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For the simplest dNFS network configuration, a single network path can be configured. The single network path in Figure 26 is used for the database server public network and network traffic between the NAS server and NFS client. A benefit of this configuration is its simplicity, however it creates a single point of failure for NFS and potentially not enough bandwidth to support general network and NFS traffic. For these reasons, Dell Technologies does not recommended using this network configuration for a critical, highly available database having high transaction rates.
The remainder of this section covers two different single network path configurations:
Note: Figure 26 represents a network route between a single interface in Dell Unity and a single interface on the database server. This route is intended to be used by NFS control and data traffic, and public network traffic. For information about creating network routes and using specific network routes for certain network traffic, see the following sections: Shared subnets, Static routing, dNFS without oranfstab, and dNFS with oranfstab.
The following figures show:
using this path:
Note: See Dell Unity NAS servers for information about setting VLAN ID.
dNFS uses two kinds of NFS mounts: the native operating system mount of NFS (known as a kernel kNFS mount) and the Oracle database NFS mount (dNFS mount). When a single network path is used for dNFS, file oranfstab is not necessary because Oracle dNFS gleans the required information for the mounted NFS share from file /etc/mtab.
If dNFS is unable to find the necessary information in /etc/mtab, control is handed back to the database and file access is attempted through kNFS.
To reduce the potential of running out of bandwidth on a single interface, consider moving NFS traffic to a different interface on the database server. Moving NFS traffic to a different interface requires an additional IP address and an additional switch interface.
If this additional IP address is in the same subnet used by any other NIC interface in the database server, see sections Static routing and Oracle dNFS configuration file oranfstab.
Note: A single point of failure for NFS and the potential of running into NFS bandwidth issues exists with this configuration.