IOUG RAC Attack!
August 4 - 5, 2008
Chicago, IL

Co-hosted by the IOUG and RAC SIG, this two-day workshop will focus on various issues, ranging from building to installing to backup/recovery to performance tuning. You can even choose to attend the one-day hands-on lab, focusing on cluster installation prerequisites on Linux, installing Oracle clusterware, installing Oracle RDBMS, creating RAC databases (for beginners), failure testing and backup/recovery testing. Please note when choosing your registration that Day 1 Lecture is for beginners and Day 2 Lecture is more advanced.

Registration Pricing:
2 days $499
1 day lecture/1 day hands-on lab $650
**Registration price includes education, course materials and breakfast and lunch for each day.

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This event will take place in the heart of downtown Chicago at:
Independent Oracle Users Group Headquarters
401 N. Michigan Avenue
Chicago , IL 60611
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Lecture – Day One Agenda
Lecture – Day Two Agenda
Hands-on Lab Agenda

Lecture – Day One Agenda (9:00am – 5:00pm)

The first day of lecture will cover how to build, install, configure, and backup/recovery. There will also be some discussion on performance tuning.
In-depth sessions include:

Backup and Restoring a RAC Database Using RMAN
Edward Whalen, Performance Tuning Corporation
This session will discuss how to backup and restore an Oracle Real Application Cluster implementation. Potential problems and pitfalls will be identified as well as time proven solutions. This discussion will include the latest in RAC and storage technologies including Oracle ASM.

Some aspects of backing up an Oracle RAC database are identical to the non-RAC configuration, yet other aspects yield different needs and techniques. This session will discuss both the similarities and differences. In addition, examples of various RAC backup and restore techniques will be provided.

The speaker will cover backup and recovery design and implementation. At the end of this session the student should be able to design a backup and restore strategy for RAC, with their own needs in mind. The speaker’s company has deployed more than 150 RAC clusters on Linux

Building a RAC Test Environment on VMWare for Free
Dan Norris, Piocon
RAC. The simple acronym makes some cheer for joy and others so scared that they run screaming. If you're in the latter group, come to this session and have your fears wiped away. In this session, we will review the whole process of building a virtual cluster using VMWare systems from installing VMWare to building the RAC database. While we will review the processes and procedures, the primary session focus will be on the pitfalls commonly encountered by those that have attempted to build this configuration.

Under the Hood of Oracle Clusterware
Alex Gorbachev (Pythian)

This presentation provides practical understanding of Oracle Clusterware/CRS and knowledge required for independent troubleshooting of Clusterware issues - why nodes are evicted, why resources don't start or fail fo r no apparent reason. After this presentation, a DBA will know where to look for the answers instead of blindly running cluvfy utility.

Demystifying Oracle RAC Internals
Krish Telikicherla, Oracle Corporation

A detailed look at Oracle Clusterware and RAC, the various internal components, processes, their interactions and configuration that make a highly available system. We will look at failover scenarios, cluster reconfiguration, Fast Application Notification(FAN/FCF), the Oracle Cluster Registry and a some new features of 11g.

Round Table Session
Moderator: Michelle Malcher, Pepsico

Lecture – Day Two Agenda

The second day of lecture will cover performance tuning more in-depth. The speakers will also discuss networking, failover, load balancing, and workload management.
In-depth sessions include:

Performance Tuning Oracle RAC on Linux
Edward Whalen, Performance Tuning Corporation
This session will discuss how to tune and troubleshoot an Oracle Real Application Cluster implementation on Linux. Potential problems and pitfalls will be identified as well as time proven solutions. This discussion will include the latest in RAC hardware technologies, as well as monitoring and tuning RAC on the Linux operating system.

The rush to implement systems on Linux has left some implementations with performance problems. Customers that have previously used Oracle on other UNIX platforms are less familiar with the performance monitoring tools that are available on Linux. These tools include sar, vmstat, iostat, and sar.

The speaker will cover Linux specific problems such as the difference between 32-bit and 64-bit Linux, low and high memory and the Linux kernel architecture. It will include how to identify I/O bottlenecks, and monitoring Linux memory. The speaker’s company has deployed more than 150 RAC clusters on Linux.

Connections! Connections! Connections!
Alex Gorbachev (Pythian)

Scalability, high availability, manageability - if at least one of those concerns you then connection management must be taken very seriously just as "Location! Location! Location!" in real-estate business.
During the presentation we will review the most important aspects of connection management such as client and server-side load balancing, connection failover techniques and real-time load balancing advisory. We will consider different application environments and languages and specifics of connection management in each environment.

RAC Installation & Configuration Best Practices
Krish Telikicherla, Oracle Corporation

This presentation will cover the best practices for deploying Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) with an emphasis on Linux, ensuring a high availability (HA) setup and a successful and smooth install.

Oracle Services on RAC: How They Work and What You Should Use Them For?
Jeremy Schneider
In RAC databases, Services are a crucial, integral part of the plumbing that provides high availability and database fault-tolerance. They are the only feature whose configuration is spread across both the data dictionary and the clusterware registry. Understanding them is a basic, core responsibility of anyone who plans or maintains Oracle cluster database systems. This session will closely examine how services work in RAC. First are the similarities and differences between single-instance and cluster databases; such as methods to create, delete, modify, start and stop services. We will also discuss limits and best practices. Next, we examine where service configuration is stored – no less than four places. This leads into a discussion of clusterware integration. Other topics covered include load balancing, failover, cluster notifications, distributed databases and parallel execution. Several 11g enhancements also discussed. The session aims to cover every aspect of services on RAC.

Round Table Session
Moderator: Michelle Malcher, Pepsico

Hands-on Lab (8:30am – 5:00pm)

The agenda for the hands-on lab is the same for both days. It is highly recommended that beginners register for the first day of lecture. The beginner user should register for the second day. The lab agenda is setup to be an independent study so that you can learn at your own pace with experts to assist you along the way. The hands-on lab will cover cluster installation prerequisites on Linux, installing Oracle clusterware, installing Oracle RDBMS, creating RAC database, failure testing and backup/recovery testing. At the end of the lab, there will be a 45-minute round table session.