multiple oracle home best practice

[fmorel]

Hi all!

I would like to have 2 different Oracle homes on my Unix server:
- To begin, both will be in 8.1.7 version
- In the future, the two homes may be in a different version (9i and 8i for example).

What is the best practice ?:
- should I create a new oracle unix user for the new home?
- My first oracle home is /u00/app/oracle/product/8.1.7
would it be OK if I just do a new installation of oracle in
/u00/app/oracle/product/home2 using the same user?

Could you give me feedback of problems you hit with multiple oracle homes on Unix?

Thanks a lot!

 

[Georgdba]

Hi -
i had a lot of trouble to install to diffrent ora-version in the same Oraclehome. It caused the general great messages : end of communication channel !!
At this moment there is NOGO. executables in $ORACLE_HOME are overwritten, badlinked and so on. No other way than install the version you need on this configuration(that's the way in 1996).
Today thw best would be: use one ORACLE_BASE for bouth and under this on same Dir.-level diffrent ORACLE_HOMES (for RDBMS and or Oracle-applications (forms ... )
greetings georgedba

 

[fmorel]

And should I use another unix user?

Now under Oracle user, I have:
ORACLE_BASE=/u00/app/oracle
ORACLE_DOC=/u00/app/oracle/product/8.1.7/doc
ORACLE_HOME=/u00/app/oracle/product/8.1.7
...

Should I create another ORACLE_BASE for the same user ie:
ORACLE_2_BASE=/u00/app/oracle_2
or should I create another user "oracle2" with
ORACLE_BASE=/u00/app/oracle_2 ?

Thanks a lot for help!

 

[sem]

Using the same Unix user for ALL Oracle software works normally. You should only use different homes or place into the same home only COMPATIBLE products.

 

[dspare]

The general practise is to have one Oracle version per ORACLE_HOME location. If your intent is to have 8.1.7.3 and 8.1.7.4 both on the system at the same time then you should create an ORACLE_HOME filestructure for each, eg.,

/u01/product/oracle/8.1.7.3 and
/u01/product/oracle/8.1.7.4

Then each instance should have its environment set for the appropriate ORACLE_HOME. Then when you have everything running at 8.1.7.4 you can install 9i on the space used by 8.1.7.3 - renaming it appropriatly, of course.

 

[bwu]

How about port number, can two ora_vrsion use same port number (1521)

 

[dspare]

Two versions of Oracle can use the same listener port number but there can be only one listener on that port. If you need to use a 2nd listener user port 1522, 1530, etc.

You should not attempt to run 2 separate listeners on the same port. Strange things are bound to happen.

I would use the highest version of the listener and set up the listener.ora file to know about the DB instances it is listening for. I have never had a problem with this type of configuration as long as the documentation says the version you are running can handle the back version you are trying to service. For example, I wouldn't want to try to use an 8.1.7.4 listener to service any Oracle 7 database even it the documentation says it is okay. I would run a 2nd listener on a different port to deal with that.

And don't forget to make the appropriate edits in your tnsnames.ora file to point to the correct listener port for the instance you want to connect to.

 

[bi]

fmorel, I recommend setting up a second user for the second environment. Be sure to give the second user the same user ID and group ID as the original Oracle user. I recommend this because you can set the ORACLE_HOME, BASE, and SID in the user's profile. This helps eliminate user error (like forgetting to set the correct $OH, etc.)

I have to admit, however, that most DBAs disagree with this and you might get some pushback from the sys admin for the computer, but it can be done.