When you create an Oracle RAC database with DBCA, it automatically:

• Configures and enables server-side load balancing

• Creates a sample client-side load balancing connection definition in the tnsnames.ora file on the server

The Oracle Clusterware Database Agent is responsible for managing the LISTENER_NETWORKS parameter.

FAN, Fast Connection Failover, and the load balancing advisory depend on an accurate connection load balancing configuration that includes setting the connection load balancing goal for the service. You can use a goal of either LONG or SHORT for connection load balancing. These goals have the following characteristics:

• SHORT: Use the SHORT connection load balancing method for applications that use run-time load balancing. When using connection pools that are integrated with Load Balancing Advisory, set the CLB_GOAL to SHORT. The following example modifies the service known as oltpapp, using SRVCTL to set the connection load balancing goal to SHORT:

  $ srvctl modify service -db db_unique_name -service oltpapp -clbgoal SHORT

• LONG: Use the LONG connection load balancing method if run-time load balancing is not required. This is typical for batch operations. LONG is the default connection load balancing goal. The following is an example of modifying a service, batchconn, using SRVCTL to define the connection load balancing goal for long-lived sessions:

  $ srvctl modify service -db db_unique_name -service batchconn -clbgoal LONG

Oracle Net Services enables you to add the CONNECT_TIMEOUT, RETRY_COUNT, and TRANSPORT_CONNECT_TIMEOUT parameters to the tnsnames.ora connection string.

For example, when using SCAN addresses for the remote listeners at the database:

jdbc:oracle:thin:@(DESCRIPTION =
 (TRANSPORT_CONNECT_TIMEOUT=3)(CONNECT_TIMEOUT=60)
 (RETRY_COUNT=3)(FAILOVER=ON)
 (ADDRESS_LIST =(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcp)
  (HOST=CLOUD-SCANVIP.example.com)(PORT=5221))
 (CONNECT_DATA=(SERVICE_NAME=orcl)))
Remote_listeners=CLOUD-SCANVIP.example.com:5221

For example, when using remote listeners pointing to VIPs at the database:

jdbc:oracle:thin:@(DESCRIPTION =
 (TRANSPORT_CONNECT_TIMEOUT=3)
 (CONNECT_TIMEOUT=60)(RETRY_COUNT=20)
 (RETRY_DELAY=3)(FAILOVER=ON)
 (ADDRESS_LIST=
 (ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcp)(HOST=CLOUD-VIP1)(PORT=1521) )
 (ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcp)(HOST=CLOUD-VIP2)(PORT=1521) )
 (ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcp)(HOST=CLOUD-VIP3)(PORT=1521) ))
 (CONNECT_DATA=(SERVICE_NAME=GOLD)))

The value of these parameters is expressed in seconds. In the preceding examples, Oracle Net waits for 60 seconds for each full connection to receive a response, after which it assumes that a failure occurred and retries the next address in the ADDRESS_LIST. Oracle Net retries the address list 3 times before it returns a failure message to the client. The TRANSPORT_CONNECT_TIMEOUT parameter establishes the time to wait to establish a TCP connection to the database server.

For SCAN, Oracle Net Services tries all three addresses (returned by the SCAN address) before returning a failure to the client. EZConnect with SCAN includes this connection failover feature.

This behavior is called Oracle Net connection failover. If an error is returned from a chosen address in the list, then Oracle Net Services tries the next address in the list until it is either successful or it has exhausted all addresses in its list.

In addition to client-side load balancing, Oracle Net Services include connection failover. If an error is returned from the chosen address in the list, Oracle Net Services tries the next address in the list until it is either successful or it has exhausted all addresses in its list. For SCAN, Oracle Net Services tries all three addresses before returning a failure to the client. EZConnect with SCAN includes this connection failover feature.

To increase availability, you can specify a timeout that specifies how long Oracle Net waits for a response from the listener before returning an error. The method of setting this timeout parameter depends on the type of client access. Oracle Net maintains these parameters for backward compatibility.

This section includes the following topics:

• JDBC-Thin Clients

• OCI Clients

Client-side load balancing is defined in your client connection definition (tnsnames.ora file, for example) by setting the parameter LOAD_BALANCE=ON. When you set this parameter to ON, Oracle Database randomly selects an address in the address list, and connects to that node's listener. This balances client connections across the available SCAN listeners in the cluster.

If you configured SCAN for connection requests, then client-side load balancing is not relevant for those clients that support SCAN access. When clients connect using SCAN, Oracle Net automatically balances the load of client connection requests across the three IP addresses you defined for the SCAN, unless you are using EZConnect.

The SCAN listener redirects the connection request to the local listener of the instance that is least loaded (if -clbgoal is set to SHORT) and provides the requested service. When the listener receives the connection request, the listener connects the user to an instance that the listener knows provides the requested service. To see what services a listener supports, run the lsnrctl services command.

When clients connect using SCAN, Oracle Net automatically load balances client connection requests across the three IP addresses you defined for the SCAN, unless you are using EZConnect.

If you are using clients that do not support SCAN (for example, the client version is pre-Oracle Database 11g release 2 (11.2)), then, to use SCAN you must change the client tnsnames.ora to include the SCAN VIPs, and set LOAD_BALANCE=ON to balance requests across the VIPs. For example:

Sales.example.com=(DESCRIPTION=
  (ADDRESS_LIST=(LOAD_BALANCE=ON)(FAILOVER=ON)
    (ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=172.22.67.192)(PORT=1521))
    (ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=172.22.67.193)(PORT=1521))
    (ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=172.22.67.194)(PORT=1521))
    (CONNECT_DATA=(SERVICE_NAME=salesservice.example.com))
  ))

Load balancing distributes work across all of the available Oracle RAC database instances. Oracle recommends that applications use connection pools with persistent connections that span the instances that offer a particular service. When using persistent connections, connections are created infrequently and exist for a long duration. Work comes into the system with high frequency, borrows these connections, and exists for a relatively short duration. The load balancing advisory provides advice about how to direct incoming work to the instances that provide the optimal quality of service for that work. This minimizes the need to relocate the work later.

By using the Load Balancing Advisory and run-time connection load balancing goals, feedback is built in to the system. Work is routed to provide the best service times globally, and routing responds gracefully to changing system conditions. In a steady state, the system approaches equilibrium with improved throughput across all of the Oracle RAC instances.

Standard architectures that can use the load balancing advisory include connection load balancing, transaction processing monitors, application servers, connection concentrators, hardware and software load balancers, job schedulers, batch schedulers, and message queuing systems. All of these applications can allocate work.

The load balancing advisory is deployed with key Oracle clients, such as a listener, the JDBC universal connection pool, OCI session pool, Oracle WebLogic Server Active GridLink for Oracle RAC, and the ODP.NET Connection Pools. Third-party applications can also subscribe to load balancing advisory events by using JDBC and Oracle RAC FAN API or by using callbacks with OCI.

You can configure your environment to use the load balancing advisory by defining service-level goals for each service for which you want to enable load balancing.

Configuring a service-level goal enables the load balancing advisory and the publishing of FAN load balancing events for that service. There are two types of service-level goals for run-time connection load balancing:

• SERVICE_TIME: Attempts to direct work requests to instances according to response time. Load balancing advisory data is based on elapsed time for work done in the service plus available bandwidth to the service. An example for the use of SERVICE_TIME is for workloads such as internet shopping where the rate of demand changes. The following example shows how to set the goal to SERVICE_TIME for connections using the online service:

  $ srvctl modify service -db db_unique_name -service online
    -rlbgoal SERVICE_TIME -clbgoal SHORT
  

• THROUGHPUT: Attempts to direct work requests according to throughput. The load balancing advisory is based on the rate that work is completed in the service plus available bandwidth to the service. An example for the use of THROUGHPUT is for workloads such as batch processes, where the next job starts when the last job completes. The following example shows how to set the goal to THROUGHPUT for connections using the sjob service:

  $ srvctl modify service -db db_unique_name -service sjob
    -rlbgoal THROUGHPUT -clbgoal LONG

Setting the run-time connection load balancing goal to NONE disables load balancing for the service. You can see the goal settings for a service in the data dictionary by querying the DBA_SERVICES, V$SERVICES, and V$ACTIVE_SERVICES views. You can also review the load balancing settings for a service using Oracle Enterprise Manager.

The load balancing advisory FAN events provide metrics for load balancing algorithms.

The easiest way to take advantage of these events is to use the run-time connection load balancing feature of an Oracle integrated client such as JDBC, Universal Connection Pool (or the deprecated Implicit Connection Cache), ODP.NET Connection Pools, OCI session pools, or Oracle WebLogic Server Active GridLink for Oracle RAC. Other client applications can take advantage of FAN programatically by using the Oracle RAC FAN API to subscribe to FAN events and execute event-handling actions upon receipt. Table 5-1 describes the load balancing advisory FAN event parameters.

VERSION

EVENT_TYPE

SERVICE

DATABASE

INSTANCE

PERCENT

FLAG

TIMESTAMP

You can use the following query against the internal queue table for load balancing advisory FAN events to monitor load balancing advisory events generated for an instance:

SET PAGES 60 COLSEP '|' LINES 132 NUM 8 VERIFY OFF FEEDBACK OFF
COLUMN user_data HEADING "AQ Service Metrics" FORMAT A60 WRAP
BREAK ON service_name SKIP 1
SELECT
 TO_CHAR(enq_time, 'HH:MI:SS') Enq_time, user_data
 FROM sys.sys$service_metrics_tab
 ORDER BY 1 ;

The results of this query contain rows similar to the following:

02:56:05|SYS$RLBTYP('hr', 'VERSION=1.0 database=sales service=hr
   { {instance=sales_4 percent=38 flag=GOOD aff=TRUE}{instance=sales_1
   percent=62 flag=GOOD aff=TRUE} } timestamp=2012-07-16 07:56:05')

Following is an example of a load balancing advisory event for the lba_serv service offered on two instances (orcl1 and orcl2), as captured from Oracle Notification Service using the Oracle RAC FAN API:

Notification Type: database/event/servicemetrics/lba_serv.example.com
   VERSION=1.0 database=orcl service=lba_serv.example.com { {instance=orcl2
   percent=50 flag=UNKNOWN aff=FALSE}{instance=orcl1 percent=50 flag=UNKNOWN
   aff=FALSE} } timestamp=2012-07-06 13:19:12

The overall goals of FAN are to enable end-to-end, lights-out recovery of applications and load balancing based on real transaction performance.

Applications use the FAN high availability (HA) events to achieve very fast detection of failures, balancing of connection pools following failures, and distribution of connections again when the failed components are repaired.

The FAN events carrying load balancing advice help connection pools consistently deliver connections to available instances that provide the best service. FAN HA is integrated with the JDBC-thin and OCI drivers. FAN HA and FAN load balancing are both integrated with the JDBC Universal Connection Pool (and the deprecated Implicit Connection Cache), the OCI session pools, the ODP.NET connection pool, and Oracle WebLogic Server Active GridLink for Oracle RAC.

Due to the integration with FAN, Oracle integrated clients are more aware of the current status of an Oracle RAC cluster. This prevents client connections from waiting or trying to connect to instances or services that are no longer available. When instances start, Oracle RAC uses FAN to notify the connection pool so that the connection pool can create connections to the recently started instance and take advantage of the additional resources that this instance provides.

Oracle client drivers that are integrated with FAN can:

• Remove terminated connections immediately when a service is declared DOWN at an instance, and immediately when nodes are declared DOWN

• Report errors to clients immediately when Oracle Database detects the NOT RESTARTING state, instead of making the client wait while the service repeatedly attempts to restart

Oracle connection pools that are integrated with FAN can:

• Balance connections across all of the Oracle RAC instances when a service starts; this is preferable to directing the sessions that are defined for the connection pool to the first Oracle RAC instance that supports the service

• Balance work requests at run time using load balancing advisory events

The use of client drivers or connection pools and FAN requires that you properly configure the Oracle Notification Service to deliver the FAN events to the clients. In addition, for load balancing, configure database connection load balancing across all of the instances that provide the services used by the connection pool. Oracle recommends that you configure both client-side and server-side load balancing with Oracle Net Services. If you use DBCA to create your database, then both client-side and server-side load balancing are configured by default.

Enabling Fast Connection Failover (FCF) for Universal Connection Pool and Oracle WebLogic Server Active GridLink for Oracle RAC enables the use of FAN HA and load balancing advisory events.

For Universal Connection Pool to use FAN, your application can use the JDBC development environment for either JDBC OCI or JDBC Thin clients. The Java Database Connectivity Oracle Call Interface (JDBC/OCI) driver connection pooling functionality is part of the JDBC-thin client. This functionality is provided by the OracleOCIConnectionPool class.

To enable FCF for the JDBC-thin client, call the method setFastConnectionFailoverEnabled(true) of the OracleDataSource class in the oracle.jdbc.pool package before making the first getConnection() request. When you enable FCF for the JDBC-thin client, the failover property applies to every connection in the connection pool. Enabling FCF with JDBC-thin driver or JDBC/OCI clients enables the connection pool to receive and react to all FAN events.

JDBC application developers can programmatically integrate with FAN by using a set of APIs introduced in Oracle Database 11g release 2 (11.2). The Oracle RAC FAN APIs enable application code to receive and respond to FAN event notifications sent by Oracle RAC in the following ways:

• Listening for Oracle RAC service down, service up, and node down events

• Listening for load balancing advisory events and responding to them

Run-time connection load balancing requires the use of an Oracle JDBC driver and an Oracle RAC database.

Oracle JDBC Universal Connection Pool and Oracle WebLogic Server Active GridLink for Oracle RAC leverage the load balancing functionality provided by an Oracle RAC database.

The Universal Connection Pool and Oracle WebLogic Server Active GridLink for Oracle RAC are integrated to take advantage of Load Balancing Advisory information. Oracle introduced the Universal Connection Pool for JDBC in Oracle Database 11g release 11.1.0.7.0. Consequently, Oracle deprecated the existing JDBC connection pool, the Implicit Connection Cache, which was introduced in Oracle Database 10g release 1 for use with Oracle RAC databases. In addition to Oracle Database 12c, you can also use the Universal Connection Pool with Oracle Database 10g or Oracle Database 11g.

Run-time connection load balancing requires that FCF is enabled and configured properly. In addition, the Oracle RAC load balancing advisory must be configured with service-level goals for each service used by the connection pool. The connection load balancing goal should be set to SHORT, for example:

srvctl modify service -db db_unique_name -service service_name
   -rlbgoal SERVICE_TIME -clbgoal SHORT

The Replay data source (oracle.jdbc.replay.OracleDataSource) is a JDBC-thin data source that Application Continuity requires for Java.

This data source serves as the connection factory that produces new physical JDBC connections, for both Universal Connection Pool and Oracle WebLogic Server Active GridLink for Oracle RAC data sources. The JDBC replay driver maintains a history of calls during a client conversation with Oracle Database 12c, in collaboration with Oracle Database. Following any outage of the session caused by a loss of database service, planned or unplanned, under the direction of the database, the JDBC replay driver attempts to rebuild the non-transactional and transactional database session states, so that the outage appears as a delayed execution.

To use Application Continuity for Java and the JDBC replay driver, you must use an Oracle Database 12c client and connect to an Oracle Database 12c database. Application Continuity for Java is supported in the following configurations:

• JDBC applications using Oracle JDBC Replay data source and using neither Universal Connection Pool or Oracle WebLogic Server Active GridLink—typical third-party, JDBC-based connection pools

• JDBC applications using Universal Connection Pool data sources—standalone or third-party application servers configured to use a Universal Connection Pool data source

• JDBC applications using only Oracle WebLogic Server Active GridLink but not Universal Connection Pool data sources—typical Oracle WebLogic Server J2EE cases

1. Ensure that you are using an application that is certified for replay.

2. Use SRVCTL to create a service for use by the application, if one does not already exist. Set the -failovertype parameter to TRANSACTION and the -commit_outcome parameter to TRUE for this service.

3. Configure the connection element using the PoolDataSource object, as shown in the following example:

   PoolDataSource rds = PoolDataSourceFactory.getPoolDataSource();
   rds.setConnnectionPoolName("replayExample");
   rds.setONSConfiguration("nodes=racnode1:4200,racnode2:4200");
   rds.setFastConnectionFailoverEnabled(true);
   rds.setConnectionFactoryClassName("oracle.jdbc.replay.OracleDataSourceImpl");
   
   Connection conn = rds.getConnection();

4. When connecting to the database, use a URL that can access all instances offering the service.

Transaction Guard provides a protocol and a generic tool for applications to use for at-most-once execution in case of planned and unplanned outages.

Applications use the logical transaction ID to determine the outcome of the last transaction open in a database session following an outage. Without Transaction Guard, end users or applications that attempt to retry operations following outages can cause logical corruption by committing duplicate transactions or committing transactions out of order.

OCI clients can enable FCF by registering to receive notifications for Oracle RAC high availability FAN events and responding when events occur. Using FCF improves the session failover response time in OCI applications and also removes connections to nonfunctioning instances from connection and session pools. FCF can be used in OCI applications that also use TAF, OCI drivers (including your own connection pools), OCI connection pool, and OCI session pools. FAN is posted over the Oracle Notification Service for both high availability and load balancing events.

To use FCF, you must use a service with FAN enabled. FAN is published over Oracle Notification Service. Client applications can also register callbacks that are used whenever an event occurs. This reduces the time that it takes to detect a connection failure.

During DOWN event processing, OCI:

• Terminates affected connections at the client and returns an error

• Removes connections from the OCI connection pool and the OCI session pool—the session pool maps each session to a physical connection in the connection pool, and there can be multiple sessions for each connection

• Fails over the connection if you have configured TAF. If TAF is not configured, then the client only receives an error if the instance it is connected to fails.

If your application is using TAF, then you must enable the TAF properties for the service using SRVCTL or Oracle Enterprise Manager. Configure your OCI client applications to connect to an Oracle RAC database using the configured service.

OCI applications must connect to an Oracle RAC instance to enable HA event notification. Furthermore, these applications must perform the following steps to configure FCF for an OCI client:

1. Configure the service for your OCI connection pool to enable FAN, connection load balancing, and run-time connection load balancing, as shown in the following example:

   $ srvctl modify service -db crm -service ociapp.example.com -notification TRUE

2. Link the application with a thread library.

3. After linking with the thread library, the applications can register a callback that is invoked whenever a FAN event occurs.

As of Oracle Database 12c, OCI session pooling enables multiple threads of an application to use a dynamically managed set of pre-created database sessions.

In connection pooling, the pool element is a connection, but in session pooling, the pool element is a session. Oracle Database continually reuses the sessions in the session pool to form nearly permanent channels to the instances, thus saving the overhead of creating and closing sessions every time applications need them.

Run-time connection load balancing is enabled by default in an Oracle Database 11g release 11.1, or later, client communicating with a server of Oracle Database 10g release 10.2, or later. For Oracle RAC environments, session pools use service metrics received from the Oracle RAC load balancing advisory^Foot 1 through Fast Application Notification (FAN) events to balance application session requests. The work requests coming into the session pool can be distributed across the instances of Oracle RAC offering a service, using the current service performance.

For Oracle RAC environments, session pools use service metrics received from the Oracle RAC load balancing advisory through Fast Application Notification (FAN) events to balance application session requests. To enable your application to receive the service metrics based on the service time, ensure that you configure FAN, the load balancing advisory goal (-rlbgoal parameter), and the connection load balancing goal (-clbgoal parameter) for a service that is used by the session pool, as shown in the following example:

$ srvctl modify service -db crm -service ociapp.example.com -rlbgoal SERVICE_TIME
  -clbgoal SHORT -notification TRUE

OCI supports FAN messages and Transaction Guard. FAN is designed to quickly notify an OCI-based application of outages at the node, database, instance, service, and public network levels.

Once notified of the failure, an application can leverage Transaction Guard to reliably determine the outcome of the last in-flight transaction.

Transaction Guard avoids the costs of ambiguous errors that lead to user frustration, customer support calls, and lost opportunities. Transaction Guard is safer and performs better, with lower overheads, than home grown solutions for a known outcome.

ODP.NET connection pools can subscribe to FAN HA notifications that indicate when nodes, services, and service members are down.

After a DOWN event, Oracle Database cleans up sessions in the connection pool that go to the instance and ODP.NET proactively removes connections that are no longer valid. ODP.NET establishes additional connections to existing Oracle RAC instances if the removal of invalid connections reduces the total number of connections to below the value for the Min Pool Size parameter.

When connecting to Oracle Database 12c and later, ODP.NET uses Oracle Notification Service, rather than Advanced Queuing.

Enable Fast Connection Failover for ODP.NET connection pools by subscribing to FAN high availability events. To enable Fast Connection Failover, include "HA Events=true" and "pooling=true" (the default value) in the connection string, as shown in the following example where user_name is the name of the database user and password is the password for that user:

con.ConnectionString =
   "User Id=user_name;Password=password;Data Source=odpnet;" +
   "Min Pool Size=10;Connection Lifetime=120;Connection Timeout=60;" +
   "HA Events=true;Incr Pool Size=5;Decr Pool Size=2";

When connecting to Oracle Database 12c and later, ODP.NET uses Oracle Notification Service, rather than Advanced Queuing.

Use the following procedure to enable ODP.NET clients or applications to receive FAN load balancing advisory events:

1. Enable Oracle Notification Service notifications by using SRVCTL, and set the run-time load balancing goal, as shown in the following example:

   $ srvctl modify service -db crm -service odpapp.example.com
     -notification TRUE -clbgoal LONG -rlbgoal SERVICE_TIME

2. Ensure Oracle Notification Service (ONS) is configured for FAN events including run-time load balancing advice.

3. To take advantage of load balancing events with ODP.NET connection pools, set the load balancing attribute in the ConnectionString to TRUE (the default is FALSE). You can do this at connect time. This only works if you are using connection pools, or when the pooling attribute is set to TRUE which is the default.

   The following example demonstrates how to configure the ConnectionString to enable load balancing, where user_name is the name of the user and password is the password:

   con.ConnectionString =
     "User Id=user_name;Password=password;Data Source=odpapp;" +
     "Min Pool Size=10;Connection Lifetime=120;Connection Timeout=60;" +
     "Load Balancing=true;Incr Pool Size=5;Decr Pool Size=2";

ODP.NET supports FAN messages and Transaction Guard. FAN is designed to quickly notify an ODP.NET-based application of outages at the node, database, instance, service, and public network levels.

Once notified of the failure, an application can leverage Transaction Guard to reliably determine the outcome of the last in-flight transaction.

Transaction Guard avoids the costs of ambiguous errors that lead to user frustration, customer support calls, and lost opportunities. Transaction Guard is safer and performs better, with lower overheads, than home grown solutions for a known outcome.

A global (XA) transaction can span Oracle RAC instances by default, allowing any application that uses the Oracle XA library to take full advantage of the Oracle RAC environment to enhance the availability and scalability of the application.

GTXn background processes support XA transactions in an Oracle RAC environment. The GLOBAL_TXN_PROCESSES initialization parameter, which is set to 1 by default, specifies the initial number of GTXn background processes for each Oracle RAC instance. Use the default value for this parameter clusterwide to allow distributed transactions to span multiple Oracle RAC instances. Using the default value allows the units of work performed across these Oracle RAC instances to share resources and act as a single transaction (that is, the units of work are tightly coupled). It also allows 2PC requests to be sent to any node in the cluster.

Before Oracle RAC 11g release 1 (11.1), the way to achieve tight coupling in Oracle RAC was to use distributed transaction processing (DTP) services, that is, services whose cardinality (one) ensured that all tightly-coupled branches landed on the same instance—regardless of whether load balancing was enabled. If the XA application does not use suspend and resume on the same transaction branch, and does not issue savepoints that span branches, then tightly coupled XA transactions no longer require the special type of singleton services to be deployed on Oracle RAC databases. If your application cannot determine whether a transaction branch has been suspended and resumed, then the application must continue to use DTP services or preferably use XA affinity.

XA affinity (placing all branches of the same XA transaction at the same Oracle RAC instance) is a requirement when suspending and resuming the same XA branch or if using savepoints across branches. It also provides much better performance because different transactions can be balanced. XA affinity is available with Oracle WebLogic Server Active GridLink for Oracle RAC, JDBC Universal Connection Pool, and Oracle Tuxedo.

An external transaction manager, such as Oracle Services for Microsoft Transaction Server (OraMTS), coordinates XA transactions. However, an internal Oracle transaction manager coordinates distributed SQL transactions. They can both use singleton services or uniform services. Singleton services provide XA affinity and can be drained for maintenance, taking advantage of global transactions.

To provide improved application performance with distributed transaction processing (DTP) in Oracle RAC, you can take advantage of XA affinity.

Using XA affinity, you can direct all branches of a distributed transaction to a single instance in the cluster. To implement XA affinity you can use an application server that provides XA affinity, such as WebLogic Server and Universal Connection Pool. If your application server does not have XA affinity, then you can also use singleton services across Oracle RAC.

Connection pools at the application server tier that load balance across multiple connections to an Oracle RAC database use XA affinity to ensure that all tightly-coupled branches of a global distributed transaction run on only one Oracle RAC instance. When using a connection pool with XA affinity, your services using XA can span Oracle RAC. This is also true in distributed transaction environments using protocols such as X/Open Distributed Transaction Processing or the Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator.

To enhance the performance of distributed transactions, you use services to manage DTP environments. A singleton service runs on one Oracle RAC instance at time in an Oracle RAC database. This service still allows draining for maintenance, so has better high-availability characteristics than an older DTP service. To load balance across the cluster, it is better to have several groups of smaller application servers with each group directing its transactions to a single service, or set of services, than it is to have one or two larger application servers. Using singleton services, global distributed transactions performed through the services have their tightly-coupled branches running on a single Oracle RAC instance. This has the following benefits:

• The changes are available locally within one Oracle RAC instance when tightly coupled branches need information about changes made by each other

• Relocation and failover of services are fully supported using global transactions

• By using more singleton services than there are Oracle RAC instances, Oracle Database can balance the load by services across all of the Oracle RAC database instances

Most applications using XA on Oracle RAC can use uniform or (all preferred) services with XA affinity provided by the connection pool or transaction processing monitor.

The application may also use singleton services to provide XA affinity.

When using singleton services, to leverage all of the instances in a cluster, create one or more singleton services for each Oracle RAC instance that hosts distributed transactions. Choose different services for application servers to balance the workload among the Oracle RAC database instances. Because all of the branches of a distributed transaction are on one instance, you can leverage all of the instances to balance the load of many distributed transaction processing (DTP) transactions through multiple singleton services, thereby maximizing application throughput.

If you add or delete nodes from your cluster database, then you may have to identify and relocate services to ensure that you maintain optimum performance levels. Using singleton services, current work can complete. If you use DTP services, then current work is aborted.

You only need to use DTP services for XA applications that suspend and resume the same branch. When you are using DTP, the same approach applies as that for singletons, but you cannot drain the work when relocating services.

To create distributed transaction processing (DTP) services for distributed transaction processing, perform the following steps:

1. Create a singleton service using Oracle Enterprise Manager or SRVCTL.

   For an administrator-managed database, define only one instance as the preferred instance. You can have as many available instances as you want, for example:

   $ srvctl add service -db crm -service xa_01.example.com -preferred RAC01
     -available RAC02,RAC03

   For a policy-managed database, specify the server pool to use, and set the cardinality of the service to SINGLETON, for example:

   $ srvctl add service -db crm -service xa_01.example.com -serverpool dtp_pool
     -cardinality SINGLETON

2. Set the DTP parameter (-dtp) for the service to TRUE (the default value is FALSE). You can use Oracle Enterprise Manager or SRVCTL to modify the DTP property of the singleton service. The following example shows how to modify the xa_01.example.com service using SRVCTL:

   $ srvctl modify service -db crm -service xa_01.example.com -dtp TRUE

   Note:

   If the application does require DTP services, then use the -dtp parameter. If not, then use the preceding example with no -dtp parameter.

Beginning with Oracle Real Application Clusters 11g release 1 (11.1), global transactions and XA affinity replace the need for distributed transaction processing (DTP) services.

Most XA deployments should be using global transactions with XA affinity for improved load balancing and flexibility rather than the DTP attribute.

If the instance that provides a DTP service, for example XA_01, fails, then the service fails over in the same manner as any other service. Because there is a requirement that sessions exist on exactly one instance, however, the -f (force kill) option for database sessions always applies.

If services migrate to other instances, then you might have to force the relocation of the service back to the preferred instance after it is restarted to evenly re-balance the load on all of the available hardware. You can use data from the GV$ACTIVE_SERVICES view to determine whether you need to relocate the DTP service.

In this scenario, you need to check the thresholds for the payroll service. You can use the AWR report to get this information. You should compare the results from reports run over several successive intervals during which time the system is running optimally. For example, assume that for servers accessed by a payroll application, the AWR report runs each Thursday during the peak usage times of 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. The AWR report contains the response time, or elapsed database time, and the CPU consumption time, or CPU time, for calls for each server, including the payroll service. The AWR report also provides a breakdown of the work done and the wait times that are contributing to the response times.

Using DBMS_MONITOR, you set a warning threshold for the elapsed time per call for the payroll service at 0.5 seconds (500000 microseconds). You also set a critical threshold for the elapsed time per call for the payroll service at 0.75 seconds (750000 microseconds).

In this example, thresholds are added for the payroll service as follows:

EXECUTE DBMS_SERVER_ALERT.SET_THRESHOLD( 
METRICS_ID => DBMS_SERVER_ALERT.ELAPSED_TIME_PER_CALL 
, warning_operator => DBMS_SERVER_ALERT.OPERATOR_GE 
, warning_value => '500000' 
, critical_operator => DBMS_SERVER_ALERT.OPERATOR_GE 
, critical_value => '750000' 
, observation_period => 30 
, consecutive_occurrences => 5 
, instance_name => NULL 
, object_type => DBMS_SERVER_ALERT.OBJECT_TYPE_SERVICE 
, object_name => 'payroll');

You can verify the threshold configuration is set on all the instances using the following SELECT statement:

SELECT METRICS_NAME, INSTANCE_NAME, WARNING_VALUE, CRITICAL_VALUE, 
OBSERVATION_PERIOD FROM dba_thresholds ;

You can enable performance data tracing for important modules and actions within each service. The performance statistics are available in the V$SERV_MOD_ACT_STATS view. For example, you might decide to set the following:

• For the ERP service, enable monitoring for the exceptions pay action in the payroll module.

• For the ERP service, enable monitoring for the all actions in the payroll module.

• For the HOT_BATCH service, enable monitoring for all actions in the posting module.

The following commands show how to enable the module and action monitoring for the services:

EXECUTE DBMS_MONITOR.SERV_MOD_ACT_STAT_ENABLE(service_name => 'erp', module_name=>
 'payroll', action_name => 'exceptions pay');
EXECUTE DBMS_MONITOR.SERV_MOD_ACT_STAT_ENABLE(service_name => 'erp', module_name=>
 'payroll');
EXECUTE DBMS_MONITOR.SERV_MOD_ACT_STAT_ENABLE(service_name => 'hot_batch', 
module_name =>'posting'); 

To verify monitoring is enabled for the service, module, and actions, use the following SELECT statement:

COLUMN AGGREGATION_TYPE FORMAT A21 TRUNCATED HEADING 'AGGREGATION'
COLUMN PRIMARY_ID FORMAT A20 TRUNCATED HEADING 'SERVICE'
COLUMN QUALIFIER_ID1 FORMAT A20 TRUNCATED HEADING 'MODULE'
COLUMN QUALIFIER_ID2 FORMAT A20 TRUNCATED HEADING 'ACTION'
SELECT * FROM DBA_ENABLED_AGGREGATIONS ; 

The output is similar to the following:

AGGREGATION            SERVICE                MODULE        ACTION
------------           --------------------   ----------    -------------
SERVICE_MODULE_ACTION  erp                    payroll       exceptions pay
SERVICE_MODULE         erp                    payroll
SERVICE_MODULE         hot_batch              posting

Services provide location transparency. A service name can identify multiple database instances, and an instance can belong to multiple services. Several database features use services for an Oracle RAC database:

This section includes the following topics:

• Oracle Clusterware Resources for a Service

• Database Resource Manager Consumer Group Mappings for Services

• Performance Monitoring by Service with AWR

• Parallel Operations and Services

• Oracle GoldenGate and Oracle RAC

When you create new services for your database, you should define the automatic workload management characteristics for each service. The characteristics of a service include:

• Service Name

• Service Edition

• Service Management Policy

• Database Role for a Service

• Instance Preference

• Server Pool Assignment

• Load Balancing Advisory Goal for Run-time Connection Load Balancing

• Connection Load Balancing Goal

• Distributed Transaction Processing

• Failing Over OCI Clients with TAF

Your Oracle RAC database includes an Oracle database service identified by DB_UNIQUE_NAME, if set, or DB_NAME or PDB_NAME, if not. This default service is always available on all instances in an Oracle RAC environment, unless an instance is in restricted mode. You cannot alter this service or its properties. Additionally, the database supports the following two internal services:

• SYS$BACKGROUND is used by the background processes only

• SYS$USERS is the default service for user sessions that are not associated with any application service

All of these services are used for internal management. You cannot stop or disable any of these internal services to do planned outages or to failover to Oracle Data Guard. Do not use these services for client connections.

This feature allows listener registration only from local IP addresses, by default, and provides the ability to configure and dynamically update a set of IP addresses or subnets from which registration requests are allowed by the listener.

Security is a high priority to all enterprises, and network security and controlling access to the database is a critical component of overall security endeavours. Database Instance registration with a listener succeeds only when the request originates from a valid node. The network administrator can specify a list of valid nodes, excluded nodes, or disable valid node checking. The list of valid nodes explicitly lists the nodes and subnets that can register with the database. The list of excluded nodes explicitly lists the nodes that cannot register with the database. The control of dynamic registration results in increased manageability and security of Oracle RAC deployments.

By default, valid node checking for registration (VNCR) is enabled. In the default configuration, registration requests are only allowed from nodes within the cluster, because they are redirected to the private subnet, and only nodes within the cluster can access the private subnet. Non-SCAN listeners only accept registration from instances on the local node. You must manually include remote nodes or nodes outside the subnet of the SCAN listener on the list of valid nodes by using the registration_invited_nodes_alias parameter in the listener.ora file or by modifying the SCAN listener using SRVCTL, as follows:

$ srvctl modify scan_listener -invitednodes node_list -invitedsubnets subnet_list

When you create and administer services, you are dividing the work that your database performs into manageable units.

The goal of using services is to achieve optimal utilization of your database infrastructure. You can create and deploy services based on business requirements. Oracle Database can measure the performance for each service. Using the DBMS_MONITOR package, you can define both the application modules within a service and the individual actions for a module and monitor thresholds for these actions, enabling you to manage workloads to deliver capacity on demand.

When you create new services for your database, you should define the automatic workload management characteristics for each service, as described in "Service Characteristics".

In addition to creating services, you can:

• Delete a service. You can delete services that you created. However, you cannot delete or modify the properties of the default database service that Oracle Database created.

• Check the status of a service. A service can be assigned different roles among the available instances. In a complex database with many services, you may not remember the details of every service. Therefore, you may have to check the status on an instance or service basis. For example, you may have to know the status of a service for a particular instance before you make modifications to that instance or to the Oracle home from which it runs.

• Start or stop a service for a database or an instance. A service must be started before it can be used for client connections to that instance. If you shut down your database, for example, by running the SRVCTL command srvctl stop database -db db_unique_name where db_unique_name is the name of the database you want to stop, then Oracle Database stops all services for that database. Depending on the service management policy, you may have to manually restart the services when you start the database. Both the srvctl stop database and srvctl stop service commands accept the -force option to forcibly disconnect connections. To drain sessions for planned outages do not use the -force option.

  Note:

  If Oracle Database QoS Management is enabled for the Oracle RAC database, then the services are automatically restarted after they are stopped.

• Map a service to a consumer group. You can map services to Resource Manager Consumer groups to limit the amount of resources that services can use in an instance. You must create the consumer group and then map the service to the consumer group.

• Enable or disable a service for a database or an instance. By default, Oracle Clusterware attempts to restart a service automatically after failures. You can prevent this behavior by disabling a service. Disabling a service is useful when you must perform database or instance maintenance, such as when you are performing an upgrade and you want to prevent connection requests from succeeding.

• Relocate a service to a different instance. You can move a service from one instance to another instance to re-balance workloads, for example, after adding or deleting cluster nodes.

The Cluster Managed Database Services page is the master page for beginning all tasks related to services.

Access this page, as follows:

1. In Oracle Enterprise Manager, go to the Cluster Database Home page.

   See Also:

   Oracle Database 2 Day DBA for details on logging in to Oracle Enterprise Manager.

2. From the Availability menu, select Cluster Managed Database Services to display the Cluster Managed Database Services page.

3. Enter or confirm the credentials for the Oracle RAC database and host operating system and click Continue to display the Cluster Managed Database Services page.

From the Cluster Managed Database Services page you can drill down to perform the following tasks:

• View a list of services for the cluster

• View the instances on which each service is currently running

• View the server pool and nodes offering the service in a policy-managed environment

• View the status for each service

• Create or edit a service

• Start or stop a service

• Enable or disable a service

• Perform instance-level tasks for a service

• Delete a service

When you create a service using SRVCTL, you must start the service with a separate SRVCTL command.

However, you may later have to manually stop or restart the service. You may also have to disable the service to prevent automatic restarts, to manually relocate the service, or obtain status information about the service. The following sections explain how to use SRVCTL to perform the following administrative tasks:

• Creating Services with SRVCTL

• Creating Services for Application Continuity and Transaction Guard

• Starting and Stopping Services with SRVCTL

• Enabling and Disabling Services with SRVCTL

• Relocating Services with SRVCTL

• Obtaining the Status of Services with SRVCTL

• Obtaining the Configuration of Services with SRVCTL