About This Guide

The Oracle Parallel Server™ (OPS) represents a significant development in RDBMS capability for ORACLE® users. The ability to cluster two computer systems and coordinate their access to a single shared Oracle database provides for increased throughput and capacity with higher levels of application and database availability.

The Silicon Graphics® OPS consists of the following hardware components:

The software for OPS consists of IRIX 5.3 with XFS, IRIX patches, OPS software for Silicon Graphics systems, IRISconsole software, FDDI software, and software for the component systems, such as the Indy workstation and the CHALLENGE RAID storage system. Optional software includes Performance Co-Pilot™ (PCP), IRIXPro™, Database Accelerator (DBA), and IRIX NetWorker™ 4.1.1. Software components of OPS that must be obtained from Oracle Corporation are ORACLE RDBMS and the Parallel Server Option.

Audience

This guide is written for the person who administers the OPS system. The OPS administrator is familiar with Oracle RDBMS in general and the specific Oracle database instances running on the CHALLENGE servers. The OPS administrator is also familiar with the operation of the Indy workstation and the CHALLENGE servers, as well as the optional Vault storage systems and CHALLENGE RAID storage system, if they are used in the OPS configuration. The OPS administrator has acquired familiarity with the Oracle Parallel Server system and uses IRISconsole to control the OPS hosts.

Structure of This Document

This guide contains the following chapters and appendix:

Chapter 1 

“Features of the Oracle Parallel Server” explains capabilities of the Oracle Parallel Server and explains how system components work together.

Chapter 2 

“Using the OPS System” explains how to configure and start the OPS system software and how to halt the OPS system.

Appendix A 

“Troubleshooting” lists possible problem situations and suggests solutions.

Conventions

These type conventions and symbols are used in this guide:

Helvetica Bold  

Hardware labels

Italics 

Executable names, filenames, IRIX commands, manual or book titles, new terms, program variables, tools, utilities, variable command line arguments, variable coordinates, and variables to be supplied by the user in examples, code, and syntax statements

Fixed-width type 


Error messages, prompts, and onscreen text

Bold fixed-width type  


User input, including keyboard keys (printing and nonprinting); literals supplied by the user in examples, code, and syntax statements (see also <>)

“” 

(Double quotation marks) Onscreen menu items and references in text to document section titles

[] 

(Brackets) Surrounding optional syntax statement arguments

<> 

(Angle brackets) Surrounding nonprinting keyboard keys, for example, <Esc>, <Ctrl-D>