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Best Practices for Running Oracle Databases in Solaris Containers

Ritu Kamboj and Fernando Castano, September 2005

This article provides an overview of Solaris Containers in the Solaris 10 Operating System, with guidelines for running a non-RAC Oracle database in a container. Oracle 9i R2 and 10g R1 databases (RAC and non-RAC) have been certified to run in a global zone. This document concentrates on running a non-RAC Oracle database in a container in the Solaris OS, and it explains in detail the process of creating a non-global zone appropriate for deploying an Oracle database. Additionally, it captures special considerations for running a non-RAC Oracle database in a container in the Solaris OS.

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Contents:

1 Executive Summary
2 Document Scope
3 Overview
3.1 Solaris Containers
3.2 Solaris Zones Partitioning Technology
3.3 Solaris Resource Manager
3.3.1 Workload Identification
3.3.2 Resource Controls
3.3.3 CPU and Memory Management
4 Oracle License Model for Solaris Containers
5 Creating a Container
5.1 Requirements
5.2 Creating a Resource Pool
5.3 Creating a Non-Global Zone
6 Special Considerations
6.1 Devices in Containers
6.2 File Systems in Containers
6.3 Backup With Recovery Manager
6.4 Volume Management
6.5 CPU Visibility
7 Oracle Features Not Available in Containers
7.1 Oracle RAC
7.2 Solaris Dynamic Intimate Shared Memory (DISM)
8 Appendix
8.1 Appendix 1: Script to Create a Container
8.1.1 README.txt
8.1.2 setenv.sh
8.1.3 zone_cmd_template.txt
8.1.4 pool_cmd_template.txt
8.1.5 create_zone_cmd.sh
8.1.6 create_pool_cmd.sh
8.1.7 create_container.sh
8.2 Appendix 2: Setting System V IPC Kernel Parameters
9 References

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