The following figure shows the solution’s redundant and highly available physical LAN design and connectivity.
Figure 7. Physical network design and connectivity
Note: The ports on the switches shown in the preceding figure, to which the database server network ports are connected, are for illustration purposes only. Network administrators can choose any available ports on the switches, as appropriate.
The four database servers tested in this solution were configured with a highly available network:
Oracle public networks from all database servers and private interconnect networks from the two Oracle RAC nodes are configured on the same redundant ToR 10 GbE S4048-ON switches. However, the network traffic is segregated by using VLANs as shown in the following table.
Table 15. Sample VLAN configuration on S4048-ON 10 GbE ToR switches
Traffic type | VLAN ID |
All Oracle public | 16 |
Oracle private interconnect | 100 |
Note: VLAN IDs used in the table are examples. Network administrators can use VLAN IDs that conform to their network policies and standards only if the Oracle public and private networks are on two separate VLANs.
The virtual environment in this Ready Solution for Oracle was tested by using a single VMware ESXi host running two VMs. One VM for running a standalone Oracle 11gR2 database and the other VM for running a standalone Oracle 12c R2 database.
Figure 8. Virtual network design on the VMware ESXi database host
The preceding figure shows the virtual or VM network topology implemented in the virtualized databases ESXi host. It also shows how the virtual layer maps to the physical layer.
As shown in the figure, the VMware-based virtual network design in the Ready Solution for Oracle consists of the following virtual switches and port groups:
NOTE: Typically, for single ESXi host implementations, standard switches and port groups are sufficient. Distributed switches and port groups configured in this solution provide easy expansion to virtual Oracle RAC environments by using multiple ESXi hosts, if needed.
NOTE: Though not shown in Figure 8 or implemented during testing of this Ready Solution for Oracle, we recommend that you configure an additional 1 GbE management network port for redundancy.
We used the following recommended SAN connectivity and zoning best practices to configure all the database servers with the XtremIO X2 storage arrays:
The following figure shows the recommended physical SAN connections between the database servers, the FC switches, and the dual X-Brick XtremIO X2 cluster storage arrays in this Ready Solution for Oracle.
Figure 9. SAN setup: Physical design and connectivity
Note: The ports on the FC switches shown in the figure to which the database server HBA ports and the XtremIO FC front-end ports are connected are for illustration purposes only. SAN administrators can choose any available ports on the switches, as appropriate.
The SAN connectivity and redundancy of the components in the solution ensure that no single point of failure exists and provides the necessary bandwidth. As shown in the figure, the SAN setup in the Ready Solution for Oracle with XtremIO X2 storage consists of:
The following figure shows the logical view of the Oracle RAC production database servers after the recommended zoning configurations are created on the redundant FC switches. The same design and configuration is used for the XVC database and the virtualized database servers. Zoning is configured so that each host initiator in the database server is zoned to four target front-end ports that are located on four separate XtremIO storage controllers. This configuration provides a total of 16 paths per database server and ensures sufficient bandwidth and availability for the Oracle database servers to reach the storage if one or more ports or HBAs, a switch, or storage FC ports or controllers fail.
Figure 10. SAN setup: Zoning logical view
To test the backup and recovery solution, we connected the DD6300 system as the backup appliance to the Ready Solution for Oracle with XtremIO X2 storage. As shown in the preceding figure, we connected two 10 GbE ports from two separate NICs on the DD6300 system to two separate S4048-ON 10 GbE switches. S4048-ON switches serve as the ToR Ethernet switches for Oracle database public and private interconnect network traffic in this Ready Solution for Oracle.
Figure 11. Data Domain DD6300 backup and recovery solution: IP network connections
For the databases in this Ready Solution for Oracle to communicate with the DD6300 backup appliance, the two DD6300 network ports on the S4048-ON switches were added as untagged 10 GbE ports to VLAN (configuration) ID 16. This VLAN serves as the public VLAN in this Ready Solution for Oracle. We connected the management port on the DD6300 system to the S3048-ON 1 GbE switch that serves as the management switch in the Ready Solution for Oracle with XtremIO X2 storage.
In the DD6300 system, we configured the two network ports with static IP addresses that belong to the same subnet as the Oracle database public network in this Ready Solution for Oracle. These two network interfaces were added to the default interface group under the DD Boost protocols configuration.