Customer Reviews

Oracle9i RAC: Oracle Real Application Clusters Configuration and Internals (Oracle In-Focus series)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I purchased this based on Madhu Tumma's review (Madhu you have changed your identity to MTM). I agree with some of the sections like quorum disk and split brain architectures are well explained, the rest of the book is not worth it.

Chapters are not complete (like other reviewers have also indicated), most of the contents are referenced to outside material. Do a search for the string 'step-by-step' on metalink and you will get everthing this book contains. The book contains many incomplete sections and several errors. I searched all possible sources for 'automated freelist' could not find it, what's this? Similarly, cache fusion is better explained in the Oracle concepts document. Overall quality of printing is also bad.

Mike I have purchased your earlier books and have liked them however this one is disappointing.

At the outset I thought this was a great book, however as I read through the various chapters found this is to be more like a kludge. Most of information is incomplete; the topics are good, however they hang loose and or is misleading.

The installation and configuration chapter has all the platforms covered, it is good to have such details in one book, however when you read it its utterly confusing. There is no clean transition between sections. For example under Linux the authors discuss system details, then they move to interconnect and clustered software and then they kind of get lost, they talk about shared storage volumes followed by configuring NAS then comes OCFS. The fundamental question that came to a DBA in our group - are all these related? Do we need setup shared storage volumes, configure NAS etc to configure OCFS. Can we not configure OCFS on SAN? Is our configuration wrong?

The authors discuss the watchdog process required with 9.1 and mention that in 9.2 you have to replace this with hangcheck timer however the configuration file output in the cluster manager configuration section show watchdog parameters. In the end of this section, the authors suggest referring to metalink for step-by-step instructions (Similar notes are found elsewhere also).

The performance-tuning chapter, it's poorly done. The authors have provided listings from a STATSPACK report however; there is absolutely no explanation. Authors have provided screens shots from OEM that are not clear nor contain any explanation.

Lots of material is cramped into one book however nothing is complete, you have a feeling you are left to hang of a cliff. The production of the book is also bad; the book came apart in about a week. The producers have tried to save some trees by making the pages crowded and not leaving any margin space on pages. It's good for the environment but hard for the reader's eyes. There are all these reasons why readers love books from publishers such as O'Reilly.

The width of the book is small compared to normal book sizes, with no compromise on the price.

One should think twice before buying this book.

The book has lots of incomplete sections and misleading statements, to list a few..

The architecture chapter contains marketing performance measurements from vendors such as HP, Intel that claim the RAC has linear scalability. Every time a new node is added, the cluster interconnects have latency factors that reduce true scalability. RAC provides horizontal scalability would be more appropriate.

The installation and configuration covers all hardware platforms, however it's confusing, most sections have links to other sites most commonly metalink for further information. Similarly, the chapter on application deployment regarding SAP has a note to check with the vendor.

The performance-tuning chapter contains OEM material and screen shots that are not clear and there is no explanation on what they mean. What's this `automated freelist' feature referred in the conclusion?

The chapter called `Internals of Real Application Clusters' contains no internals, all the information in this chapter can be found in the RAC concepts guide. Hmmm! Did the book get its `internals' title from this chapter?

The chapter on `TAF' is just an overview and very poorly done by the authors.

The book has good titles, however incomplete and misleading sections. The book is only good as a cross reference to get to the appropriate material elsewhere. Nothing more.

Buy at your own risk.

I have worked with RAC for 2 years and this book has addressed some of the missing pieces of the puzzle. This book is first in a new series "Oracle In Focus" and will give O'Reilly a run for their money. I really like this book and although I did have some critiques I felt that I could not resist. However, RAC is a very sophisticated Product and the authors have done a splendid job in bringing all of the material under one cover.

This book does a great job laying out the differences between RAC and OPS. It also covers the architecture and implementation of RAC for all major platforms including Veritas DBE/AC. The architecture discussion covers areas such as I/O Fencing, SCSI3 Persistent Reservations, and Quorum Disks in Chapter 3. This is important information which sets a basis for the next chapter. In Chapter 4 RAC technical Architecture is thoroughly reviewed after a brief overview of the OPS evolution.

Chapter 5 is a brief chapter that covers Hardware and RAC and explains the Implementation of RAC from a hardware perspective. I liked the approach taken by the authors because they do a good job tying in CFS or RAW with the disk subsystem. They also cover Veritas, Tru64 and Polyserve CFS's.

Chapter 6 is a 100 page chapter that covers RAC Install and configuration for almost every platform. It is high level but covers the subject matter well. It is very current in relation to where Oracle is with Patch sets and such. I had only wished they covered the Linux install better and covered the watchdog/hang check timer kernel transition. I suspect the author's deadline did not allow for this. The reference to the metalink articles at the end of the chapter gives the reader a launching point into the subject matter.

Chapter 7 is dedicated to the RAC internals and is good at condensing the internals that is covered in the Oracle RAC concepts guide. It is in Chapter 8 that the authors cover Threads but they stop short of explaining of how threads are used to generate SCN's and the role they play in recovery and Data Guard gap resolution. Overall this is a good chapter which covers the basics of RAC admin.

Chapter 10 covers TAF (Transparent Application Failover) connectivity to RAC. Although this chapter covers the subject matter okay it is weak in when they cover load balancing on the nodes. It explains how Dedicated and shared are handled but it stops there and doesn't explain the how the nodes database processes inform the listeners of the work load. I felt this chapter could have been done better since it is one of the attractions to RAC. For example, when they authors cover TAF with JDBC they should have correlated their explanation with the commonly used terms of JDBC Thick/Thin. This is touched upon towards the end of Chapter 14 and might be attributed to having two different authors with unique styles.

The remaining chapters are pretty good after skimming over them. I will update my review after finishing the book. Don't get me wrong by my critiques. I like this book very much. This book is a must for anyone who is interested in RAC.

This book has too many number of typo's and incomplete material. Most of the material in this book leads to a reference elsewhere outside the book. Most of the reference lead to metalink or other white papers, rest of it are based on marketing material from vendors.

Even the reference material is mentioned wrongly, for example Steve Adam's book, he did not write Scaling Oracle 8i.

Implementation chapters have covered many platforms, all of this can be found in metalink as referenced in the reference section.

Performance tuning chapter is poor in content. STATSPACK that provides RAC related details, the authors have provided report outputs, but there is no explanation.

Stay away from this book.

The book is 600 pages and only 40 of them involve RAC administration. The rest are mostly explanations of the theory and the workings of Oracle RAC. Most of the information in this book can be obtained either through the metalink or other websites.

The book is good if you would like to expand your knowledge of RAC. But its lack of details on "how to" install, troubleshoot, configure, and manage RAC makes this book less than ideal for Oracle DBAs.

Finally, although the author(s) are obviously good writers, their writing style is more suited for a novel. Their smooth but wordy and banal prose makes it exceedingly easy to miss important points regarding Oracle RAC.

Oracle RAC is made simple in this book. Good thing about this book is, it focuses on the RAC and RAC related subjects. Many concepts of the clustering are dicussed in detail. It is a good buy and worth the money.

If you are in the process of either installing RAC or learning about it you are better off doing your research on Metalink. If you have the spare money then this book offers you a central place for a collection of different Metalink articles.

I have worked with RAC for 2 years and this book has addressed some of the missing pieces of the puzzle. This book is first in a new series "Oracle In Focus" and will give O'Reilly a run for their money. I really like this book and although I did have some critiques I felt that I could not resist. However, RAC is a very sophisticated Product and the authors have done a splendid job in bringing all of the material under one cover.

This book does a great job laying out the differences between RAC and OPS. It also covers the architecture and implementation of RAC for all major platforms including Veritas DBE/AC. The architecture discussion covers areas such as I/O Fencing, SCSI3 Persistent Reservations, and Quorum Disks in Chapter 3. This is important information which sets a basis for the next chapter. In Chapter 4 RAC technical Architecture is thoroughly reviewed after a brief overview of the OPS evolution.

Chapter 5 is a brief chapter that covers Hardware and RAC and explains the Implementation of RAC from a hardware perspective. I liked the approach taken by the authors because they do a good job tying in CFS or RAW with the disk subsystem. They also cover Veritas, Tru64 and Polyserve CFS's.

Chapter 6 is a 100 page chapter that covers RAC Install and configuration for almost every platform. It is high level but covers the subject matter well. It is very current in relation to where Oracle is with Patch sets and such. I had only wished they covered the Linux install better and covered the watchdog/hang check timer kernel transition. I suspect the author's deadline did not allow for this. The reference to the metalink articles at the end of the chapter gives the reader a launching point into the subject matter.

Chapter 7 is dedicated to the RAC internals and is good at condensing the internals that is covered in the Oracle RAC concepts guide. It is in Chapter 8 that the authors cover Threads but they stop short of explaining of how threads are used to generate SCN's and the role they play in recovery and Data Guard gap resolution. Overall this is a good chapter which covers the basics of RAC admin.

Chapter 10 covers TAF (Transparent Application Failover) connectivity to RAC. Although this chapter covers the subject matter okay it is weak in when they cover load balancing on the nodes. It explains how Dedicated and shared are handled but it stops there and doesn't explain the how the nodes database processes inform the listeners of the work load. I felt this chapter could have been done better since it is one of the attractions to RAC. For example, when they authors cover TAF with JDBC they should have correlated their explanation with the commonly used terms of JDBC Thick/Thin. This is touched upon towards the end of Chapter 14 and might be attributed to having two different authors with unique styles.

The remaining chapters are pretty good after skimming over them. I will update my review after finishing the book. Don't get me wrong by my critiques. I like this book very much. This book is a must for anyone who is interested in RAC.

If you need a RAC book,this probably is not the one. While the technical contents are good, its not complete. It has pointers to various resources elsewhere. For example the installation chapter contains references to notes on metalink.
The two chapters that are really detailed is the backup and recovery where the author has stepped through RMAN and the other chapter is the cluster guard install. Does anyone use cluster guard?

Performance tuning chapter is poorly done. STATSPACK reports are not explained OEM screens are not clear and no explanations.

I think if these reference sections are compiled together, this probably would be a 20 page book