I borrowed a copy of the book from my coworker. It's probably one of the few technical books I actually enjoyed reading. Besides providing a good technical foundation to RAC, it also includes business and historical perspectives to High Availability and Redundancy. Gives you the arsenal to understand CRS, ASM, and GES (some of the most difficult aspects of Oracle Clustering), and provides you with information on proper RAC performance tuning. I bought the book from Amazon to read AGAIN because I actually enjoyed reading it the first time. I learned a lot from this book.

RAC Handbook is an excellent RAC book for new and experienced DBAs. The book is not one of the several 600 page RAC books that contain pages of not-so valuable information. The RAC Handbook is around 400 pages and it is packed with excellent detail on how to install RAC and troubleshoot common performance issues. The author of this book, K Gopalakrishnan is also the author of "Oracle Wait Interface: A Practical Guilde to Performance Diagnostics & Tuning" by Oracle Press. This book won an Oracle award and it one of the best performance tuning books. The RAC Handbook features an excellent chapter on Cache Fusion and several easy to understand examples of how blocks are transferred amongst multiple nodes. The RAC Handbook also has a decent chapter on ASM which could have been a little longer and could have gone into more detail. The chapter on RAC installation will walk you though using the cluster verify utilities which can and will alleviate many headaches that can be experienced during a RAC installation. This book is a great read for anyone that wants to build their RAC skills. Gopalakrishnan is an excellent author and I trust his research.

By far one of my favorite books on RAC internals.

I especially like the section on Cache Fusion and how locking works with Oracle 10g RAC and OPS.

My only request is that it covered more details on command line utilities but other books cover that so not that big of a deal.

It really is the guru internals guide to RAC for consultants!

I have the other book by Gopal on Oracle 10g Wait tuning and that is a great tech reference as well.

I had the fortune to work with Gopal on a RAC troubleshooting project. While a book cannot replace the real person it is a good summary of his experiences learned over many customer engagements.
The book covers all aspects of RAC from the history lesson and installation overview, to locking and even extended RAC. My favorite chapters are 10 "RAC Performance Management" and 14 "RAC Troubleshooting". They should be mandatory reading for any DBA supporting RAC. Require your developers to read chapter 16 "Developing Applications for RAC" before they start coding.

On some of the topics this book is excellent.Looks like this book focussed on topics those are not covered in other books or manuals.

I suggest first read some simple installation and administration manuals.
Later refer this book for specific information.Then you can take more from this book.

THanks,
Mansoor.

I did a fair level of research before purchasing this book. One of the reasons that biased me toward it was the fact that one of the RAC specialists from Oracle India carried with him as a reference.
The book goes into great detail on RAC internals and oracle locks/enqueues, and as the author points out, some chapters/topics require several passes to sink in. The book is no hands-on step by step installation/management handbook, although it does cover a two node cluster installation. The author focuses on understanding the concepts underlying Oracle RAC, as he sees this as key to being successful in managing and supporting the technology. As in all things computer, only hands-on experience brings this to bear.
I would like to see more practical information on the different ways in which services can be configured, used and monitored.
I also found the coverage of the $CRS_HOME/bin utilities too light.
All in all, a great reference and invaluable concepts guide which would be well supplemented with a practical hands-on book.

I personally found very interesting the description of 10g Cache Fusion internals and GRD etc. which is covered in a consistent, readable and understandably manner in this book. I believe the book might also be interesting for 9i RAC DBAs as the author make comparisons between 10g and 9i RAC functionality and resource management internals. It is not a replacement for the official 10g RAC documentation but a must-have complement.

This is the best book on 10g RAC out there. The most in-depth topics and detailed points on all aspects of RAC. It's the only book I carry with me on business and would recommend this book to anyone looking for some pointers working with 10g RAC.

If you have his earlier book, OWI Practical guide to Performance Diagnostics and Tuning, you know KG's style. This book is equally good. As you come to expect of him the book is concise, precise, relevant and lucid.

You are low level, mid level or senior level DBA, there are chapters that are of interest to you. I found Part IV, covering Advanced Concepts in RAC very interesting. With his in depth coverage on Cache Coherency, GES & GCS he lays a solid foundation. The ice on the cake is Chapter 12 - Closer look at Cache fusion. Your money gets more than its worth on this chapter alone - if you ask me. The hands on approach for cache fusion are remarkable. Work load and connection management as well RAC troubleshooting are very helpful too.

In a nutshell, you will not be disappointed and it is worth more than its price.

Equating technology to any sport, you succeed when the fundamentals are strong.

This books takes a wonderful step towards elucidating fundamental concepts of Oracle RAC, its evolution from OPS, separation from OPS and how RAC has evolved into a leading technology.

Part 1 is a quick primer of clustering technolgies and HA concepts. There is a detailed parallel drawn between OPS and RAC and elucidated in a very clear manner. These concepts are then tailored into the RAC architecture chapter which explains the RAC architecture in detail and the components that make up RAC.

Part 2 , once you are armed with the architectural concepts, dives into elucidating the Installation procedures and takes us through an Oracle RAC setup detailing the steps.

Part 3, chapters 7 and 8 give you a thorough run down of basic and advanced Oracle RAC administration.

Chapters 9 onwards is when the author differentiates himself from the other text on the same subject. While its easy to say Oracle RAC backup and recovery works the same with some differences or to say Cache Fusion is how we move the blocks around, its another thing to conceptualize this and the authoer excels in presenting these concepts in a very natural flow. Bringing to light these concepts and delving deeper into GRD, RAC Performance Management etc, the author sets a high standard.

Finally, when watching a show, the artists hope to leave the audience wanting for more rather than thinking when are they going to stop...On the same note, Gopal has left us wanting for more with this wonderful book.

Equating technology to any sport, you succeed when the fundamentals are strong.

This books takes a wonderful step towards elucidating fundamental concepts of Oracle RAC, its evolution from OPS, separation from OPS and how RAC has evolved into a leading technology.

Part 1 is a quick primer of clustering technolgies and HA concepts. There is a detailed parallel drawn between OPS and RAC and elucidated in a very clear manner. These concepts are then tailored into the RAC architecture chapter which explains the RAC architecture in detail and the components that make up RAC.

Part 2 , once you are armed with the architectural concepts, dives into elucidating the Installation procedures and takes us through an Oracle RAC setup detailing the steps.

Part 3, chapters 7 and 8 give you a thorough run down of basic and advanced Oracle RAC administration.

Chapters 9 onwards is when the author differentiates himself from the other text on the same subject. While its easy to say Oracle RAC backup and recovery works the same with some differences or to say Cache Fusion is how we move the blocks around, its another thing to conceptualize this and the authoer excels in presenting these concepts in a very natural flow. Bringing to light these concepts and delving deeper into GRD, RAC Performance Management etc, the author sets a high standard.

Finally, when watching a show, the artists hope to leave the audience wanting for more rather than thinking when are they going to stop...On the same note, Gopal has left us wanting for more with this wonderful book.

When I first received this book after ordering it from Amazon, my initial feeling was disappointment. "It's too thin", I thought. A subject like RAC needs a much bigger tome. Well, I was wrong.

By concentrating his work specifically on RAC, Mr. Gopalakrishnan has been able to thoroughly cover his subject in a relatively thin volume. But, be warned. This is not a book for beginners nor is it a book about Oracle in general. It is specifically about RAC, how a lot of it works under the covers. For those people who are interested in the subject, it is an invaluable resource. The chapters on the Global Resource Directory and Cache Fusion are worth the price, alone. I was also quite happy to see chapters on installation and ASM management. There are plenty of installation guides available on the web, but it was nice to see the author's version of it. After all, you can't work on a RAC database without first installing it. Mr. Gopalakrishnan understands that.

There isn't much to complain about here and a ton to compliment. The book has already helped me in understanding some of the problems I have encountered with the RAC database I am currently managing. Needless to say, I highly recommend it.

I have a number of books on Oracle, some good and some bad. This book has a place on my shelf next to the books written by Kyte, Millsap and Lewis. That would be in the "good" category, for those who don't know. The very, very good category. :-)

By far, the best book I have read on the subject of Oracle10g RAC. Given the success of Gopalakrishnan as coauthor of the book "Oracle Wait Interface: A Practical Guide to Performance Diagnostics & Tuning", I was eager to see his work on a subject as involved as Oracle10g RAC. I am happy to say that Gopal did an outstanding and thorough job! Every chapter of this book is clear and well written with accurate demonstrations and valuable illustrations. This book is for both beginners as well as seasoned Oracle professions.

What I found most useful was the in-depth coverage of Cache Fusion and Global Resource Directory as well as a thorough troubleshooting section. The author also provides extensive coverage on installation and architecture concerns, backup and recovery in RAC, performance monitoring, workload balancing and distribution, connection management, as well as application development and extensions to the RAC architecture. Oracle's Automatic Storage Management (ASM) feature is fully explained as well as many other basic and advanced administration topics.

The only area of improvement I would suggest is greater coverage on backing up and recovering the two key Oracle Clusterware shared components: the Voting Disk and the Oracle Cluster Registry File. Although the book does contain information pertaining to backing up and recovering these resources, I felt that these two files are critical enough to the operation of Oracle Clusterware that a full working example would be helpful. Possibly a workshop that fully details how to recover a voting disk and cluster registry file after the loss of both files.

I would highly recommend this book to DBA's and Developers tasked with working in an Oracle10g RAC environment. You will not be disappointment!

Just got this much expected book from Gopal! Absolutely fantastic...It is certainly very detailed and in-depth was my immediate impression.

Many topics are detailed, exhaustive and to the point. It is different to the other RAC books available in the market and also this book is platform independent. I am very impressed with this one because it is unique and the style of writing is great, not to mention the depth and clarity of the chapters.

I would like to agree with the other person who has commented that we need lot of attention and concentration to read this book. If you have a RAC database, nothing like it to try the example demonstrations provided in the book.

Not everyone will be fortunate to have a 4 node RAC to test the possible cache fusion scenarios explained in this book. But the author has prepared a very effective demonstration to reveal the internal operations of the cache fusion. A lot of topics like internal of resource mastering/remastering, two pass recovery and past images are dealt to the core. Another unique in the book is a discussion on extended RAC (most commonly known as stretch clusters or geo clusters) and discussions on Application development for RAC.

Overall, it is an excellent text on RAC and worth for your investment on Time and money. There are so less books with good quality and content. It is worth the wait and I hope you won't be disappointed.

I particularly liked the chapters for cache fusion and the troubleshooting bits as in most cases in practical on the field situations its easy to be armed with the knowledge on how to look at the traces and better understand cache fusion for performance tuning. Could complete reading this book within a few hours which makes it more appealing from its thicker counterparts. A pleasure to read

I particularly liked the chapters for cache fusion and the troubleshooting bits as in most cases in practical on the field situations its easy to be armed with the knowledge on how to look at the traces and better understand cache fusion for performance tuning. Could complete reading this book within a few hours which makes it more appealing from its thicker counterparts. A pleasure to read

Following up on his previous runaway bestseller success with the Oracle Wait Interface book, 'X$KG' Gopal has outdone himself yet again! Whether you are a newbie looking to take your first dive into RAC or an experienced DBA looking desperately for help navigating the murky waters of RAC, THIS is THE book for you. KG has cleverly, yet simply crystallized his vast experience with this product into easily understandable, yet deep content. He has explained Advanced RAC concepts (Part IV) with adequate examples that makes it easy to digest this information overload. This book will be a well-thumbed one in my repertoire, along with other books from the best of the best.

If you are interest in methodology of Oracle Cache Fusion, and related technology, read this book right now. Useful for tuning and design of Oracle 10gR2.

Absolutely fantastic! But do not be misled by the "handbook" term. It is not just the handbook with list of commands, couple of scripts or syntax. It goes more deeply in to the internals of the RAC infrastructure. For example Cache Fusion and Global Resources Directory have dedicated chapters. In my private opinion currently there is no other source of knowledge about RAC technology which covers it in so deep & complete way. As author has mentioned in the introduction this book seems to provide solid background and fundamentals of RAC, which can be a baseline for every RAC DBA. After book lecture, DBA can use received theory to dig into the technology and understand it in practical manner.
If I can do something to improve it I would prefer to have more details about CRS troubleshooting. This technology is quite new and still there is no good review point on what to do when something will go wrong with it.

This is a good book for all levels of DBA who want to jump onto the RAC enviorment. Its a very hands-on book and also gives a good conceptual knowledge. I had the other RAC on Linux book by Julian Dyke and I had to return it as it had too much of theortical details. That is an excellent book too, but if I can get the same information with less amount of reading, I would rather go for less reading. I have read a few chapters and found some very intresting details esp. in the Cache Fusion details chapter. The chapter on tuning is really detailed and helpful. Overall a very good book.

If you are interest in methodology of Oracle Cache Fusion, and related technology, read this book right now. Useful for tuning and design of Oracle 10gR2.

This is a good book for all levels of DBA who want to jump onto the RAC enviorment. Its a very hands-on book and also gives a good conceptual knowledge. I had the other RAC on Linux book by Julian Dyke and I had to return it as it had too much of theortical details. That is an excellent book too, but if I can get the same information with less amount of reading, I would rather go for less reading. I have read a few chapters and found some very intresting details esp. in the Cache Fusion details chapter. The chapter on tuning is really detailed and helpful. Overall a very good book.

These days, we find a lot of books on Oracle Technology flooding the market in tandem with the product announcements. Most of the books just rehash the standard (or even beta) documentation, or published metalink notes. This book is certainly does not belong to that category.

First of all, I find that this is the first book which tries to present an accurate picture of RAC. This book clearly demonstrates that RAC is the improved version of OPS and shows the evoluation path of OPS to RAC. I suppose most of the people who have worked on Oracle for a long time will agree with that statement. Most of the current books in the market that I get to read just tend to follow what Oracle marketing says, that RAC is not OPS.

Notably, this is the first ever book on RAC, that has shown me how cache fusion really works. Cache fusion is the secret of RAC and not many people knows how they work under the hood. In this book the author has clearly demonstrated how the resources are mastered, how the locks are coverted and that a row level locks (transaction locks) are different to a buffer locks (Global Cache locks). There are places where the author has used block dumps to explain the internal implementations.

What I see is that the author has tried his best to concentrate on concepts and inner workings of various things inside RAC.

In that sense, this book is well stocked with lengthy discussions for the RAC hungry technicians. the book requires a lot of attention (and sometimes repeated readings) and certainly this is not bed time reading!

The beginning is light and interesting, especially the history of OPS which is difficult to find and collate.I really enjoyed reading the Global Resource Directory chapter along with the Cache Fusion. Many other chapters are worth a mention including the Backup and Recovery, Performance Tuning (No wonder,the author has another best selling oracle performance tuning book!) and Application Development. The consistency and approach is great and the author has tried to keep things in context, most of the times. The author has managed to touch many topics in RAC though some of them could have been lengthier and more conclusive.

One last thing, If you want to buy a book just to get the bunch of day to day commands for RAC and plan to work on RAC, please do not buy this book. You will be thoroughly disappointed as this book doesn't belong to that category. It only tells us how things works internally, what are the concepts behind the scenes and not the magic commands to administer RAC.

As a whole, I find this book a very enriching reference/concepts book to read when I don't know how something works in RAC. If there is a secret in RAC, there is a good chance you might find it in this book rather than any other. Contents in this book are generally not seen in other RAC books that I have read and the quality of presentation is much better.

Good buy but prepare for some heavy reading.!! I recommend this book to every DBA (even architects) who want to know HOW RAC works.