RAC Attack! was another great success at C15LV

By Franck Pachot

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The RAC Attack  – install a RAC in your own laptop – is a great success at Las Vegas.
The idea is to help people follow the RAC Attack cookbook which is available at:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/RAC_Attack_-_Oracle_Cluster_Database_at_Home/RAC_Attack_12c/Hardware_Requirements

It is a complex configuration and there is always problems to troubleshoot:

• get Virtual Box be able to run a 64-bits guest, and that might involve some BIOS settings
• be able to install VirtualBox, and we have people with their company laptop where some security policies makes things difficule
• Network configuration is not simple and any misconfiguration will make things more difficult later

So it is a very good exercise for troubleshooting.
The organisation way excellent: Organisation by Ludovico Caldara, infrastructure by Erik Benner, food sponsored by OTN, and Oracle software made available on USB sticks thanks to Markus Michalewicz. Yes the RAC Product Manager did the racattack installation.
It’s also a very good networking event where people meet people around the technology, thanks to IOUG Collaborate.

More Ninjas graduating the Dojo! #racattack @ioug @racsig #c15lv @OracleDBDev @Mythics pic.twitter.com/M4pdb8AHf9

— Erik Benner (@Erik_Benner) April 12, 2015

When people manage to get a VM with the OS installed, they can get the red tee-shirt. Look at the timelapse of the full day and you will see more and more red T-shirts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqlhbR7dYm0
Do you wonder why we are so happy to see people having only the OS installed? Because it’s the most difficult part. Creating a cluster on a laptop is not easy. You have to create the VM, you have to setup networking, DNS, etc.
Once this setup is good, then installing Grid Infrastructure and Database is straightforward with graphical installer.