Hi Alexei,

I think there is a misunderstanding here. A service shouldn't depend on a failed-over VIP.

Let's take an example of a 2-node RAC:

A node crashes and the VIP starts on the other node. CRS activates the services on the other node as well, but it registers them under the listener of the local VIP (ie the VIP of the surviving node). If a client connects to the VIP of the failed node it gets an error back immediately (ORA-12541 no listener) and tries to connect to the next VIP in the address-list of your tnsnames.ora and succeeds to connect. I.e. a VIP running on a different node than it should returns an error. The important thing is that it returns the error immediately and the client can handle it immediately (e.g. with TAF).

If the second node comes back then services remain on the node which didn't crash (if you have configured the service "Preferred/Available"). When the VIP switches back you may have a short "unavailability" to connect to the service (only to connect, not already "connected" sessions). On my Laptop with vmware this was 12 seconds. In a real environment probably less. After the failed node finished to boot I relocated the services back. This was another "unavailability" of service of 1 second. I started a test on my Laptop with 1 node up and running. To bring the service on the "down node" up again resulted in an unavailability of service of 13 seconds to connect to the service.

Could you please explain where your long wait times come from?

My understanding is that VIPs are there only for NIC-failures (i.e. a node crash means also a NIC failure ;-)). If a NIC failes then the VIP starts on another node and returns errors immediately when trying to connect to Oracle using this VIP.

Ciao

Clemens



--
To unsubscribe, email: suse-oracle-unsubscribe@(protected)
For additional commands, email: suse-oracle-help@(protected)
Please see http://www.suse.com/oracle/ before posting