OCR / Vote disk Maintenance Operations: (ADD/REMOVE/REPLACE/MOVE)

In this Document

Applies to:

Oracle Server - Enterprise Edition - Version 10.2.0.1 to 11.2.0.3 [Release 10.2 to 11.2]
Information in this document applies to any platform.

Goal

The goal of this note is to provide steps to add, remove, replace or move an Oracle Cluster Repository (OCR) or voting disk in Oracle Clusterware 10gR2, 11gR1 and 11gR2 environment. It will also provide steps to move OCR / voting and ASM devices from raw device to block device.

This article is intended for DBA and Support Engineers who need to modify, or move OCR and voting disks files, customers who have an existing clustered environment deployed on a storage array and might want to migrate to a new storage array with minimal downtime.

Typically, one would simply cp or dd the files once the new storage has been presented to the hosts. In this case, it is a little more difficult because:

1. The Oracle Clusterware has the OCR and voting disks open and is actively using them. (Both primary and mirrors)
2. There is an API provided for this function (ocrconfig and crsctl), which is the appropriate interface than typical cp and/or dd commands.

It is highly recommended to take a backup of the voting disk, and OCR device before making any changes.

Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR) and Voting Disk Additional clarifications

For Voting disks (never use even number of voting disks):
External redundancy means 1 voting disk
Normal redundancy means 3 voting disks
High redundancy means 5 voting disks
For OCR: 10.2 and 11.1, maximum 2 OCR devices: OCR and OCRMIRROR
11.2+, upto 5 OCR devices can be added.

Fix

Prepare the disks

For OCR or votind disk addition or replacement, new disks need to be prepared. Please refer to Clusteware/Gird Infrastructure installation guide for different platform for the disk requirement and preparation.

1. Size

For 10.1:
OCR device minimum size (each): 100M
Voting disk minimum size (each): 20M
For 10.2:
OCR device minimum size (each): 256M
Voting disk minimum size (each): 256M
For 11.1:
OCR device minimum size (each): 280M
Voting disk minimum size (each): 280M
For 11.2:
OCR device minimum size (each): 300M
Voting disk minimum size (each): 300M

2. For raw or block device (pre 11.2)

Please refer to Clusterware installation guide on different platform for more details.
On windows platform the new raw device link is created via $CRS_HOME\bin\GUIOracleOBJManager.exe, for example:
\\.\VOTEDSK2
\\.\OCR2

3. For ASM disks (11.2+)

On Windows platform, please refer to Document 331796.1 How to setup ASM on Windows
On Linux platform, please refer to Document 580153.1 How To Setup ASM on Linux Using ASMLIB Disks, Raw Devices or Block Devices?
For other platform, please refer to Clusterware/Gird Infrastructure installation guide.

4. For cluster file system

If OCR is on cluster file system, the new OCR or OCRMIRROR file must be touched before add/replace command can be issued. Otherwise PROT-21: Invalid parameter (10.2/11.) or PROT-30 The Oracle Cluster Registry location to be added is not accessible (for 11.2) will occur.

As root user
# touch 
/cluster_fs/ocrdisk.dat
# touch /cluster_fs/ocrmirror.dat
# chown 
root:oinstall /cluster_fs/ocrdisk.dat  /cluster_fs/ocrmirror.dat
# chmod 640 
/cluster_fs/ocrdisk.dat  /cluster_fs/ocrmirror.dat

It is not required to pre-touch voting disk file on cluster file system.
After delete command is issued, the ocr/voting files on the cluster file system require to be removed manually.

5. Permissions

For OCR device:
chown root:oinstall <OCR device>
chmod 640 <OCR device>
For Voting device:
chown <crs/grid>:oinstall <Voting device>
chmod 644 <Voting device>
For ASM disks used for OCR/Voting disk:
chown griduser:asmadmin <asm disks>
chmod 660 <asm disks>

ADD/REMOVE/REPLACE/MOVE OCR Device

Note: You must be logged in as the root user, because root owns the OCR files. "crsctl -replace" command can only be issued when CRS is running, otherwise "PROT-1: Failed to initialize ocrconfig" will occur.

Please ensure CRS is running on ALL cluster nodes during this operation, otherwise the change will not reflect in the CRS down node, CRS will have problem to startup from this down node. "ocrconfig -repair" option will be required to fix the ocr.loc file on the CRS down node.

For 11.2+ with OCR on ASM diskgroup, due to unpublished Bug 8604794 - FAIL TO CHANGE OCR LOCATION TO DG WITH 'OCRCONFIG -REPAIR -REPLACE', "ocrconfig -repair" to change OCR location to different ASM diskgroup does not work currently. Workaround is to manually edit /etc/oracle/ocr.loc or /var/opt/ocr.loc or Windows registry HYKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Oracle\ocr, point to desired diskgroup.

Make sure there is a recent copy of the OCR file before making any changes:

ocrconfig -showbackup

If there is not a recent backup copy of the OCR file, an export can be taken for the current OCR file. Use the following command to generate an export of the online OCR file:

In 10.2

# ocrconfig -export <OCR export_filename> -s online

In 11.1 and 11.2

# ocrconfig -manualbackup node1 2008/08/06 06:11:58 /crs/cdata/crs/backup_20080807_003158.ocr

To recover using this file, the following command can be used:

# 
ocrconfig -import <OCR export_filename>

From 11.2+, please also refer How to restore ASM based OCR after complete loss of the CRS diskgroup on Linux/Unix systems Document 1062983.1

To see whether OCR is healthy, run an ocrcheck, which should return with like below.

# ocrcheck Status of Oracle Cluster Registry is as follows : Version : 2 Total space (kbytes) : 497928 Used space (kbytes) : 312 Available space (kbytes) : 497616 ID : 576761409 Device/File Name : /dev/raw/raw1 Device/File integrity check succeeded Device/File Name : /dev/raw/raw2 Device/File integrity check succeeded Cluster registry integrity check succeeded For 11.1+, ocrcheck as root user should also show: Logical corruption check succeeded

1. To add an OCRMIRROR device when only OCR device is defined:

To add an OCR mirror device, provide the full path including file name.
10.2 and 11.1:

# ocrconfig -replace ocrmirror <filename> eg: # ocrconfig -replace ocrmirror /dev/raw/raw2 # ocrconfig -replace ocrmirror /dev/sdc1 # ocrconfig -replace ocrmirror /cluster_fs/ocrdisk.dat > ocrconfig -replace ocrmirror \\.\OCRMIRROR2 - for Windows

11.2+: From 11.2 onwards, upto 4 ocrmirrors can be added

# ocrconfig -add <filename> eg: # ocrconfig -add +OCRVOTE2 # ocrconfig -add /cluster_fs/ocrdisk.dat

2. To remove an OCR device

To remove an OCR device:
10.2 and 11.1:

# ocrconfig -replace ocr

11.2+:

# ocrconfig -delete <filename> eg: # ocrconfig -delete +OCRVOTE1

* Once an OCR device is removed, ocrmirror device automatically changes to be OCR device.
* It is not allowed to remove OCR device if only 1 OCR device is defined, the command will return PROT-16.

To remove an OCR mirror device:
10.2 and 11.1:

# ocrconfig -replace ocrmirror

11.2+:

# ocrconfig -delete <ocrmirror filename> eg: # ocrconfig -delete +OCRVOTE2

After removal, the old OCR/OCRMIRROR can be deleted if they are on cluster filesystem.

3. To replace or move the location of an OCR device

Note. 1. An ocrmirror must be in place before trying to replace the OCR device. The ocrconfig will fail with PROT-16, if there is no ocrmirror exists.
2. If an OCR device is replaced with a device of a different size, the size of the new device will not be reflected until the clusterware is restarted.

10.2 and 11.1:
To replace the OCR device with <filename>, provide the full path including file name.

# ocrconfig -replace ocr <filename> eg: # ocrconfig -replace ocr /dev/sdd1 $ ocrconfig -replace ocr \\.\OCR2 - for Windows

To replace the OCR mirror device with <filename>, provide the full path including file name.

# ocrconfig -replace ocrmirror <filename> eg: # ocrconfig -replace ocrmirrow /dev/raw/raw4 # ocrconfig -replace ocrmirrow \\.\OCRMIRROR2 - for Windows

11.2:
The command is same for replace either OCR or OCRMIRRORs (at least 2 OCR exist for replace command to work):

# ocrconfig -replace 
<current filename> -replacement <new filename>
eg:
# ocrconfig 
-replace /cluster_file/ocr.dat -replacement +OCRVOTE
# ocrconfig -replace 
+CRS -replacement +OCRVOTE

ADD/DELETE/MOVE Voting Disk

Note: 1. crsctl votedisk commands must be run as root for 10.2 and 11.1, but can be run as grid user for 11.2+
2. For 11.2, when using ASM disks for OCR and voting, the command is same for Windows and Unix platform.

To take a backup of voting disk:

$ dd if=voting_disk_name of=backup_file_name

For Windows:

ocopy \\.\votedsk1 o:\backup\votedsk1.bak

For 10gR2 release

Shutdown the Oracle Clusterware (crsctl stop crs as root) on all nodes before making any modification to the voting disk. Determine the current voting disk location using:
crsctl query css votedisk

1. To add a Voting Disk, provide the full path including file name:

# crsctl add css votedisk <VOTEDISK_LOCATION> -force eg: # crsctl add css votedisk /dev/raw/raw1 -force # crsctl add css votedisk /cluster_fs/votedisk.dat -force > crsctl add css votedisk \\.\VOTEDSK2 -force - for windows

2. To delete a Voting Disk, provide the full path including file name:

# crsctl delete css votedisk <VOTEDISK_LOCATION> -force eg: # crsctl delete css votedisk /dev/raw/raw1 -force # crsctl delete css votedisk /cluster_fs/votedisk.dat -force > crsctl delete css votedisk \\.\VOTEDSK1 -force - for windows

3. To move a Voting Disk, provide the full path including file name, add a device first before deleting the old one:

# crsctl add css votedisk <NEW_LOCATION> -force # crsctl delete css votedisk <OLD_LOCATION> -force eg: # crsctl add css votedisk /dev/raw/raw4 -force # crsctl delete css votedisk /dev/raw/raw1 -force

After modifying the voting disk, start the Oracle Clusterware stack on all nodes

# crsctl start crs

Verify the voting disk location using

# crsctl query css votedisk

For 11gR1 release

Starting with 11.1.0.6, the below commands can be performed online (CRS is up and running).

1. To add a Voting Disk, provide the full path including file name:

# crsctl add css 
votedisk <VOTEDISK_LOCATION>
eg:
# crsctl add css votedisk 
/dev/raw/raw1
# crsctl add css votedisk /cluster_fs/votedisk.dat
> 
crsctl add css votedisk \\.\VOTEDSK2        - for windows

2. To delete a Voting Disk, provide the full path including file name:

# crsctl delete css 
votedisk <VOTEDISK_LOCATION>
eg:
# crsctl delete css votedisk 
/dev/raw/raw1 -force
# crsctl delete css votedisk 
/cluster_fs/votedisk.dat
> crsctl delete css votedisk \\.\VOTEDSK1     - 
for windows

3. To move a Voting Disk, provide the full path including file name:

# crsctl add css 
votedisk <NEW_LOCATION> 
# crsctl delete css votedisk 
<OLD_LOCATION>
eg:
# crsctl add css votedisk /dev/raw/raw4
# 
crsctl delete css votedisk /dev/raw/raw1

Verify the voting disk location:

# crsctl query css 
votedisk

For 11gR2 release

From 11.2, votedisk can be stored on either ASM diskgroup or cluster file systems. The following commands can only be executed when Grid Infrastructure is running. As grid user:

1. To add a Voting Disk
a. When votedisk is on cluster file system:

$ crsctl add css 
votedisk <cluster_fs/filename>

b. When votedisk is on ASM diskgroup, no add option available.
The number of votedisk is determined by the diskgroup redundancy. If more copy of votedisk is desired, one can move votedisk to a diskgroup with higher redundancy. See step 4.
If a votedisk is removed from a normal or high redundancy diskgroup for abnormal reason, it can be added back using:

alter diskgroup <vote diskgroup 
name> add disk '</path/name>' force;

2. To delete a Voting Disk
a. When votedisk is on cluster file system:

$ crsctl delete css 
votedisk <cluster_fs/filename>

b. When votedisk is on ASM, no delete option available, one can only replace the existing votedisk group with another ASM diskgroup

3. To move a Voting Disk on cluster file system

$ crsctl add css votedisk 
<new_cluster_fs/filename>
$ crsctl delete css votedisk 
<old_cluster_fs/filename>

4. To move voting disk on ASM from one diskgroup to another diskgroup due to redundancy change or disk location change

$ crsctl replace 
votedisk <+diskgroup>|<vdisk>

Example here is moving from external redundancy +OCRVOTE diskgroup to normal redundancy +CRS diskgroup

1. create new diskgroup +CRS as 
desired



2. $ crsctl query css votedisk
##  
STATE    File Universal Id                File Name Disk group
--  -----    
-----------------                --------- ---------
 1. ONLINE   
5e391d339a594fc7bf11f726f9375095 (ORCL:ASMDG02) [+OCRVOTE]
Located 1 voting 
disk(s).

3. $ crsctl replace votedisk +CRS
Successful addition of 
voting disk 941236c324454fc0bfe182bd6ebbcbff.
Successful addition of voting 
disk 07d2464674ac4fabbf27f3132d8448b0.
Successful addition of voting disk 
9761ccf221524f66bff0766ad5721239.
Successful deletion of voting disk 
5e391d339a594fc7bf11f726f9375095.
Successfully replaced voting disk group 
with +CRS.
CRS-4266: Voting file(s) successfully replaced



4. $ crsctl query css votedisk
##  STATE    File Universal 
Id                File Name Disk group
--  -----    
-----------------                --------- ---------
 1. ONLINE   
941236c324454fc0bfe182bd6ebbcbff (ORCL:CRSD1) [CRS]
 2. ONLINE   
07d2464674ac4fabbf27f3132d8448b0 (ORCL:CRSD2) [CRS]
 3. ONLINE   
9761ccf221524f66bff0766ad5721239 (ORCL:CRSD3) [CRS]
Located 3 voting 
disk(s).

5. To move voting disk between ASM diskgroup and cluster file system
a. Move from ASM diskgroup to cluster file system:

$ crsctl query css votedisk
##  
STATE    File Universal Id                File Name Disk group
--  -----    
-----------------                --------- ---------
 1. ONLINE   
6e5850d12c7a4f62bf6e693084460fd9 (ORCL:CRSD1) [CRS]
 2. ONLINE   
56ab5c385ce34f37bf59580232ea815f (ORCL:CRSD2) [CRS]
 3. ONLINE   
4f4446a59eeb4f75bfdfc4be2e3d5f90 (ORCL:CRSD3) [CRS]
Located 3 voting 
disk(s).

$ crsctl replace votedisk /rac_shared/oradata/vote.test3
Now 
formatting voting disk: /rac_shared/oradata/vote.test3.
CRS-4256: Updating 
the profile
Successful addition of voting disk 
61c4347805b64fd5bf98bf32ca046d6c.
Successful deletion of voting disk 
6e5850d12c7a4f62bf6e693084460fd9.
Successful deletion of voting disk 
56ab5c385ce34f37bf59580232ea815f.
Successful deletion of voting disk 
4f4446a59eeb4f75bfdfc4be2e3d5f90.
CRS-4256: Updating the profile
CRS-4266: 
Voting file(s) successfully replaced

$ crsctl query css votedisk
##  
STATE    File Universal Id                File Name Disk group
--  -----    
-----------------                --------- ---------
 1. ONLINE   
61c4347805b64fd5bf98bf32ca046d6c (/rac_shared/oradata/vote.disk) []
Located 1 
voting disk(s).

b. Move from cluster file system to ASM diskgroup

$ crsctl query css votedisk
##  
STATE    File Universal Id                File Name Disk group
--  -----    
-----------------                --------- ---------
 1. ONLINE   
61c4347805b64fd5bf98bf32ca046d6c (/rac_shared/oradata/vote.disk) []
Located 1 
voting disk(s).

$ crsctl replace votedisk +CRS
CRS-4256: Updating the 
profile
Successful addition of voting disk 
41806377ff804fc1bf1d3f0ec9751ceb.
Successful addition of voting disk 
94896394e50d4f8abf753752baaa5d27.
Successful addition of voting disk 
8e933621e2264f06bfbb2d23559ba635.
Successful deletion of voting disk 
61c4347805b64fd5bf98bf32ca046d6c.
Successfully replaced voting disk group 
with +CRS.
CRS-4256: Updating the profile
CRS-4266: Voting file(s) 
successfully replaced

[oragrid@auw2k4 crsconfig]$ crsctl query css 
votedisk
##  STATE    File Universal Id                File Name Disk 
group
--  -----    -----------------                --------- 
---------
 1. ONLINE   41806377ff804fc1bf1d3f0ec9751ceb (ORCL:CRSD1) 
[CRS]
 2. ONLINE   94896394e50d4f8abf753752baaa5d27 (ORCL:CRSD2) [CRS]
 3. 
ONLINE   8e933621e2264f06bfbb2d23559ba635 (ORCL:CRSD3) [CRS]
Located 3 voting 
disk(s).

6. To verify:

$ crsctl query css 
votedisk

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