Oracle Database 12c Release 1 RAC On Windows 2012

Oracle Database 12c Release 1 (12.1) RAC On

Windows 2012 Using VirtualBox

This article describes the installation of Oracle Database 12c Release 1 (12.1) RAC on

Windows 2012 Server Standard Edition using VirtualBox with no additional shared disk

devices.

 Introduction

 Download Software

 VirtualBox Installation

 Install the Database Software and Create a Database

 Check the Status of the RAC

Related articles.

 Oracle Database 12c Release 1 (12.1.0.1) RAC On Oracle Linux 6 Using VirtualBox

Introduction

One of the biggest obstacles preventing people from setting up test RAC environments is the

requirement for shared storage. In a production environment, shared storage is often provided

by a SAN or high-end NAS device, but both of these options are very expensive when all you

want to do is get some experience installing and using RAC. A cheaper alternative is to use a

FireWire disk enclosure to allow two machines to access the same disk(s), but that still costs

 Following on from the last point, the VMs will each need at least 3G of RAM,

preferably 4G if you don't want the VMs to swap like crazy. Don't assume you will be

able to run this on a small PC or laptop. You won't.

 This procedure provides a bare bones installation to get the RAC working. There is

no redundancy in the Grid Infrastructure installation or the ASM installation. To add

this, simply create double the amount of shared disks and select the "Normal"

redundancy option when it is offered. Of course, this will take more disk space.

 During the virtual disk creation, I always choose not to preallocate the disk space.

This makes virtual disk access slower during the installation, but saves on wasted

disk space. The shared disks must have their space preallocated.

 This is not, and should not be considered, a production-ready system. It's simply to

allow you to get used to installing and using RAC.

 The virtual machines can be limited to 2Gig of swap, which causes a prerequisite

check failure, but doesn't prevent the installation working. If you want to avoid this,

define 3+Gig of swap.

 This article uses the 64-bit versions of Windows and Oracle 11g Release 2.

 In this article I am using a Oracle Linux as my host OS.

Download Software

Download the following software.

 VirtualBox

 Oracle Database 12c Release 1 (12.1.0.1.0) Grid and DB software

VirtualBox Installation

Now we must define the two virtual RAC nodes. We can save time by defining one VM, then

cloning it when it is installed.

Start VirtualBox and click the "New" button on the toolbar. Enter the name "w2012-121-rac1",

OS "Microsoft Windows" and Version "Windows 2012 (64 bit)", then click the "Next" button.

Enter "4096" as the base memory size, then click the "Next" button.

Accept the default option to create a new virtual hard disk by clicking the "Create" button.

Acccept the default hard drive file type by clicking the "Next" button.

Acccept the "Dynamically allocated" option by clicking the "Next" button.

Accept the default location and set the size to "30G", then click the "Create" button. If you can

spread the virtual disks onto different physical disks, that will improve performance.