Oracle RAC (Voting Disk ) FAQ’s
1.What is Voting Disk?
Voting Disk is a file that maintains node membership details.
All members in the Cluster read and write Heartbeat Information in Voting Disk.
2. What Information is stored in Voting Disk?
Voting disks contain static and dynamic data.
Static data : Info about nodes in the cluster
Dynamic data : Disk heartbeat logging
It maintains and consists of important details about the cluster nodes membership, such as
– which node is part of the cluster,
– which node is joining the cluster, and
– which node is leaving the cluster.
3. Why do we need Voting Disk?
CSSD processes (Cluster Services Synchronization Daemon) monitor the health of RAC nodes employing two distinct heart
beats: Network heart beat and Disk heart beat. Healthy nodes will have continuous network and disk heartbeats exchanged
between the nodes. Break in heart beat indicates a possible error scenario. There are few different scenarios possible
with missing heart beats:
1. Network heart beat is successful, but disk heart beat is missed.
2. Disk heart beat is successful, but network heart beat is missed.
3. Both heart beats failed.
In addition, with numerous nodes, there are other possible scenarios too. Few possible scenarios:
1. Nodes have split in to N sets of nodes, communicating within the set, but not with members in other set.
2. Just one node is unhealthy.
Nodes with quorum will maintain active membership of the cluster and other node(s) will be fenced/rebooted.
4.Why do we have odd number of voting disks?
Odd number of Voting disks are required to prevent Split Brain Syndrome.
A node must be able to access more than half of the voting disks in order to decide which node can be evicted incase of
failure.
5. How to backup Voting Disk?
Prior to Oracle 11g R2 version, Voting Disk is backed up using dd command
From 11g R2, no need to manually backup voting disk.
It is automatically backup along with OCR whenever there is a configuration change.
In 11g R2, Restoring Voting disk from a manually copied backupfile may prevent cluster services from starting up.
1.What is Voting Disk?
Voting Disk is a file that maintains node membership details.
All members in the Cluster read and write Heartbeat Information in Voting Disk.
2. What Information is stored in Voting Disk?
Voting disks contain static and dynamic data.
Static data : Info about nodes in the cluster
Dynamic data : Disk heartbeat logging
It maintains and consists of important details about the cluster nodes membership, such as
– which node is part of the cluster,
– which node is joining the cluster, and
– which node is leaving the cluster.
3. Why do we need Voting Disk?
CSSD processes (Cluster Services Synchronization Daemon) monitor the health of RAC nodes employing two distinct heart
beats: Network heart beat and Disk heart beat. Healthy nodes will have continuous network and disk heartbeats exchanged
between the nodes. Break in heart beat indicates a possible error scenario. There are few different scenarios possible
with missing heart beats:
1. Network heart beat is successful, but disk heart beat is missed.
2. Disk heart beat is successful, but network heart beat is missed.
3. Both heart beats failed.
In addition, with numerous nodes, there are other possible scenarios too. Few possible scenarios:
1. Nodes have split in to N sets of nodes, communicating within the set, but not with members in other set.
2. Just one node is unhealthy.
Nodes with quorum will maintain active membership of the cluster and other node(s) will be fenced/rebooted.
4.Why do we have odd number of voting disks?
Odd number of Voting disks are required to prevent Split Brain Syndrome.
A node must be able to access more than half of the voting disks in order to decide which node can be evicted incase of
failure.
5. How to backup Voting Disk?
Prior to Oracle 11g R2 version, Voting Disk is backed up using dd command
From 11g R2, no need to manually backup voting disk.
It is automatically backup along with OCR whenever there is a configuration change.
In 11g R2, Restoring Voting disk from a manually copied backupfile may prevent cluster services from starting up.