Tuesday, May 23, 2006

WebLogic Server and Oracle RAC

Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) is a software component you can add to a high-availabitlity solution that enables users on multiple machines to access a single database with increased performance. RAC comprises of two or more Oracle databases instances running on tow or more clustered machines and accessing a shared storage device via cluster technology. Oracle RAC offers the following features to applications on WebLogic Server:
  • Scalability: A RAC appears lika a single Oracle database and is maintained using the same tools and practices. All nodes in the cluster execute transactions against the same database. RAC coordinates access to the shared data to ensure consistency, and integrity. Nodes can be added to the cluster without partitioning data (Horizontal scaling).
  • Availability: Depending on the configuration, when a RAC node fails, in-flight transactions are redirected to another node in the cluster either by WebLogic Server or Oracle Thin driver. The fail-over is not for failed connections. Fail-over is only for transactions, which will be driven to completion, based on the time of failure.
  • Load Balancing: BEA supports load balancing capability with Oracle RAC servers, through multi-data sources
  • Failover: BEA recommends using WebLogic JDBC multi data sources to handle failover. Transparent Application Failover is not supported with WebLogic Server due to the requirement of Oracle OCI driver which is not supported by BEA.
Configuration Options
BEA supports several configuration options for using Oracle RAC with WebLogic Server:
  1. Multiple RAC instances with Global Transactions: BEA recommends the use of transaction-aware WebLogic JDBC multi data sources, which support failover and load balancing, to connect to RAC nodes.
  2. Multiple RAC instances without XA transactions: BEA recommends the use of (non-transaction-aware_ multi data sources to connect to the RAC nodes. Use the standard multi data source configuration, which supports failover and load balancing.
  3. Multiple RAC nodes when multi data sources are not an option: Use Oracle RAC with connect-time failover. Load balancing is not supported in this configuration.
LimitationsA detailed explanation of the following limitations can be found on WebLogic site
  1. Since Oracle requires that a Global Transaction must be initiated, prepared, and concluded in the same instance of the RAC cluster, and since Oracle Thin driver cannot guarantee that a transaction is initiated and concluded on the same RAC instance when when the driver is configured for load balancing, you cannot use connect-time load balancing wihen using XA with Oracle RAC.
  2. There is a potential for Inconsistent Transaction Completion
  3. Potential for Data Deadlocks in Some Failure scenarios
  4. Potential for Transactions Completed out of sequence.

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