Testing Your Oracle Resource Hierarchy

You can test your Oracle resource hierarchy by initiating a manual switchover. This will simulate a failover of a resource instance from the primary server to the backup server.

Performing a Manual Switchover from the GUI

You can initiate a manual switchover from the LifeKeeper GUI by selecting Edit, then Resource, then finally In Service from the drop down menu. For example, an in service request executed on a backup server causes the application hierarchy to be placed in service on the backup server and taken out of service on the primary server. At this point, the original backup server is now the primary server and original primary server has now become the backup server.

If you execute the Out of Service request, the application is taken out of service without bringing it in service on the other server.

Recovery Operations

When the primary server fails, the Oracle Recovery Kit software performs the following tasks:

• Brings Oracle into service on the backup server by bringing in-service the logical interface on one of that server’s physical network interfaces. (Note: This occurs only when there is an IP resource instance defined as a dependency of the Oracle hierarchy.)

• Mounts the file system on the shared disk on that server.

• Starts the daemon processes related to Oracle.

Since session context is lost following recovery, after the recovery, Oracle users must reconnect using exactly the same procedures they used to connect originally.