Creating a Real Application Cluster with DBCA

Once the DBCA is invoked, the first page that the DBCA displays is the Welcome page for RAC. However, the DBCA only displays this RAC-specific Welcome page if it detects that the DBCA is running on a cluster node and the DBCA can communicate with Oracle Cluster Ready Services (CRS) previously installed by the OUI.

If the DBCA does not display the Welcome Page for RAC, then the DBCA was unable to detect that the clusterware (CRS) is running. If this happens, you should perform clusterware diagnostics by executing the olsnodes command. Once you get the DBCA RAC Welcome screen, to create a RAC database:

1. Select the Real Application Clusters database option, then click Next, and the DBCA will display the Operations page. The DBCA only enables Instance Management and Services Management if there is at least one RAC database configured on your cluster.

2. Next, select Create a database and then click Next, and the DBCA will display the Node Selection page.

3. The DBCA will highlight the local node by default. You must select the other nodes that you want to configure as members of your cluster database, and then click Next. The DBCA will then display the Database Templates page. If nodes that are part of your cluster installation do not appear on the Node Selection page, then you need to perform clusterware diagnostics by executing the olsnodes command.

4. The templates on the Database Templates page are the Data Warehouse, General Purpose, and Transaction Processing preconfigured templates. These templates include datafiles and specially configured options for each environment. However, the New Database template does not include datafiles or the specially configured options. You would use a template with datafiles if you want to create a preconfigured database. Select a template from which to create your cluster database, then click Next, and the DBCA will display the Database Identification page.

5. . . . See book for details

6. If you selected a preconfigured database template, such as the General Purpose template, then the DBCA will display the control files, datafiles, and redo logs on the Database Storage page. Select the folder and the file name underneath the folder to edit the file name. However, if you selected the New Database template, the template is without datafiles, and the DBCA displays the control files, tablespaces, datafiles, and redo logs. To change the tablespace properties, such as the datafile or the tablespace size, click the tablespaces icon to expand the object tree and click the tablespace. The tablespace property dialog appears on the right-hand side. Make your changes and click OK. Platform-specific topics for entering file names in the Database Storage page are:

a. For UNIX-based platforms, if you have not set the dbca_raw_config environment variable, then the DBCA displays default datafile names. You must enter override values for these names to provide raw device names for each control file, datafile, and redo log group file.

b. For Windows-based platforms, if the default symbolic links exist, then the DBCA replaces the default datafiles with these symbolic link names and displays them in the Storage page. If the symbolic links do not exist, then the DBCA displays the default file system datafile file names on the Storage page. In this case, replace the default datafile file names with the symbolic link names.

7. After you have completed your entries on the Database Storage page, click Next, and the DBCA displays the Creation Options page. Select one of the following database options and then click Finish.

a. Create Database—Creates the database

b. Save as a Database Template—Creates a template that records the database structure, including your supplied inputs, initialization parameters, and so on. You can later use this template to create a database.

c. Generate Database Creation Scripts—Generates database creation scripts.

8. The DBCA only displays the last option if you selected the New Database template. After you click Finish, the DBCA will display a Summary dialog. You should review the Summary dialog information and click OK. If you decide you don't want to complete database creation at this point, click on Cancel to stop database creation.

After completion of Step 20 the DBCA:

§ Creates the RAC data dictionary views

§ Creates an operative RAC database

§ Configures the network for the cluster database

§ Starts the services if you are on a Windows-based platform

§ Starts the listeners and database instances and then starts the high availability services