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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Hello
All,<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>We&#8217;re
considering ASM with Oracle Clusterware 10.2.0.4 as a replacement to OCFS2 in
order to maintain a more reliable RAC. We&#8217;ve been hitting stability
issues with our 2 node RAC running IA64 SLES9 SP3 and Oracle 10.1 and OCFS2
1.2.1 &#8211; As the upgrade options are limited, ASM seems to be a better
alternative and been recommended by Oracle support as well.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>I&#8217;ve
got a couple of questions and would appreciate your thoughts:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoListParagraph style='text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>1.<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span><![endif]><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>The
primary RAC is hosting 5 databases with around 500 GB divided into a few disk
groups with RAID 6 hosted in two SANs; these disk groups are composed of disks
of 36GB with 15K RPM and 146GB with 10K RPM. I&#8217;d like to know if we need
to break the RAID6. If so, what is the best recommended RAID type? <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoListParagraph style='text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>2.<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span><![endif]><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>We&#8217;ve
got consistent shared LUN listing across the cluster, an example is /dev/mapper/2003013840ad20008
(we&#8217;re using this method to create and mount OCFS2 volumes); is it possible
to maintain the same way of discovery? There is a note in &#8220;Configuring
Oracle ASMLib on Multipath Disks&#8221; saying that <tt><span style='font-family:
"Arial","sans-serif"'>dm</span></tt> prefix must be used for the scan order and
exclude. Do we still need ASMLib, and can we use the device mapper instead of
dm prefix?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Thanks,
and looking forward to hearing from you<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Best
regards,<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Karim
Alkhayer<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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