Oracle Database Tips by Donald Burleson

Oracle10g Grid Computing with RAC
Chapter 8 - RAC Administration 

Introduction

This chapter is devoted to the administration features that are specific to a RAC system. Even though the instances in a RAC system generally follow the same administration methods and principles as a stand-alone instance, RAC has certain unique administration issues.

In this chapter, we will cover topics such as parameter management, undo management, space management, handling redo threads, and data files. We will also focus on server control utility, the global services daemon, the Oracle Enterprise Manager, and the usage of SQL*plus utility.

We will begin with setting up and managing the configuration parameters that control all of the system features of the database and instances.

Parameter Management

When the Oracle server starts up, it uses a parameter file that contains initialization parameters. These parameters specify the name of the database, the amount of memory to allocate, the names of control files, and various limits and other system parameters.  In Oracle Database 10g, you can replace the initialization files with an SPFILE, which allows many Oracle parameters to be changed dynamically.