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Series: Oracle RAC 12.2- Complete Installation on VMware Workstation
📌 A note before we start Yes, it’s 2026 and Oracle RAC 12c is already out of support. The goal of this series is not to recommend this version for production- it’s to share what’s part of my daily life as a DBA: learning, revisiting concepts, and documenting the process. If it helps someone else along the way, even better.
📋 This series- Oracle RAC 12.2 on VMware Workstation:
What Is Oracle RAC?
RAC works by having multiple servers (nodes) access the same datafiles stored on shared storage. What makes this possible is Oracle Clusterware– the software that coordinates nodes, manages resources, and guarantees data consistency.
Core Components
Oracle Clusterware (Grid Infrastructure): manages cluster resources, VIPs, OCR, and Voting Disks. It’s installed before the database and is the heart of RAC.
Oracle ASM (Automatic Storage Management): a filesystem and volume manager dedicated to Oracle. It manages shared disks transparently across nodes.
Cache Fusion: the mechanism that allows nodes to share data blocks in memory over the interconnect, without hitting disk. This is what sets RAC apart from a simple cluster.
SCAN (Single Client Access Name): a single entry point for clients. Three IPs in round-robin provide load balancing and failover transparency- the application doesn’t need to know which node the instance is running on.
OCR (Oracle Cluster Registry): stores cluster configuration- resources, nodes, VIPs, and services.
Voting Disks: used by Clusterware to determine which nodes are active. In a split-brain scenario, the voting disk decides which node survives and which gets evicted.
Network Topology
| Network | Purpose | Interface |
|---|---|---|
| Public | Client access, VIPs, SCAN | eth0 |
| Interconnect | Cache Fusion between nodes | eth1 |
| iSCSI | Storage traffic | eth2 |
💡 In practice: In this lab, eth0 and eth2 share the same vmnet0 (Bridged)- VMware doesn’t allow two Bridged vmnets on the same physical NIC. Separation is done by IP: eth0 uses
192.168.15.170/171and eth2 uses192.168.15.130/131.
Reference Environment
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Hypervisor | VMware Workstation |
| Host | Linux |
| Guest OS | Oracle Linux 7.9 |
| Oracle Grid Infrastructure | 12.2.0.1 |
| Oracle Database | 12c Release 2 (12.2.0.1) |
| Storage | targetcli (Linux-IO)- iSCSI |
IP Mapping
| Host | Interface | IP | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| orclrac1 | eth0 | 192.168.15.170 | Public network |
| orclrac1 | eth1 | 10.10.10.1 | Interconnect |
| orclrac1 | eth2 | 192.168.15.130 | iSCSI |
| orclrac1-vip | — | 192.168.15.180 | VIP |
| orclrac2 | eth0 | 192.168.15.171 | Public network |
| orclrac2 | eth1 | 10.10.10.2 | Interconnect |
| orclrac2 | eth2 | 192.168.15.131 | iSCSI |
| orclrac2-vip | — | 192.168.15.181 | VIP |
| orclrac-scan | — | 192.168.15.190/191/192 | SCAN |
| vpslab | — | 192.168.15.3 | iSCSI Target (targetcli) |
Disk Layout
| LUN | File | Size | Device | Oracle Disk Group |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| lun-0 | lun-ocr-vote1.img | 10 GB | /dev/sdc | +OCR (voting) |
| lun-1 | lun-ocr-vote2.img | 10 GB | /dev/sdh | +OCR (voting) |
| lun-2 | lun-ocr-vote3.img | 10 GB | /dev/sdg | +OCR (voting) |
| lun-3 | lun-gimr.img | 40 GB | /dev/sdf | +MGMT (GIMR) |
| lun-4 | lun-data1.img | 60 GB | /dev/sde | +DATA |
| lun-5 | lun-fra1.img | 40 GB | /dev/sdd | +FRA |
lsblkmay show devices out of order- the kernel assigns names in discovery order. Always usels -la /dev/disk/by-path/ | grep iscsito correctly identify each LUN.
Required Software
| Software | Version | Source |
|---|---|---|
| VMware Workstation | Current | vmware.com |
| Oracle Linux | 7.9 | edelivery.oracle.com |
| Oracle Grid Infrastructure | 12.2.0.1 | edelivery.oracle.com |
| Oracle Database | 12c R2 (12.2.0.1) | edelivery.oracle.com |
| targetcli-fb | — | apt install -y targetcli-fb (vpslab Ubuntu) |
Oracle binaries require a free account on Oracle eDelivery. Search for Oracle Grid Infrastructure 12.2 and Oracle Database 12c Release 2, selecting Linux x86-64.
[…] Oracle RAC 12.2 on VMware Workstation- Series Overview […]
[…] Oracle RAC 12.2 on VMware Workstation- Series Overview […]
[…] 📌 About this series: This guide covers Oracle RAC 12c, which is out of support. The goal is to document learning and revisit concepts- not to recommend this version for production. Read the full context in the series overview → […]
[…] 📌 About this series: This guide covers Oracle RAC 12c, which is out of support. The goal is to document learning and revisit concepts- not to recommend this version for production. Read the full context in the series overview → […]
[…] 📌 About this series: This guide covers Oracle RAC 12c, which is out of support. The goal is to document learning and revisit concepts- not to recommend this version for production. Read the full context in the series overview → […]