[Oracle RAC & VMWare] Creating disks in VMWare for Oracle RAC environments.

Hello all

How are you doing?

Some time ago, I helped my teammates Patricia Flores Solano (LinkedIn) and Thiago Ferreira (LinkedIn) create a document about a POC with VMWare and Oracle RAC that they were doing for a project.

The Oracle RAC installation follows the same steps as a Bare Metal environment, but we documented the process of creating the VMWare disks, which has some tricks and tips that can help to get better performance.

But always remember:

1. This step-by-step worked for us, but it might not work for you.
2. This post is designed to help you. Never change any productive or test environment without first testing and making sure the solution is suitable for your environment. 
3. I'm not responsible for that, ok?

Hope it helps. Let's get started!

1) We need to add on the sysctl.conf file.

       vm.swappiness = 1

       vm.dirty_background_ratio = 3

       vm.dirty_ratio = 80

       vm.dirty_expire_centisecs = 500 

       vm.dirty_writeback_centisecs = 100

2) Preparing Vmware Storage for Oracle RAC. 

For this, we will Shutdown the guest VM, edit VM, VM Option, Advanced , Edit configuration and Add new configuration params.

We'll change guest disk with enable.UUID=true.

3) Add PVSCSI

The "VMware Paravirtual SCSI adapter" is a high-performance storage controller which provides greater throughput and lower CPU use. VMware Paravirtual SCSI controllers are best suited for environments running I/O-intensive applications.

You can see more information about this here.

4) Add Disk for CRS Oracle RAC

5) Add Disk for DATA Oracle RAC in vCenter (VMs  >  linux01 > Click > Edit Settings)

6) ADD NEW DEVICE > Hard Disk

7) Deploy New Hard disk* and Edit

Location: HCI_Shared_Data

New Hard disk: 1700 GB

Disk Provisioning: Thick Provision Eager Zeroed

Sharing: Multi-writer

Disk Mode: Independent - Persistent

Virtual Device Node: SCSI controller 1

8) Now, I'll change the VM Linux 2 (VMs  >  linux02 > Click > Edit Settings)

9) ADD NEW DEVICE > Existing Hard Disk

10) Now, we'll check the disk.

[root@linux01 ~]# lsblk

NAME        MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT

sdy          65:128  0  1.7T  0 disk

sdf           8:80   0  100G  0 disk

└─sdf1        8:81   0  100G  0 part

sdo           8:224  0  1.7T  0 disk

sdw          65:96   0  1.7T  0 disk

sdd           8:48   0  100G  0 disk

└─sdd1        8:49   0  100G  0 part

sdm           8:192  0  1.7T  0 disk

sdu          65:64   0  1.7T  0 disk

sdb           8:16   0  220G  0 disk

└─sdb1        8:17   0  220G  0 part /u01

sdk           8:160  0  1.7T  0 disk

sds          65:32   0  1.7T  0 disk

sdi           8:128  0  1.7T  0 disk

sdq          65:0    0  1.7T  0 disk

sr0          11:0    1 1024M  0 rom

sdg           8:96   0  100G  0 disk

└─sdg1        8:97   0  100G  0 part

sdx          65:112  0  1.7T  0 disk

sde           8:64   0  100G  0 disk

└─sde1        8:65   0  100G  0 part

sdn           8:208  0  1.7T  0 disk

sdv          65:80   0  1.7T  0 disk

sdc           8:32   0  100G  0 disk

└─sdc1        8:33   0  100G  0 part

sdl           8:176  0  1.7T  0 disk

sdt          65:48   0  1.7T  0 disk

sda           8:0    0  110G  0 disk

├─sda2        8:2    0  109G  0 part

│ ├─ol-swap 252:1    0    4G  0 lvm  [SWAP]

│ ├─ol-home 252:2    0   55G  0 lvm  /home

│ └─ol-root 252:0    0   50G  0 lvm  /

└─sda1        8:1    0    1G  0 part /boot

sdj           8:144  0  1.7T  0 disk

sdr          65:16   0  1.7T  0 disk

sdh           8:112  0  1.7T  0 disk

└─sdh1        8:113  0  1.7T  0 part

sdp           8:240  0  1.7T  0 disk

You can create as many VMDKs as needed for DATA, FRA and RECO.

After that, just proceed with the installation as usual. 

That's it, guys!!! It's very easy, isn't it?

We hope that helps!

Regards

Mario