ORA_DBA Windows Groups for Oracle configuration.  Failing to do this can lead to errors during installation.  Disabling User Access Control is also recommended.

We recommend you create a new Local Windows account that have the above-mentioned permissions and that this account is used to run the Dbvisit Standby software (it's Services and Windows Schedules).  

In the example we will discuss below a new Local account called "dbvisit" is created with the relevant groups assigned.  UAC was also disabled.

Before you continue, review the following checklist:

1. Is port 4433 open for the Central Console

2. Is port 7890 used by Dbvnet open and available

3. Is port 5533 used by agent for communication is open and available.

The above ports should be added to the Windows Firewall to allow the Dbvisit Standby components to communicate.  If you have a firewall between your Primary and Standby (DR) datacenter please make sure that these ports can be used.

Also, review any AntiVirus software application installed and make sure these do not block the Dbvisit Standby software components.

Unlike the previous version, the agent and control center installations are separate installer files. Below we will first look at agent manager installation.

Open

Step 2.1: Accept the license agreement

Step 2.3: Complete the configuration Details

( 1 ) Fully qualified name for the agent host. Here we have provided the short host name but it is recommended to provide the fully qualified host name.

( 2 ) The control center hostname. This is the server on which control center is installed.

( 3 ) The agent communication port. The default port is 5533

( 4 ) The User domain and the user in which the agent manager is installed. In this case its Administrator.

( 5 ) The password for the user

( 6 ) The agent hosts IPAddress on which the agent manager listens

( 7 ) Agent Transfer port. The default port is 7890. This port is used for file transfer between primary and standby and also run remote commands.

( 8 ) Click Nex to continue the installation.

Step 2.4: Agent Passphrase

The Agent and control center must be configured with the same passphrase. This is how the system knows that the systems are part of the same configuration setup. Recommended a strong passphrase.

Step 2.5: Installation Directory

The location of the software installation.

Step 2.6: Finish the Installation

Click Finish to complete the installation

The service agentmanager is running

Step 3: Windows control center Installation

The windows control center installation is straightforward and simple installation.

Step 3.1: Start the installer

Step 3.2: License Agreement

Step 3.3: Configuration details

The control center hosts resolvable IP addresses are displayed ( 1 ). The Webserver port ( 2 ) and the Agent Communication ( 3) . By default the agent communication port is 5533 and the webserver GUI port is 4433.

Step 3.4: Passphrase for control center.

This is the passphrase that must be the same as the agent manager passphrase. This is to ensure that the hosts are recognised as part of same system

Step 3.5:Installation Location

The default installation location is specified in the installer. This location can be changed to custom locations.

Step 3.6: Finish the installation

Click on Install to start the control center installation process.

Click on Finish to exit out of the installer.

After the Installation

After the installation is complete and the services are running, the control center can be opened in the browser using the following address. The default login password for the control center is admin/admin.

https://<control center address provided during agent installation>:4433

Below is the main screen after logging in using the default username and password.