Product Description

Real Application Clusters (RAC) and the Grid architecture are Oracle's strategy for scaling out enterprise systems to cope with bigger workloads and more users. Many books limit themselves by conceptualizing and theorizing about RAC technology, but this book is the first to portray implementing and administering an Oracle 10g RAC system in a Linux environment. This book features basic concepts underlying Linux and Oracle RAC, design strategies, hardware procurement and configuration, and many other topics.

The RAC-specific technologies described include configuration of the interconnect, OCFS, ASM, Cluster Ready Services, and Grid Control. The Oracle features RMAN and Data Guard are also discussed, along with available hardware options. The authors include practical examples and configuration information, so that upon reading this book, you'll be armed with the information you need to build an Oracle RAC database on Linux, whether it is on a single laptop or a 64-node Itanium cluster.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #439910 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 824 pages

About the Author
Julian Dyke is a senior database consultant with Intel Solution Services, specializing in implementation and performance tuning of Oracle Real Application Clusters. He has over 20 years of database experience as a kernel developer, production DBA, and consultant. He presents regularly at conferences, seminars, and user group events in the UK, Europe, and America. He also contributes articles and papers to various trade publications. Julian is a member of the Oak Table Network and is chair of the UK Oracle User Group RAC SIG. He maintains juliandyke.com, which provides information on Oracle diagnostics, trace, and execution plans.

Steve Shaw is a senior database consultant for Intel Solution Services, specializing in Oracle Real Application Clusters on Linux. Steve has over 10 years of commercial IT experience, including a period of time with Oracle Corporation. Steve is the author of Hammerora, the leading open source Oracle load-test tool. Steve has contributed articles to many Oracle publications and websites, and presents regularly at Oracle seminars, conferences, and special interest groups. He has also been the lead technical reviewer for a number of Oracle books.

Customer Reviews

The Magnum Opus on Oracle RAC
This book can easily be used as a college textbook on Oracle RAC. I am studying for the Oracle Certified Master exam and this is possibly the most high level book on Oracle I have read.

It has 3 major strengths which I found to be superior to any Oracle RAC books I have read (including the manual from Oracle).

1)Technical Depth
2)Comprehensive Overview and instructions
3)Quality of writing


1)Technical Depth
The authors write about Linux and Oracle and are high level experts in the subjects. For example, the authors have a very detailed description of how Oracle Cache Fusion handles locking across all the nodes in a RAC environment (probably the crown jewel of RAC technology). They also discuss, in detail, different types of CPU, memory, and storage and contains detailed description of each architecture. Lastly, it contains vast number of "how to" install, configure, change, analyze, backup/restore, and utilize Oracle RAC and Linux.

2)Comprehensive Coverage and Instructions
No small amount of detail has been skipped. The book contains every utility (there are many) provided by Oracle to implement RAC. It provides a good step-by-step coverage of Linux and Oracle RAC installation as well what each step is adding to the RAC environment. To top it off, it adds how to performance tune, administer, troubleshoot, backup/restore, and use Dataguard in a RAC environment. I can't think of a subject on RAC which the authors did not cover.

3)Quality of Writing
I was pleasantly surprised how well written this book is. Although far from a Pulitzer Prize material, it certainly belongs in that category amongst the Oracle books. Every praragraph has been well organized and written. The proofreader of this book deserves major praise for their work.

Excellent Book !
I was reviewing information about Julian Dyke, his presentations and publications are very good in general. This book in particular has interesting chapters like "Trace and Diagnostics" and "RAC Internals". It's not easy to find books with internals because this information in general is restricted. In my opinion is not for beginners, you need to have an Oracle background. I would highly recommend this book if you are an Oracle DBA working or starting with Oracle Clusters & Linux

Jose Valerio

Solid content
I am not a DBA, but I support several systems with various databases. I picked this book because I needed to get up to speed on Oracle RAC in a hurry. Even though I'm working with it under AIX, all of the concepts and core components are the same. This book was filled with the information that I needed and did so in a logical fashion. I was mainly interested in the clustering components and the book gave good descriptions and examples. This book enabled me to look at the systems in my environment and quickly figure out how it was configured and what state the various clustering components were in. I think the book is very readable and also makes an excellent reference. Again, I primarily do system administartion and clustering, but this book gave me a solid understanding of how RAC works which enables me to better understand the DBA's requirements and what the system requirements are for a RAC environment. It also helped me in determining proper kernel tuning parameters.