Oracle does not support iSCSI on Linux for production environments. mistake? typo?

Hi All,

This is neto from Brazil

How are you?

Last weekend, I was doing some studies and I was a little bit confused with a note.

I read the document about "Optimizing EMC Celerra IP Storage on Oracle 11g Direct NFS"

The document is very good, but I believe there is a mistake or typo on the documentation:

The note is: "Oracle does not support iSCSI on Linux for production environments".

Based on the Oracle documents and Metalink documents, Oracle DOES support iSCSI (as a block protocol) for production environments.

RAC Technologies Matrix for Linux Platforms

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/clustering/certify/tech_generic_linux_new.html

RAC: Frequently Asked Questions

Metalink Document: Doc ID: 220970.1

Can I use iSCSI storage with my RAC cluster?

For iSCSI, Oracle has made the statement that, as a block protocol, this technology does not require validation for single instance database. There are many early adopter customers of iSCSI running Oracle9i and Oracle Database 10g. As for RAC, Oracle has chosen to validate the iSCSI technology (not each vendor's targets) for the 10g platforms - this has been completed for Linux and Windows. For Windows we have tested up to 4 nodes - Any Windows iSCSI products that are supported by the host and storage device are supported by Oracle. We don't support NAS devices for Windows, however some NAS devices (eg NetApp) can also present themselves as iSCSI devices. If this is the case then a customer can use this iSCSI device with Windows as long as the iSCSI device vendor supports Windows as an initiator OS. No vendor-specific information will be posted on Certify.

Raw Devices and Cluster Filesystems With Real Application Clusters

Metalink Document: Doc ID: 183408.1

SCSI:
Disk drives are connected individually to the host machine by small computer system interfaces (SCSI) through one of a number of disk controllers.

SAN:
Storage Area Network is a shared dedicated high-speed network connecting
storage elements and the backend of the servers.

NAS:
Network Attached Storage is a special purpose server with its own embedded
software that offers crossplatform file sharing across the network. 

iSCSI: 
Another form of network attached storage that communicates in block mode over Ethernet (Gigabit Ethernet) to special storage subsystems.  Like NFS attached storage, iSCSI uses standard hardware and software to communicate - although a private network is recommended.  Because it operates in block mode, use of iSCSI with RAC requires either a cluster filesystem or use of raw volumes.

So, I hope to be contributing with EMC to clarify the document for the readers, because Oracle does support iSCSI on Linux for production environments.

All the best

neto

NetApp - I love this company!

Comments

[Matt DeMarco]

Nice post!
I'm sure that would confuse a lot of folks!