ORACLE 11G RAC ArcSDE 9.3.1 installation and configuration

[OlamobisiFawehinmi]

Hi

I have seen a few posts with requests for help with this, and because no one appears to have answered the posts conclusively, I'm wondering if any of the previous guys that posted found a way to set this up. I'm trialing a high availability database setup using Oracle RAC and ArcSDE 9.3.1 on Windows 2008 64-bit on vmware and ASM on SAN.

We have the RAC up and running with two nodes and failover, loadbalancing working fine. I need to install SDE (Direct Connect and SDE Three Tier on another application server) and I'm not sure how to complete this.

My initial thoughts on this are:

1. Install SDE on Node 1
2. Run post install to create SDE repository and schema on database
3. configure SDE (in the past I start SDE, use the commands I'm familiar with and then shut down the  service).
4. Install SDE on Node 2, but not do any post install.
5. Install client on Desktop, setup TNS and direct connect to RAC
6. To complete the three tier connection on another application server:
       install SDE on server
       What next??

Any help with verifying these steps and or provide more information will be greatly appreciated. Most of the documentation refered to in other posts do not provide this step by step approach.

Thanks

Joseph

[VinceAngelo]

While you can install ArcSDE on both RAC nodes, you probably shouldn't run it on either
(that is, if you run the application server anywhere). Once you've committed to using
RAC, you've effectively committed to using Direct Connect, so you can stop with step 3.

It is not recommended to run ArcSDE (or Oracle) on a virtual host.

- V

[OlamobisiFawehinmi]

Many thanks Vince.

The production environment will be standalone servers so that's fine.

I have a third party application currently in Live that will not support Direct Connect going forward. The intent was to have SDE installed on the thrid party application server rather than on any of the RAC nodes. I'm just not sure how the configuration will go given that the repository will already be created on the database. We could effectively bubble wrap the third party app on the current servers and migrate all other clients, but not sure if ESRI will retain support for Direct Connect going forward?

Any particular steps/issues within the SDE install that I should watch out for?

Regards
Joseph

[VinceAngelo]

All applications using the ArcSDE API have an inherent ability to support homogeneous
Direct Connect (provided the platform is supported be the database vendor);  Direct
Connect across releases is a recent innovation (within reason).  Any app which doesn't
support DC is going to be a priority for upgrade/replacement soon.

I run alternate host ArcSDE 'sdesetup' sessions all the time.  So long as you've got
a proper TNS configuration, there won't be any issues.  Heck, at 10.0, the instance
upgrades are executed from Catalog, not 'sdesetup'.

Placing an ArcSDE application server on the third party application host will likely incur
an ArcGIS Server licensing requirement for that host.

Esri is probably more likely to retain Direct Connect than application server if one
of the protocols were to be dropped (neither is probable, so this shouldn't factor
into your decisions at all).

Make sure you configure the listener(s) to support ST_GEOMETRY, as per the install
documentation (which is a reason to at least install ArcSDE on both RAC hosts -- It
makes applying service packs easier).

- V

[TravisVal]

Joseph,

Because you are using RAC, you have to make sure that you follow ALL the instructions for setting up SDE on a RAC system.  Check out this link, there are some additional steps listed all the way at the bottom of this version of the setup document.

http://webhelp.esri.com/arcgisdesktop/9.3/index.cfm?id=2808&pid=2802&topicname=Installation_summary_...

The sectioin starts with:

If you are using Real Application Cluster (RAC), you must rename the version_util package, utilize the version_util.no_state_seq.sbp package, and load the correct package....

Travis