Building a 5 nodes Oracle EBS using RAC and shared appl top 2.

Requirements

The first part of this series was a good example for small pieces answers. But this will not.
I have collected all requirements what is need for implement and well configure a 5 node EBS system (with RAC and shared appl top of course)

What are these requirements?

1. Documentations
2. Required Software
3. Recommended hardware configuration

Documentations

Currently there aren't any good and complete documentation which is contain all implementation and configuration step for creating our planned system. There are installation guides (DB, RAC, EBS), EBS release notes, note for creating RAC for EBS, note for HTTP load balancing, note for SSL security and so on, and so on.

This table contains all documentation what I used at our latest succesful implementation:

Name	Location	Id, note number
Oracle Applications Concepts	OTN	E12841-02
Oracle E-Business Suite Installation Guide Using Rapid Install	OTN	E12842-04
Oracle® E-Business Suite Installation and Upgrade Notes Release 12 (12.1.1) for Linux x86-64	Oracle Support	761566.1
Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3 Readme	Oracle Support	1080973.1
Oracle E-Business Suite Applications Technology Readme for Release 12.1.3	Oracle Support	1066312.1
Interoperability Notes EBS 12.0 and 12.1 with Database 11gR2 - 11.2.0.3	Oracle Support	1058763.1
Sharing The Application Tier File System in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12	Oracle Support	384248.1
Using Oracle 11g Release 2 Real Application Clusters with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12	Oracle Support	823587.1
Oracle® Real Application Clusters Administration and Deployment Guide	OTN	E10718-03
Oracle® Clusterware Administration and Deployment Guide 11g Release 2 (11.2)	OTN	E10717-03
Oracle® Grid Infrastructure Installation Guide 11g Release 2 (11.2) for Linux	OTN	E41961-02
Using Load-Balancers with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12	Oracle Support	380489.1
Implementing Load Balancing On Oracle E-Business Suite - Documentation For Specific Load Balancer Hardware	Oracle Support	727171.1
Enabling SSL in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12	Oracle Support	376700.1
Secure Configuration Guide for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12	Oracle Support	403537.1

They are recommended and very useful documentations:

Name	Location	Id, note number
Latest Oracle HRMS Legislative Data Patch Available	Oracle Support	145837.1
Oracle Applications NLS Release Notes, Release 12.1	Oracle Support	Depends on language
Concurrent Processing - CP Analyzer for E-Business Suite	Oracle Support	1411723.1
Using AutoConfig to Manage System Configurations in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12	Oracle Support	387859.1
Adding and Deleting Oracle RAC Nodes for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12	Oracle Support	1134753.1
Concurrent Processing - Best Practices for Performance for Concurrent Managers in E-Business Suite	Oracle Support	1057802.1
OPatch - Where Can I Find the Latest Version of OPatch?	Oracle Support	224346.1
SSL Primer on Using OpenSSL as a Certificate Authority with E-Business Suite	Oracle Support	1175193.1
R12 - The OAM URLs not changed to https after SSL install	Oracle Support	752807.1

Required Software

What software do you have to own for a succesfully implementation?

1. Oracle Enterprise Linux 64 bit or Redhat Enteprise Linux 64 bit version (at least version 5)
2. A well configured 1 or 2 node Oracle EBS 12.1.3 system with version 11.2.0.3 database. - Sorry this post doesn't contain instalation of Oracle EBS
3. Oracle Database 11g R1 base installation (11.2.0.3 patch is a full installation, so it is not really necessary software, but could be good)
4. Oracle Database 11.2.0.3 patchset (11.2.0.4 is very new at this time and it is not certified yet)
5. Patches
1. Database patches from interoperability note
2. Any other database patch what already applied for the original Oracle EBS system database
3. Application patches
4. Optionally a special linux patch made by Oracle (6078836)
5. Latest opatch patch for 11.2.0.3, for OAS software (6880880)

Recommended hardware configuration

What are the minimal hardware requirement? I couldn't answer it, it depends on your system, how many users will use it, what moduls will use them, how many form user, how many web user etc. etc.
If you have attentively read the previous post, you have seen some CPU and Memory data, but they are only there just for an example.

So back too the original quiestion, when you architect, plan a new system you have to think on these areas at least:

1. hardware (servers, storage, etc.)
2. network configuration
3. storage partition
4. backup solution
5. monitoring

Hardware

What are the minimal requirement for a 5 node EBS system with RAC and load balancer?

Very simple :) 5 server, a storage and a load balancer solution. (1 or 2 LB device, it depends on you)

In this configuration I have planned

• 2 node for RAC database servers
• 1 node for concurrent manager 
• 2 node for web tier (web and forms processing)
• 1 load balancer solution
• 1 storage solution

Of course you could use more than one concurrent manager server, in this case you have to configure the PCP for all concurrent manager server.

I wittingly wrote the "solution" word for the load balancer and storage, not "device". These 2 area usually already solved at customers. When you are planning the new system check them if they are certified with Oracle EBS or not.

By the way check that the storage service these requirements at least:

• could share partitions for all nodes
• could service cluster file system or at least NFS file system for all nodes

The servers could be virtual or traditional physical servers. But be aware about the Oracle certification and licence policy. For example Oracle licence on a vmware virtual server could be more expensive than if you use Oracle VM.

Network configuration

In the first post you have seen a simple network diagram. I put it here again with a small addition and an explanation.

It's recommended to create these subnetworks - from my viewpoint that how will you configure it physically it doesn't matter.

• A fully separeted subnetwork for RAC interconnect network
• A separeted subnetwork for communication between Oracle EBS nodes
• A subnetwork for communication between the load balancer and Oracle EBS nodes
• A network connection between the load balancer and the users network

The 2. and 3. subnetwork could be the same - I will use a same subnetwork in this post series.

As you seen I will configure https connection between the load balancer and users and between the Oracle EBS web tiers and load balancer.

Storage partition

I still love diagram :) I created an other for showing an example of storage partition. In this post series I will use these partitions and their mount point names.

So why I recommend them?

1. For all servers you will need a local storage (or partition from the storage) for storing the operating system related files.
2. For database nodes you will need:
1. A partition on each db node for storing Oracle cluster and database software files. (/u01 mount point)
2. Partitions for ASM disk groups for storing cluster data files and database data files and archive log files
3. A temporary partition which will be used during the installation. You will get details about it in later posts (/u04 partition)
3. A shared partition for application server for storing the shared APPL_TOP directory
4. A shared partition for all nodes for common shared files between database and application server (for example APPLCSF directory) and this post series I will use this parition for storing all INST_TOP directories instead of store them on local storage or on independent partitions. This solution has got many advantages but of course many possibilites for wrong administration.

Backup solution

Nowadays every Orace EBS system still needs a good backup solution. I have worked with many backup software and devices. All of them is useful if they could:

• backup and restore database files online with RMAN
• backup and restore standard files from file systems from all nodes in one step

Monitoring

Oracle EBS software contains a monitoring feature name Oracle Application Monitoring. Could be helpful but I recommend to implement, configure and use a much general monitoring system to monitor and handle the whole system like operating system, DB, RAC, OAS and of course EBS components. Could be good the Oracle's OEM, but Precise or any other monitoring system is good if they could monitor these components.