Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Simple HA for Oracle OpsCenter Using ZFS

So we're testing out Oracle's OpsCenter (Enterprise Manager...whatever) to see how useful it will be in our environment. Anything to help maintain the numerous zones, is welcome, right?

We downloaded the trial software (Finally, you can see before you buy!) and began installing and configuring. First thing I was curious about: How easily can we move this to another server, should the primary fail?

As they would have it, it's a fairly simple task, if you do some work, early on to prepare for it.

Visit http://wikis.sun.com/display/OC2dot5/About+High+Availability for a heads-up, though I have some caveats to ad to their doc.

When you unmount and export your dataset and zfs pool from node a to install packages to node b, be sure that once it's on node b, to run the uninstall script (http://wikis.sun.com/display/OC2dot5/Uninstalling+Ops+Center+Software). If you don't, the install will fail on node b, at where it tries to install/configure postgress. Do not do this, until after you've mount your xvm directory onto node b. Then run through the install as you did on node a, patch, etc. and it should be easily moveable between both nodes.

Also, note that the install makes several entries in your /etc/vfstab:
/var/opt/sun/xvm/uce/etc.opt - /etc/opt/SUNWuce lofs - yes -
/var/opt/sun/xvm/uce/var.opt - /var/opt/SUNWuce lofs - yes -
/var/opt/sun/xvm/uce/opt - /opt/SUNWuce lofs - yes -

Be sure to comment those out, when you move the services off of the node and onto the other, and remount them on the other server, before attempting to start OpsCenter on the other node. Directions for shutting down OpsCenter, are here: