« RAC with ASM on Linux, Crash Scenario: Voting Disk Loss | Main | RAC with ASM on Linux, Crash Scenario: All Oracle Homes Loss »

RAC with ASM on Linux, Crash Scenario: ASM Spfile Loss

On this 5th scenario we lose the ASM Spfile.

The ASM spfile  in this case is located on a Raw Device, so backup and recovery from and to a Raw Device is explained.

Backup and restore using create pfile from spfile and create spfile from pfile can also be used. In this case it will be necessary to shutdown the database and ASM instances, then start the ASM instance with the pfile and recreate the spfile.

To simulate the ASM spfile loss we write zeros to it's raw device; because the ASM spfile is accessed only at startup this loss does not affect online work with the database or ASM instances.

The recovery steps include:
  • Restore the ASM spfile  from backup using dd
  • Check
Crash script and full details of the test: Crash Scenario 4 - ASM Spfile Loss

Important! : Before running a crash scenario be sure to Backup the ASM Spfile, details to backup it are included on the attached file.

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://blogs.oracle.com/mte1521/mt-tb.cgi/4326

Comments (3)

hai wu:

Hi Alejandro,
What's the benefits of using spfile for ASM/RAC? In 10gR1 installation, the choice for pfile is the first option there. Can we put spfile into disk group managed by ASM? What's the benefits of storing spfile into RAW disk versus ASM disk group for RAC?
Thanks,
Hai

Alejandro Vargas:

Hello,
On RAC with ASM, we create the ASM spfile on a shared location outside ASM disk groups, because in order to mount the ASM disk groups at startup you need to read the spfile before.
The database spfile can be located on ASM, because ASM must be up in order to open a database based on it.
I prefer ocfs2 instead of raw for OCR, voting disk and ASM spfile, but in many sites prefer to use raw devices instead, in OS's other than linux you may be forced to use raw devices if you dont want to use a third party cluster file system.

Excellent job. We are implementing RAC currently and these recovery scenarios really help us in preparing a bullet proof backup strategy

Thanks
Vijay.Cherukuri

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)

About This Entry

This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on May 7, 2007 6:10 AM.

The previous post in this blog was RAC with ASM on Linux, Crash Scenario: Voting Disk Loss.

The next post in this blog is RAC with ASM on Linux, Crash Scenario: All Oracle Homes Loss.

Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.

Top Tags

Powered by
Movable Type and Oracle