In this section, you will

• Mount Solaris DVD on Virtual Drive
• Boot and install Solaris 10 on VMWare

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This section describes the following tasks

• Create Virtual Machine
• Add network cards
• Create new datastore for shared disks
• Add disks for ACFS, Binary Homes and Stage areas

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This section describes how to

• Install VMWare
• Login to VMWare Server
• Create a datastore for Virtual Machine

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The following images show the hardware setup used for setting up 11gR2 RAC on Solaris 10. The comments on the disk setup are typed in the image itself.

I have assigned 1 CPU and 2GB RAM to each of the VM nodes. This version of 11gR2 requires this much of memory. So do not try to install it if you do not meet hardware requirements. Also, preferrably, as in my case, the disks are physically separate. Node 1, Node 2 and shared disks are all on separate physical disks.

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Welcome to a multi part series on 11gR2 RAC – Solaris x86-64bit. The intended audience for this series are DBAs who wish to learn new features of 11gR2 hands on by setting up RAC in their environment. They could use this setup before they do an actual implementation on SPARC based setup.

I assume that you have read some basic documentation on Oracle 11gR2 and understand that it is different from earlier releases of Oracle RAC.

This series is for demonstration purposes only and not intended to be used as a guide for implementation. This installation was done in a test environment.

The following are the parts in the series

• Part 1 – Oracle 11gR2 RAC Solaris 10 – Introduction
• Part 2 – Oracle 11gR2 RAC Solaris 10 – Hardware Setup
• Part 3 – Oracle 11gR2 RAC Solaris 10 – VMWare Installation
• Part 4 – Oracle 11gR2 RAC Solaris 10 – Virtual Machine Setup & Configuration
• Part 5 – Oracle 11gR2 RAC Solaris 10 – Install Solaris 10 OS
• Part 6 – Oracle 11gR2 RAC Solaris 10 – Configure OS
• Part 7 – Oracle 11gR2 RAC Solaris 10 – Clone and configure second node
• Part 8 – Oracle 11gR2 RAC Solaris 10 – Prepare for CRS installation
• Part 9 – Oracle 11gR2 RAC Solaris 10 – CRS Installation
• Part 10 – Oracle 11gR2 RAC Solaris 10 – Installation and configuration of RAC database

To find the execution path of a query, first create the PLAN_TABLE by running the $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin/utlxplan.sql script.

Once created, you can use any of the following methods to see a query’s execution path.
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In an Oracle database, resources can be accessed in different modes (read or write), by different processes or sessions at the same time. In order to prevent access of resources in incompatible mode concurrently, Oracle implements mechanisms for protecting and managing SGA data structures and database objects being accessed concurrently while maintaining consistency and integrity. These mechanisms are locks (enqueues) and latches.

You can find more about locks or enqueues in this article Oracle Locks/Enqueues

1. What is a latch?

Latches are locking mechanisms used to protect shared memory structures from potential corruption due to concurrent access. In other words,latches ensure exclusive access to the shared data structures in the SGA. Access to SGA structures is seralized, using latches. Latches, unlike locks or enqueues are not used to protect database objects.
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