Installation Pre-Requisite Checks

Primary Server:

Oracle Software

When looking at installing the Dbvisit Standby product, you need to make sure that the required supported Oracle Database software is already installed and configured.

No outage is required for the installation of Dbvisit Standby.

On Linux a few key points to take into account:

• The location of the Oracle software is called the ORACLE_HOME. In the Dbvisit Standby configuration this variable is also called ORACLE_HOME.

• It is recommended that the database be listed in the /etc/oratab file

• Dbvisit Standby should be installed as the same user that was used to install the Oracle Database Software

• If role separation is used, where the Grid Infrastructure software is installed and owned by the “grid” user, and the Oracle Database software is owned by the “oracle” use, Dbvisit Standby should be installed as the “oracle” user

Standby Server:

Oracle Software

When looking at installing the Dbvisit Standby on the standby server, you need to make sure that the required supported Oracle Database software is already installed and configured. Dbvisit Standby can be used to create the standby database for you once it is configured. But if you already have a standby database in place, you can configure Dbvisit Standby to update and maintain the standby database going forward.

On Linux a few key points to take into account:

• The location of the Oracle software is called the ORACLE_HOME. In the Dbvisit Standby configuration this variable is called ORACLE_HOME_DR.

• It is recommended that the database be listed in the /etc/oratab file

• Dbvisit Standby should be installed as the same user that was used to install the Oracle Database Software

• If you are planning on using ASM storage for the standby database and you are using role separation (meaning Oracle Database software is installed as the "oracle" Unix account and the Grid Infrastructure software is installed as the "grid" Unix account) you will need to make sure that the Oracle executable in the Oracle Database software home has the correct permissions. If you do not have the correct permissions you will potentially get ORA-15025 errors, as you will not be able to see the ASM storage when creating a new database manually. For more details see this the Oracle Support note: 1084186.1. The steps below can be followed to ensure the executable has the correct permission. These steps include running the setasmgidwrap command as the "grid" user:

  root@dbvlin101[/u01/app/oracle/product/12.1.0/db_1/bin]: ls -altr oracle 
  -rwsr-s--x 1 oracle oinstall 282183593 Jul 28 17:49 oracle
  
  root@dbvlin101[/u01/app/oracle/product/12.1.0/db_1/bin]: cd 
  root@dbvlin101[/root]: su - grid 
  grid@dbvlin101[/home/grid]: . oraenv 
  ORACLE_SID = [grid] ? +ASM 
  The Oracle base remains unchanged with value /u01/app/grid 
  
  grid@dbvlin101[/home/grid]: setasmgidwrap o=/u01/app/oracle/product/12.1.0/db_1/bin/oracle 
  grid@dbvlin101[/home/grid]: cd /u01/app/oracle/product/12.1.0/db_1/bin/ 
  grid@dbvlin101[/home/grid]: ls –al oracle 
  
  -rwsr-s--x 1 oracle asmadmin 282183593 Jul 28 17:49 oracle

On the primary database server, it is assumed that you have already created a primary database and that this database is running without any issues. No outage is required during the installation of Dbvisit Standby.

For Oracle RAC environments, all the RAC instances should be running during the initial Dbvisit Standby installation.

To enable the use of a standby database, your primary database must be in archivelog mode. To determine if database is in archive log mode run SQL command:

sql> archive log list

Example:

SQL> archive log list;
Database log mode Archive Mode
Automatic archival Enabled
Archive destination USE_DB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST
Oldest online log sequence 21568
Next log sequence to archive 21571
Current log sequence 21571

If the database is not in archivelog mode you can use the following to enable it. Please note this requires an outage. Also make sure you have sufficient space in your fast/flash recovery area:

SQL > connect / as sysdba
SQL > shutdown immediate
SQL > startup mount
SQL > alter database archivelog;
SQL > shutdown immediate;
SQL > startup

For more details on enabling archivelog mode, please see the Oracle Documentation.

Dbvisit should be installed with the same account that is running the Oracle Database software, and in most Unix systems this will be the "oracle" Unix user account. The user should also be part of the Oracle DBA group, which in most cases is the "dba" group on Unix.

Dbvisit Standby does not make use of the Oracle Listener for database connections. All connections to the database are local connections, for example:

SQL> connect / as sysdba
Connected.

The sys database account can also be used by Dbvisit, example:

SQL> connect sys/syspassword as sysdba
Connected.

If operating system authentication is not allowed and user (sys) authentication is used, the credentials should be specified in the Dbvisit Database Configuration (DDC) file.

Dbvisit Standby uses email for alert notifications. Dbvisit Standby comes with its own mail client. The SMTP server needs to be specified so that Dbvisit Standby knows where to send the emails to. The SMTP server is usually in the format: mail.<your companyname>.com

It is recommended to make sure that both systems are aware of the others name and IP address. Using DNS entries or using entries in the “hosts” file can be used to do this.

Example entries in host file (note that xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx are IP addresses):

xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx your_primary_server_name
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx your_standby_server_name

Dbvisit Standby version 7 makes use of Dbvnet by default. It is still possible to make use of SSH for communication if required. It is recommended that you make sure the following ports are open on each of the servers to allow for communication between them, as well as to allow the end user to connect to the Dbvisit Web GUI:

• Dbvisit Neworking (Dbvnet)

  • Default port used is 7890

• Dbvisit GUI (Dbvserver)

  • Default port used for HTTP is 8081 

  • Default port used for HTTPS is 8443

  • If port 8081 is used it will attempt to make use of port 8082

• If SSH is used, port 22 should also be open

  In most cases you will need to allow these ports to be open in your IPTABLES configuration

Required Operating System packages

(Linux)

As of Dbvisit Standby version 7.0.10, the following package and dependencies must be installed when using Oracle Linux 6 64bit or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 64bit:

• glibc 
  
  

If you do not install these packages and their dependencies, you will get errors during Dbvisit Standby installation similar to the following (this is due to glibc.i686 not being installed on OEL6 or RHEL6):

/lib/ld-linux.so.2 bad ELF interpreter no such file or directory

It is required for 64bit versions of OEL6 and RHEL6 that you install the glibc.i686 package and ALL its dependancies.

If you have your YUM repositories configured you can use the following commands to install these required packages and dependancies:

 yum install glibc.i686

It is strongly recommended that you make use of the default location when installing Dbvisit Standby. The default Dbvisit Standby installation location is known as the Dbvisit Base directory.

On Unix it is important to pre-create this directory and make sure the owner and group used for this directory is the same as what was used for the Oracle Database Software installation. In most cases this will be the unix user "oracle" and group "oinstall" or "dba" 

On Unix the default location is:

/usr/dbvisit