Running RDA on Exalogic [Video]

Asset ID:	1-71-1363589.1
Update Date:	2012-10-09
Keywords:

Solution Type Technical Instruction Sure

Solution 1363589.1 : Running RDA on Exalogic [Video]

Applies to:

Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud X2-2 Hardware - Version All Versions and later
Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud Software - Version 1.0.0.0.0 and later
Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud X2-2 Half Rack - Version All Versions and later
Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud X2-2 Qtr Rack - Version All Versions and later
Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud X2-2 Full Rack - Version All Versions and later
Linux x86-64

Goal

The goal of this KM Note is to discuss the usage of the RDA tool specific to Exalogic . Please see the References section of this document for more comprehensive guides about RDA.

Fix

Introduction

Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) is a command-line diagnostic tool that is executed by an engine written in the Perl programming language. The data captured provides Oracle Support with a comprehensive picture of the customer's environment which aids in problem diagnosis.

Oracle Support encourages the use of RDA because it greatly reduces service request resolution time by minimizing the number of requests from Oracle Support for more information. RDA is designed to be as unobtrusive as possible; it does not modify systems in any way. It collects useful data for Oracle Support only and a security filter is provided if required.

RDA is not a new tool, nor is it a utility specific to Oracle Middleware. It is available for download via this support article.

Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) 4 - Getting Started <Note 314422.1>

This document contains links for the downloading RDA installer - click on "Download RDA" in the document's contents listing.

The latest versions of RDA (RDA 4.25 and above ) now includes the following 2 modules for collecting information on Oracle Exalogic hardware in addition to the existing software collectors.

EXL - Collects Oracle Exalogic Information
TSTexl - Tests Connection to Oracle Exalogic Nodes

For more details about the above modules refer to this link.

Steps for running RDA on Exalogic

A) Download and Install RDA On Your Machine

1) Download rda.zip file (installation file) on to one of the Exalogic Compute Node.

NOTE: Before downloading RDA zip file, consider the following:

a) If you are installing a product which uses system components e.g. webTier, Portal/Forms/Reports and Discoverer, Then RDA is already installed in the location ORACLE_HOME/rda
b) If you are installing standard java only products like Weblogic Server, SOA, and WebCenter etc. Then RDA is not installed by default.

For downloading RDA installer, go to the <Note 314422.1> and click on the link which says "Download RDA" in the document's contents listing. Once you click on the "Download RDA" link, it will take you to the list of available installers based on the OS used. From the list of available installers, choose installer for “Linux x86 (64-bit)” and download it into a common directory on one of the Exalogic Compute nodes.

2) Do not Extract the contents of RDA archive (rda.tar and rda.tar.gz) on a Windows client first. If you do, you will have to remove the ^M characters from the end of each line in all of the shell scripts in order for them to run correctly.

3) Check the zip integrity using unzip tool. Make sure that there are no errors detected during this check.

For example:

unzip -tv <p14557095_429_LINUX.zip>  > rdazip.log

4) Unzip RDA installation zip files into the “Common” share as shown below, preserving the directory structure and permissions. Do not extract into a directory that contains an older RDA version. Below is snippet for directory structure and command to unzip RDA zip file.

$ls

common oracle



$cd common



$ unzip <rda_4.xxxxx.zip>

5) Check directory structure and the presence of the key files. At least the following files must exist in the expected directory with a non-zero size. Following is directory structure for reference.

rda/RDA/Library/Remote/Unix.pm

rda/modules/rda.dat

rda/modules/S000INI.cfg

Make sure the RDA command (rda.sh and rda.pl) is executable. To verify, enter the following command:

chmod +x <rda>

6) Verify the RDA installation using the following command and look at the results and make sure there are no errors.

./<rda> -cv

use one of the following commands based on the environment.

rda.sh - Use this command if Perl is not available.

rda.pl - Use this command if Perl is available.

Refer to the following viewlet video, which shows the steps for RDA download and installation instructions.
Video - Refer to this Viewlet for RDA download and installation instructions. (1:36)

B) Prerequisites to Running RDA

1) Use the following command to verify that Perl is installed and available in the path:

perl -V

Inspect the command output, checking that '.' (i.e. tells perl to look for libaries in current directory) is present in @INC section. Notice the last entry "." in the example below:

@INC:

/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi

/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0

/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi

/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0

/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl

/usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi

/usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.0

/usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl

/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi

/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0

.

NOTE: If you have already installed RDA 4.25 version on Exalogic Rack as a part of any of the Fusion Middleware installations, you can use the same RDA installer to collect Exalogic HW information as long as the version of RDA used is 4.25 and above.

2) Make sure have a JDK currently installed on your machine under JAVA_HOME.

3) Also make sure you have ample space for RDA output (approximately 150 MB) in the output location you have chosen during setup. Sometimes, depending on the size of your data files (alert.log, .trc, install.log, apache logs, networking logs, etc) of the Oracle installation the final size of your RDA collection may reach over 1000 MB in size.

C) Setup and Collect RDA for Exalogic

One RDA installation should be used for collecting both HW and SW components on Exalogic box.

1) Run the below command after installation to perform the setup phase and run phase in a single go for collecting Exalogic specific information.

./rda.sh –SCRP OS INST EXL

2) if you need to run data collection for specific module again you can just run the following command for a specific module/modules. The below command is used for collecting Exalogic specific information.

./rda.sh -CRP OS INST EXL

Notice the difference between step 1) and step 2). In step 2), we are just running/collecting RDA for specific modules directly. In step 1) as we are doing setup and also collecting RDA information for specific modules, it includes “S” in the list of parameters to indicate setup.

For more details, view the command usage help by specifying the -h option, or complete manual page with the -M option.

Refer to the Viewlet video below which shows the steps for instructions on configuring and running RDA.
RDA for Exalogic Video - Refer to this Viewlet for instructions on how to Configure and Run RDA on Exalogic. (6:40)

3) Run the following command to test the Compute Node connectivity information.

./rda.sh -vTn exl:userid or ./rda.sh -vTn exl

D) Collect and Read RDA Output

Once RDA is executed successfully, it will generate an <output_directory> under ORACLE_HOME/rda. The output consists of set of HTML files that are located in the RDA output directory which you specified during setup. You can review the data collected by using a Web Browser to open the following file located in:

<output_directory>/<report_group>__start.htm

The final output is also packaged in an archive located in the <output_directory> chosen during RDA setup -- the packaged output file will have a .zip, .tar, .tar.gz, or .tar.Z extension
Video - Refer to this Viewlet for instructions on how to view the RDA output created after running RDA.(3:50)

RDA Tips Video - Refer to this Viewlet for Additional Advice and Tips (4:53)

NOTES:

1) You can find all the available commands for RDA in Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) 4 - Getting Started <Note 314422.1>

2) Content modules can be found in Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) 4 - Content Modules Man Page <Note 330760.1>

3) For information about difference between RDA and Oracle Configuration Manager (OCM), Please refer to <Note 726446.1>

References

<NOTE:1262157.1> - Getting Started With Remote Diagnostic Agent: Case Study - Oracle WebLogic Server (Video)
<NOTE:1363589.1> - Running RDA on Exalogic [Video]
<NOTE:314422.1> - Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) 4 - Getting Started
<NOTE:330760.1> - Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) 4 - Content Modules Man Page
<NOTE:726446.1> - What Is The Difference Between RDA and Oracle Configuration Manager?

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