What is RAC? What is the benefit of RAC over single instance database?

In Real Application Clusters environments, all nodes concurrently execute transactions

against the same database. Real Application Clusters coordinates each nodes access to
the shared data to provide consistency and integrity.
Benefits:
Improve response time
Improve throughput
High availability
Transparency
What is Oracle RAC One Node?
Oracle RAC one Node is a single instance running on one node of the cluster while the
2nd node is in cold standby mode. If the instance fails for some reason then RAC one
node detect it and restart the instance on the same node or the instance is relocate to the
2nd node incase there is failure or fault in 1st node. The benefit of this feature is that it
provides a cold failover solution and it automates the instance relocation without any
downtime and does not need a manual intervention. Oracle introduced this feature with
the release of 11gR2 (available with Enterprise Edition).
Real Application Clusters
Oracle RAC is a cluster database with a shared cache architecture that overcomes the
limitations of traditional shared-nothing and shared-disk approaches to provide a highly
scalable and available database solution for all your business applications. Oracle RAC
provides the foundation for enterprise grid computing.
Oracles Real Application Clusters (RAC) option supports the transparent deployment of
a single database across a cluster of servers, providing fault tolerance from hardware
failures or planned outages. Oracle RAC running on clusters provides Oracles highest
level of capability in terms of availability, scalability, and low-cost computing.
One DB opened by multipe instances so the the db ll be Highly Available if an instance
crashes.
Cluster Software. Oracles Clusterware or products like Veritas Volume Manager are

required to provide the cluster support and allow each node to know which nodes
belong to the cluster and are available and with Oracle Cluterware to know which nodes
have failed and to eject then from the cluster, so that errors on that node can be cleared.
Oracle Clusterware has two key components Cluster Registry OCR and Voting Disk.
The cluster registry holds all information about nodes, instances, services and ASM
storage if used, it also contains state information ie they are available and up or similar.
The voting disk is used to determine if a node has failed, i.e. become separated from the
majority. If a node is deemed to no longer belong to the majority then it is forcibly
rebooted and will after the reboot add itself again the the surviving cluster nodes.
Advantages of RAC (Real Application Clusters)
Reliability if one node fails, the database wont fail
Availability nodes can be added or replaced without having to shutdown the database
Scalability more nodes can be added to the cluster as the workload increases
What is a virtual IP address or VIP?
A virtual IP address or VIP is an alternate IP address that the client connections use
instead of the standard public IP address. To configure VIP address, we need to reserve
a spare IP address for each node, and the IP addresses must use the same subnet as the
public network.
What is the use of VIP?
If a node fails, then the nodes VIP address fails over to another node on which the VIP
address can accept TCP connections but it cannot accept Oracle connections.
Give situations under which VIP address failover happens:VIP addresses failover happens when the node on which the VIP address runs fails, all
interfaces for the VIP address fails, all interfaces for the VIP address are disconnected
from the network.
Using virtual IP we can save our TCP/IP timeout problem because Oracle notification
service maintains communication between each nodes and listeners.
What is the significance of VIP address failover?

When a VIP address failover happens, Clients that attempt to connect to the VIP address
receive a rapid connection refused error .They dont have to wait for TCP connection
timeout messages.
What is voting disk?
Voting Disk is a file that sits in the shared storage area and must be accessible by all
nodes in the cluster. All nodes in the cluster registers their heart-beat information in the
voting disk, so as to confirm that they are all operational. If heart-beat information of
any node in the voting disk is not available that node will be evicted from the cluster.
The CSS (Cluster Synchronization Service) daemon in the clusterware maintains the
heart beat of all nodes to the voting disk. When any node is not able to send heartbeat to
voting disk, then it will reboot itself, thus help avoiding the split-brain syndrome.
For high availability, Oracle recommends that you have a minimum of three or odd
number (3 or greater) of votingdisks.
Voting Disk is file that resides on shared storage and Manages cluster members.
Voting disk reassigns cluster ownership between the nodes in case of failure.
The Voting Disk Files are used by Oracle Clusterware to determine which nodes are
currently members of the cluster. The voting disk files are also used in concert with
other Cluster components such as CRS to maintain the clusters integrity.
Oracle Database 11g Release 2 provides the ability to store the voting disks in ASM along
with the OCR. Oracle Clusterware can access the OCR and the voting disks present in
ASM even if the ASM instance is down. As a result CSS can continue to maintain the
Oracle cluster even if the ASM instance has failed.