Oracle RAC Database Management Styles and Database Creation

Part of Oracle Database deployment is the creation of the database. You can choose to create a database as part of the database software deployment, as described in "Oracle RAC Database Management Styles and Database Installation", or you can choose to only deploy the database software, first, and then, subsequently, create any database that is meant to run out of the newly created Oracle home by using DBCA. In either case, you must consider the management style that you plan to use for the Oracle RAC databases.

For administrator-managed databases, you must ensure that the database software is deployed on the nodes on which you plan to run the respective database instances. You must also ensure that these nodes have access to the storage in which you want to store the database files. Oracle recommends that you select Oracle ASM during database installation to simplify storage management. Oracle ASM automatically manages the storage of all database files within disk groups. If you plan to use Oracle Database Standard Edition to create an Oracle RAC database, then you must use Oracle ASM to store all of the database files.

For policy-managed databases, you must ensure that the database software is deployed on all nodes on which database instances can potentially run, given your active server pool setup. You must also ensure that these nodes have access to the storage in which you want to store the database files. Oracle recommends using Oracle ASM, as previously described for administrator-managed databases.

Server pools are a feature of Oracle Grid Infrastructure (specifically Oracle Clusterware). There are different ways you can set up server pools on the Oracle Clusterware level, and Oracle recommends you create server pools for database management before you create the respective databases. DBCA, however, will present you with a choice of either using precreated server pools or creating a new server pool, when you are creating a policy-managed database. Whether you can create a new server pool during database creation depends on the server pool configuration that is active at the time.

By default, DBCA creates one service for your Oracle RAC installation. This is the default database service and should not be used for user connectivity. The default database service is typically identified using the combination of the DB_NAME and DB_DOMAIN initialization parameters: db_name.db_domain. The default service is available on all instances in an Oracle RAC environment, unless the database is in restricted mode.