Did you make a mistake patching the Oracle Home and Grid Home on Exadata?

Part of the process of applying Oracle patches can involve relinking the Oracle Executable. For example if your using Database Vault, you might need to relink your Oracle Executable to either enable or disable that feature. Some patches might require that you manually relink the software.

The thing is, in Exadata, it's important to link the software the correct way. This is because the Infiniband fabric uses a protocol called the RDS protocol to communicate. In order to use the RDS protocol, you need to make sure the database is relinked using the correct libraries.

So, if you need to relink the ORACLE_HOME or GRID_HOME software make sure you include the ipc_rds library in the make command as seen here:

make -f ins_rdbms.mk ipc_rds ioracle

If you run Exacheck it will tell you if you are not linked using the RDS protocol.

So, if you find your having network issues or node fencing - check to make sure you are using the RDS protocol. Oracle provides a way to check if you are using the RDS protocol. Simply set the ORACLE_HOME correctly (and other variables) and issue the following command:

$ORACLE_HOME/bin/skgxpinfo

If it says rds, your in good shape on that node if you get the rds response from each Oracle Home and Grid Home.

Also, are the databases in your Exadata communicating over infiniband? Did you know that by default they do not. I'll talk about that in my next post!

Robert