Preparing ASM disks for Oracle RAC Installation (Solaris SPARC)

Environment:
1. Solaris SPARC 64bit 11.2
2. Oracle RAC 12.1.0.2
3. Storage using HDS VSP

While I was doing my first (Solaris SPARC) RAC installation for a customer, I was slightly stumped. My typical installations were on Linux, with or without ASMLib. It was easy and very well documented. However, I was not so experienced in RAC installation on a SPARC!

I came on-site and the Solaris engineer told me that the LUNs (27 of them!) have been zoned to the system. When I do a “ls /dev/rdsk/”, I see plenty of disks!

c1d0s0 c1d11s2 c1d13s5 c1d16s0 c1d18s3 c1d1s6 c1d22s1 c1d24s4 c1d26s7 c1d3s3 c1d5s6 c1d8s1
c1d0s1 c1d11s3 c1d13s6 c1d16s1 c1d18s4 c1d2 c1d22s2 c1d24s5 c1d27s0 c1d3s4 c1d5s7 c1d8s2

I have formatted the above for readability.

Apparently, Solaris disks have 8 slices, from s0 to s7.

According to MOS[Doc ID 368840.1]:

Partition # 2 is a standard partition and it SHOULD NOT be changed as it reflects the total capacity of the disk. All other partitions are available for the configuration. All this information for the partitions and other data is contained in a special structure stored within the first 512 bytes of the disk, on the first cylinders. This structure is called VTOC (Volume Table of Contents). Actions like re-writting the VTOC will cause loosing the disk. Thus, it would be best to modify partition 0, starting at cylinder.

So, how do I actually format the disk correctly?

#format
Searching for disks...done

AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
0. c1d1 <HITACHI-OPEN-V -SUN-7303-100.00GB>
/virtual-devices@100/channel-devices@200/disk@1
1. c1d2 <HITACHI-OPEN-V -SUN-7303-50.00GB>
/virtual-devices@100/channel-devices@200/disk@2
2. c1d3 <HITACHI-OPEN-V -SUN-7303 cyl 1363 alt 2 hd 15 sec 512>
/virtual-devices@100/channel-devices@200/disk@3
3. c1d4 <HITACHI-OPEN-V -SUN-7303 cyl 1363 alt 2 hd 15 sec 512>
/virtual-devices@100/channel-devices@200/disk@4

Specify disk (enter its number): Specify disk (enter its number): 3

partition> 0
Part Tag Flag Cylinders Size Blocks
0 unassigned wm 0 - 1362 4.99GB (1363/0/0) 10467840

Enter partition id tag[unassigned]:
Enter partition permission flags[wm]:
Enter new starting cyl[0]: 3
Enter partition size[10444800b, 1360c, 1362e, 5100.00mb, 4.98gb]: $
partition> p
Current partition table (unnamed):
Total disk cylinders available: 1363 + 2 (reserved cylinders)

Part Tag Flag Cylinders Size Blocks
0 unassigned wm 3 - 1362 4.98GB (1360/0/0) 10444800
1 unassigned wu 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
2 backup wu 0 - 1362 4.99GB (1363/0/0) 10467840
3 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
4 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
5 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
6 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
7 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0

Ta-Da! Now, you should see c1d4s0 as /dev/rdsk/c1d4s0 and be able to view it as a candidate disk!

Regards,
Wei Shan