AIX 7.1

AIX 7.2

Filesets

The following operating system filesets are required for all versions of Oracle and AIX:

• bos.adt.base

• bos.adt.lib

• bos.adt.libm

• bos.perf.libperfstat

• bos.perf.perfstat

• bos.perf.proctools

• security.pkcs11 (mandatory for Oracle 18+ only)

• xlC.aix61.rte

• xlC.rte

• gpfs.base (not listed in docs but fails OraCHK)

lslpp -l bos.adt.base bos.adt.lib bos.adt.libm bos.perf.perfstat bos.perf.libperfstat bos.perf.proctools

lslpp -l security.pkcs11 xlC.aix61.rte xlC.rte gpfs.base

RAC

The following filesets are required for Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) Installations only:

• rsct.basic.rte

• rsct.compat.clients.rte

lslpp -l rsct.basic.rte rsct.compat.clients.rte

I/O Completion Ports (IOCP)

Check

lsdev -Cc iocp

Enable

As 'root'...

mkdev -l iocp0

chdev -l iocp0 -P -a autoconfig='available'

XL Fortran Runtime for AIX Fix Pack 10

Check

lslpp -l | grep xlf

For AIX 7100-05-04-1914 you need 16.1.0.1...

Kernel Parameters

Check

Network Tunables...

no -L tcp_ephemeral_low 

no -L tcp_ephemeral_high 

no -L udp_ephemeral_low 

no -L udp_ephemeral_high

I/O Tunables...

ioo -L aio_maxreqs

Maximum number of User Processes...

lsattr -El sys0 -a maxuproc

Maximum Length of the Command Line...

lsattr -El sys0 -a ncargs

Change

Network Tunables...

no -p -o tcp_ephemeral_low=9000

no -p -o tcp_ephemeral_high=65535

no -p -o udp_ephemeral_low=9000

no -p -o udp_ephemeral_high=65535

I/O Tunables...

ioo -p -o aio_maxreqs=65536

Maximum number of User Processes...

chdev -l sys0 -a maxuproc='16384'

Maximum Length of the Command Line... Set to 128 or longer (this is measured in 4K blocks)

chdev -l sys0 -a ncargs='128'

Concurrent IO (CIO)

Overview

Concurrent I/O (CIO) is a feature of AIX with JFS2 that bypasses the buffer caching and reduces double buffering, where an I/O comes into memory, is stored there and then copied into the application buffer. CIO also removes inode locking for the file system during write operations, so it should only be used where the application takes care of data serialization. For Oracle, this means CIO should be used for database DBF files, redo logs and control files, and flashback log files. It shouldn’t be used for Oracle binaries or archive log files. Use of CIO, for a mixed or random-access workload, can make a significant difference in memory use (reducing paging), CPU utilization (no more copying memory pages between the two memory locations) and performance in general. However, since it bypasses readahead, sequential operations may not perform as well.

Prerequisites

• The filesystems must be JFS2

• Ensure you have dedicated filesystems for datafiles (/u02), online redo log files (/redo) and controlfiles (/controlfile) and ensure those filesystems have the correct mount options for CIO.

Enabling Concurrent I/O

sqlplus / as sysdba

SHOW PARAMETER filesystemio_options

ALTER SYSTEM SET filesystemio_options=SETALL SCOPE=SPFILE;

SHUTDOWN IMMEDIATE;

STARTUP

SHOW PARAMETER filesystemio_options

IBM mount advice for database files

• Data files: Use CIO filesystemio_options=SETALL, and default agblksize (4k); mount with no options.

• Redo logs: Create with agblksize of 512 and mount with no options. With SETALL, IBM is doing direct I/O for Redo logs.

• Control files: Create with agblksize of 512 and mount with no options. With SETALL, IBM is doing direct I/O for Redo logs.

• Archive logs: Mount -o rbrw . Do not use CIO; use the jfs2 rbrw option 

• Dumps: Mount –o rbrw

• The mount option noatime, suggested for Oracle 10g, is no longer required

Oracle Advice

Advice from 960055.1:

• Database Files - Use CIO or no mount options for extremely sequential I/O 

• Redo Log Files - Use CIO or DIO 

• Controlfiles - Use CIO or DIO 

• Archive Log Files - Do not use CIO or DIO 

• Flashback Log Files - Flashback Log files should use CIO, DIO, or rbrw 

• Oracle Binaries - Do not use CIO or DIO 

Filesystems

Paging Space

Users & Groups

Groups

mkgroup id=209 dba 

mkgroup id=210 oper 

mkgroup id=205 oinstall

ASM only...

mkgroup id=204 asmadmin

mkgroup id=207 asmdba 

mkgroup id=208 asmoper

Users

mkuser id=211 oracle

chuser groups=oinstall,dba,oper,staff oracle 

chuser pgrp=oinstall oracle 

chuser gecos=oracle@$(hostname -s) oracle 

chuser login=true oracle 

chuser umask=022 oracle 

chuser loginretries=5 oracle 

chuser maxage=12 oracle 

chuser histsize=15 oracle 

chuser fsize=-1 oracle 

chuser cpu=-1 oracle 

chuser data=-1 oracle 

chuser stack=-1 oracle 

chuser nofiles=65536 oracle 

chuser stack_hard=-1 oracle 

chuser nofiles_hard=65536 oracle

Execute as oracle user...

Check if oracle belong to proper groups (dba and oper)

grep dba /etc/group

id oracle

umask

ASM only...

mkuser id=230 grid

chuser groups=oinstall,dba,oper,staff,asmdba oracle

chuser groups=oinstall,asmadmin,asmdba,asmoper,staff,dba,hagsuser grid 

chuser pgrp=oinstall grid 

chuser gecos=grid@$(hostname -s) grid 

chuser login=true grid 

chuser umask=022 grid 

chuser loginretries=5 grid 

chuser maxage=12 grid 

chuser histsize=15 grid 

chuser fsize=-1 grid 

chuser cpu=-1 grid 

chuser data=-1 grid 

chuser stack=-1 grid 

chuser nofiles=65536 grid 

chuser stack_hard=-1 grid 

chuser nofiles_hard=65536 grid

ulimit

Soft File Descriptors     at least 1024

Hard File Descriptors     at least 65536

Soft FILE size            -1 (Unlimited)

Soft CPU time             -1 (Unlimited)

Soft DATA segment         -1 (Unlimited)

Soft STACK size           -1 (Unlimited)

Soft Real Memory size     -1 (Unlimited)

Processes (per user)      -1 (Unlimited)  

Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM) 

• By default, AIX uses the Loadable Authentication Module (LAM) for identification and authentication purposes.

• Recent versions of ORAchk now recommend switching to Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM).

Orachk for AIX Troubleshooting

This section deals with some common AIX specifc warnings...

 WARNING =>  OS Patch IZ87216 is recommended but not installed

Check using...

instfix -ivk IZ87216

If the output shows that all filesets were found, then you can safely ignore this warning.

If the filesets are not found then AIX will need to be patched

Bibliography