Oracle Explorer

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

DataPump Export/Import in Rac Instance Alters SERVICE_NAMES

Environment
2 nodes 11.2.0.2 Oracle RAC on OEL 5.5 platform.

Problem
Yesterday while other DBA was doing DataPump Import on the same node, I was working on Grid Control agent installation and noticed that the agent host's service name was changed to something like "SYS$SYS.KUPC$C_1_20060315133546.xxx.yyyy.COM". In the alert log file, it recorded that:

ALTER SYSTEM SET service_names='SYS$SYS.KUPC$S_1_20110207110835.node.hostname.COM','SYS$SYS.KUPC$C_1_20110207110835.node.hostname.COM','SYS$SYS.KUPC$C_1_20110207111059.node.hostname.COM' SC
OPE=MEMORY SID='node1';
ALTER SYSTEM SET service_names='SYS$SYS.KUPC$C_1_20110207111059.node.hostname.COM','SYS$SYS.KUPC$S_1_20110207110835.node.hostname.COM','SYS$SYS.KUPC$C_1_20110207110835.node.hostname.COM','S
YS$SYS.KUPC$S_1_20110207111059.node.hostname.COM' SCOPE=MEMORY SID='node1';

In the $ORACLE_BASE/sysman/emd/targets.xml file in the agent host, there are several similar service name entries, which causing Grid Control server to connect to the agent.

Solution
According to Metalink note 363396.1 - DataPump Export: Rac Instance Startup/Shutdown Alters SERVICE_NAMES [ID 363396.1]:
"DataPump doesn't change existing service name but adds new ones for its own queue operation.

Assuming you started instance with service name TEST01 and TEST02, it will add another one at the start of operation and put the original value back at the end of operation.

There is no need to be concerned of DataPump alerting SERVICE_NAMES.

It adds new services on top of existing ones and removes the added one at the end of operation."

According to the note, I didn't change the service name back to its original value, instead I modified the targets.xml file to replace the newly created service name to its original one like "node1.hostname.com".

When the DataPump Import finished at 16:51, the alert log file recorded following actions:

Mon Feb 07 16:51:09 2011
ALTER SYSTEM SET service_names='SYS$SYS.KUPC$S_1_20110207164733.node1.hostname.COM' SCOPE=MEMORY SID='racflo1';
ALTER SYSTEM SET service_names='node1.hostname.com' SCOPE=MEMORY SID='racflo1';

Related links