View Larger Image	K. Gopalakrishnan Oracle Press, Paperback, Published November 2006, 496 pages, ISBN 007146509X
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• Databases : Database Topics
• Databases : Oracle

• Oracle Press

Learn cutting-edge technology from Oracle experts

Written by Oracle insiders, this comprehensive guide covers everything you need to know about Real Application Clusters -- low-cost hardware platforms that can rival and exceed the quality of service, availability, and scalability of the most expensive mainframe systems.

• Concepts covered are applicable to all previous versions of Oracle
• Tuning and troubleshooting tips, providing insight on the most advanced diagnostics available
• Detailed coverage of advanced RAC concepts
• Working code for all examples available online

Table of Contents

Part I: High Availability Architecture and Clusters
Chapter 1: Introduction to High Availability and Scalability
Chapter 2: Clustering Basics and History
Chapter 3: RAC Architecture
Part II: Installation, Configuration, and Storage
Chapter 4: RAC Preinstallation
Chapter 5: RAC Installation
Chapter 6: Automatic Storage Management
Part III: RAC Administration and Management
Chapter 7: RAC Basic Administration
Chapter 8: RAC Advanced Administration
Chapter 9: RAC Backup and Recovery
Chapter 10: RAC Performance Management
Part IV: Advanced Concepts in RAC
Chapter 11: Global Resource Directory
Chapter 12: A Closer Look at Cache Fusion
Chapter 13: Workload and Connection Management
Chapter 14: RAC Troubleshooting
Part V: Deploying RAC
Chapter 15: RAC Extensions
Chapter 16: Developing Applications for RAC
APPENDIX A: RAC REFERENCE
APPENDIX B: ADDING AND REMOVING CLUSTER NODES
APPENDIX C: REFERENCES
INDEX

About the Author

K Gopalakrishnan (Gopal) is a senior principal consultant with the Advanced Technology Services group at Oracle Corporation, specializing exclusively in performance tuning, high availability, and disaster recovery. He is a recognized expert in Oracle RAC and Database Internals and has used his extensive expertise in solving many vexing performance issues all across the world for telecom giants, banks, financial institutions, and universities. Gopal has more than a decade of Oracle expertise backed by an engineering degree in computer science and engineering from the University of Madras, India.

Gopal has previously co-authored an award-winning Oracle Press book, Oracle Wait Interface: A Practical Guide to Performance Diagnostics and Tuning. He was awarded an Editor's Choice award for Oracle Author of the Year by Oracle Magazine in 2005. Gopal was also chosen as an Oracle ACE by Oracle Technology Network (http://oracle.com/technology/index.html) in 2006.

Jul 31, 2007     Madhavan Amruthur from Seattle, WA
Conceptually strong
Equating technology to any sport, you succeed when the fundamentals are strong.

This books takes a wonderful step towards elucidating fundamental concepts of Oracle RAC, its evolution from OPS, separation from OPS and how RAC has evolved into a leading technology.

Part 1 is a quick primer of clustering technolgies and HA concepts. There is a detailed parallel drawn between OPS and RAC and elucidated in a very clear manner. These concepts are then tailored into the RAC architecture chapter which explains the RAC architecture in detail and the components that make up RAC.

Part 2 , once you are armed with the architectural concepts, dives into elucidating the Installation procedures and takes us through an Oracle RAC setup detailing the steps.

Part 3, chapters 7 and 8 give you a thorough run down of basic and advanced Oracle RAC administration.

Chapters 9 onwards is when the author differentiates himself from the other text on the same subject. While its easy to say Oracle RAC backup and recovery works the same with some differences or to say Cache Fusion is how we move the blocks around, its another thing to conceptualize this and the authoer excels in presenting these concepts in a very natural flow. Bringing to light these concepts and delving deeper into GRD, RAC Performance Management etc, the author sets a high standard.

Finally, when watching a show, the artists hope to leave the audience wanting for more rather than thinking when are they going to stop...On the same note, Gopal has left us wanting for more with this wonderful book.

Dec 18, 2006     Nandu Konat from Houston TX
Deep dive to RAC concepts and Cache Fusion Internals
These days, we find a lot of books on Oracle Technology flooding the market in tandem with the product announcements. Most of the books just rehash the standard (or even beta) documentation, or published metalink notes. This book is certainly does not belong to that category.

First of all, I find that this is the first book which tries to present an accurate picture of RAC. This book clearly demonstrates that RAC is the improved version of OPS and shows the evoluation path of OPS to RAC. I suppose most of the people who have worked on Oracle for a long time will agree with that statement. Most of the current books in the market that I get to read just tend to follow what Oracle marketing says, that RAC is not OPS.

Notably, this is the first ever book on RAC, that has shown me how cache fusion really works. Cache fusion is the secret of RAC and not many people knows how they work under the hood. In this book the author has clearly demonstrated how the resources are mastered, how the locks are coverted and that a row level locks (transaction locks) are different to a buffer locks (Global Cache locks). There are places where the author has used block dumps to explain the internal implementations.

What I see is that the author has tried his best to concentrate on concepts and inner workings of various things inside RAC.

In that sense, this book is well stocked with lengthy discussions for the RAC hungry technicians. the book requires a lot of attention (and sometimes repeated readings) and certainly this is not bed time reading!

The beginning is light and interesting, especially the history of OPS which is difficult to find and collate.I really enjoyed reading the Global Resource Directory chapter along with the Cache Fusion. Many other chapters are worth a mention including the Backup and Recovery, Performance Tuning (No wonder,the author has another best selling oracle performance tuning book!) and Application Development. The consistency and approach is great and the author has tried to keep things in context, most of the times. The author has managed to touch many topics in RAC though some of them could have been lengthier and more conclusive.

One last thing, If you want to buy a book just to get the bunch of day to day commands for RAC and plan to work on RAC, please do not buy this book. You will be thoroughly disappointed as this book doesn't belong to that category. It only tells us how things works internally, what are the concepts behind the scenes and not the magic commands to administer RAC.

As a whole, I find this book a very enriching reference/concepts book to read when I don't know how something works in RAC. If there is a secret in RAC, there is a good chance you might find it in this book rather than any other. Contents in this book are generally not seen in other RAC books that I have read and the quality of presentation is much better.

Good buy but prepare for some heavy reading.!! I recommend this book to every DBA (even architects) who want to know HOW RAC works.

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