The Oracle OCFS2 file system can be used to format shared storage for multiple node access. To accomplish this task, OCFS2 rpm must be installed and configured. Below is the procedure for preparing the shared disks for use, once OCFS2 has been installed and configured.

1. Logon to one of your Oracle servers as the root user.

2. Locate the shared storage presented in the directory /dev/mapper on both nodes.

-mylinux1
[root@mylinux1 ~]# ll /dev/mapper
total 0
crw——- 1 root root 10, 63 Jan 22 17:44 control
brw-rw—- 1 root disk 253, 3 Jan 22 17:45 DATA-50GB-02
brw-rw—- 1 root disk 253, 8 Jan 22 17:45 DATA-50GB-03
brw-rw—- 1 root disk 253, 1 Jan 22 17:45 VOTE-1GB-05
brw-rw—- 1 root disk 253, 2 Jan 22 17:45 VOTE-1GB-06
brw-rw—- 1 root disk 253, 4 Jan 22 17:45 HOME-50GB-02
[root@mylinux1 ~]#

-mylinux2
[root@mylinux2 ~]# ll /dev/mapper
total 0
crw——- 1 root root 10, 63 Jan 22 17:44 control
brw-rw—- 1 root disk 253, 3 Jan 22 17:45 DATA-50GB-02
brw-rw—- 1 root disk 253, 8 Jan 22 17:45 DATA-50GB-03
brw-rw—- 1 root disk 253, 1 Jan 22 17:45 VOTE-1GB-05
brw-rw—- 1 root disk 253, 2 Jan 22 17:45 VOTE-1GB-06
brw-rw—- 1 root disk 253, 4 Jan 22 17:45 HOME-50GB-03
[root@mylinux2 ~]#

3. The shared storage will be mounted on each node of the RAC. In this example our shared storage includes the following:

/dev/mapper/DATA-50GB-02
/dev/mapper/DATA-50GB-03
/dev/mapper/VOTE-1GB-05
/dev/mapper/VOTE-1GB-06

4. As the root user, format each shared storage device with the following command: NOTE: formatting of the share disks is only performed on a single node, repeating on additional nodes will destroy all information.

Example:

/sbin/mkfs.ocfs2 /dev/mapper/DATA-50GB-02

[root@mylinux1 ~]#

This procedure is repeated for each shared storage device.

Larry J. Catt, OCP 9i, 10g
oracle@allcompute.com
www.allcompute.com