11-25-2013 05:03 AM
Hello experts.
It's being almost a month testing and digging on the VCS documentation regarding "Data Guard and Oracle agents supported by Veritas".
The first I can say, documentation is incomplete, confusing and it assumes many things which is a REAL PAIN for a newbie.
Anyhow, after weeks of issues and spending hours trying to understand who the whole thing works together, I still have many questions.
Scenario:
I read the full documentation regarding Oracle Data Guard Agents for Veritas which was pretty much a real challenge.
Questions I have:
There is an example of what "vague" means. This is a portion of the document:
Note: For activateStandby, deactivateStandby, flashbackRecover, SnapshotOn, and SnapshotOff action functions, you must increase the values of the ActionTimeout and MonitorInterval attributes for OraDG and OraDGSnap types before running.
To "increase" them. Right. How much??? I found some values on another document but not sure why I have to do this or how to confirm the values are good. There are many other examples like this which makes VCS and Oracle implementation a pain.
Thanks for any help you can give me. Ask me for any information and I'll provide it.
Alex.
Solved! Go to Solution.
11-25-2013 07:58 AM
I configured the Oracle DG agent about 3 years ago and it worked fine, but I agree the documentation is not great. I don't know that much about Oracle, but my understanding from the "About the agent for Oracle Data Guard" is that:
11-25-2013 05:46 AM
Can you copy and paste or attach your main.cf file.
Mike
11-25-2013 06:20 AM
Here you have.
Keep in mind that I have remove the listener resource from here because of the "issue" I had during switchover.
11-25-2013 07:58 AM
I configured the Oracle DG agent about 3 years ago and it worked fine, but I agree the documentation is not great. I don't know that much about Oracle, but my understanding from the "About the agent for Oracle Data Guard" is that:
11-25-2013 08:32 AM
Hello Mike. First of all, thanks a lot for your time on this. Believe me, I spent nights on all these issues and I'm not newbie on Oracle's technologies.
Anyhow, if what you say is correct, then it makes perfect sense and it would be another disappointed surprise on the documentation as it does't mention the option of one OR another agent. So, it's a FACT that I can not use them both? Just checking.
Yes,
I'll remove DataGuard and see if by using hagrp -switch on the Broker, I can make it work.
YES. When I had it on the main, I have configured the database resource to depend on the listener, and that's the main reason on why I can't understand why the Netlsnr shut it down when the database comes down :(. Maybe, If I only have the broker and the listener, everything will start to work magically.
There is nothing like Oracle DG outside VCS. What VCS does (with its agent) is to perform the same tasks you would perform from SqlPlus to do a switchover for example.
Broker (dgmgrl) works fine from outside VCS. What I'm doing right now is to freeze the agents and then run the switchover but it's clearly a dumb practice just for testing.
I'll check the profile (which I don't believe is causing any issues).
Again, thanks for your inputs. I'll test it and let you know the results.
BTW, the good side on all this is I've faced MANY (if not all) the possible issues so I've learned a lot.
Thanks,
Alex.
11-25-2013 09:04 AM
Note, if you use BDG roker agent then you the need theStartUpOpt = STARTUP for Oracle resource , not CUSTOM as it needs to be for DG agent.
Mike
11-25-2013 09:38 AM
Ok. That makes all this more understandable as one of the agents uses
"StartUpOpt = CUSTOM"
and the other one
"StartUpOpt = STARTUP"
Now, how can I perform the switchover from SVC using the OraDGBroker instead of the dgmgrl?
Should I perform the switchover manually from dgmgrl?
11-25-2013 09:53 AM
In VCS just switch oradg_broker_grp to the other node - this will cause VCS to call the online function for the Oracle Broker DG resource which will run dgmgrl failover or switchover.
Mike
11-25-2013 10:02 AM
I've tried that but nothing happens. Maybe I have to wait a little longer? Trying again right now.
This is what I've got last time from Engine log:
2013/11/25 14:54:54 VCS NOTICE V-16-1-10301 Initiating Online of Resource oradg_broker (Owner: Unspecified, Group: oradg_broker_grp) on System node2
2013/11/25 14:54:56 VCS INFO V-16-1-10298 Resource oradg_broker (Owner: Unspecified, Group: oradg_broker_grp) is online on node2 (VCS initiated)2013/11/25 14:54:56 VCS NOTICE V-16-1-10447 Group oradg_broker_grp is online on system node2
11-25-2013 10:38 AM
I've read the agent guide again, and as you say it is confusing as it is not clear which statements relate to both agents and which refer to just the "Oracle Data Guard agent" as oppose to the "Oracle Data Guard broker agent" - so I think the statement in the introdution:
The Oracle Data Guard agent supports replicated data clusters on Linux and Solaris operating systems
Add a new group with at least one resource of type OraDG or OraDGBroker for VCS
Create an OraDG service group and configure the attributes of the OraDG resource that you added.
11-25-2013 01:22 PM
In all this mess, your help is obviously priceless. Thanks for that again Mike.
The main problem when using Data Guard Agent to do the switch (hagrp -switch oradg_grp -to nodeX) is that the actual BROKER configuration (managed by Oracle's dgmgrl) never gets aware of what happened in the backend and it gets "corrupted" showing wrong information. The only solution is to recreate the configuration as it will keep believing the primary database is the one from before the switch happened which is clearly wrong.
So i guess the only two options are:
I guess in case of number 2, I rather should not use dgmgrl at all.
What do you think?
Alex.
11-25-2013 02:19 PM
Its seems a bit poor that if you use SQL Plus to switch Oracle Dataguard that Oracle doesn't update Oracle's dgmgrl BROKER configuration, so you could perhaps query this with Oracle, unless using dgmgrl is the official supported way from 11g and SQL Plus method is only available for backward compatibilty and if this is the case then the Symantec VCS agent really needs updating to allow Oracle Data Guard broker agent to be used in an RDC (if it can't already as the documenation is not exactly clear)
Mike
11-25-2013 03:40 PM
Hi Alex and Mike,
I just wanted to let you know that I saw this thread and sent a link over to our Documentation team so that they could investigate the docs that you refer to here, and it looks like there's an opportunity for revision/updating. Someone from that team may ping you for additional information.
Best,
Kimberley
~ Community admin
11-25-2013 04:46 PM
I'm nobody on Veritas's world but I'm open to provide any information needed to improve the documentation.
Thanks,
Alex.
12-11-2013 03:39 AM
Kimberley.
I haven't got any information from the documentation team and besides I've marked this as RESOLVED, I still have lots of questions regarding how to properly set this up.
Thanks,
Alex.
12-13-2013 07:48 AM
Hi Alex,
Thanks for letting me know. I'd touched base with our Docs team and believe they saw they thread, but will remind them that no one has reached out to you directly yet <<correction, looks like Nayana above did>> - this seems like really interesting and valuable information for us at Symantec to collect.
Thanks again for your help!
Best,
Kimberley
12-13-2013 09:16 AM
Hello Alex,
I am from the Agent Pack documentation team. Can you send me an email addressed to nayana_dighe@symantec.com with the questions you have? With the help of the development and QA teams, I will try and get you the information you are looking for and will also update the agent guide at the earliest.
Best regards,
Nayana Dighe