Creating an oranfstab File for Direct NFS Client

8.2 Creating an oranfstab File for Direct NFS Client

If you use Direct NFS Client, then you must create a configuration file, oranfstab, to specify the options, attributes, and parameters that enable Oracle Database to use Direct NFS Client.

Direct NFS Client looks for the mount point entries in oranfstab. It uses the first matched entry as the mount point.

Create an oranfstab file and specify configurable attributes for each NFS server that the Direct NFS Client accesses.

For a server:

The NFS server name.

For NFS setup with Kerberos authentication, the server attribute name must be the fully-qualified name of the NFS server. This server attribute name is used to create service principal for Ticket Granting Service (TGS) request from the Kerberos server. If you are configuring external storage snapshot cloning, then the NFS server name should be a valid host name. For all other scenarios, the NFS server name can be any unique name.

The mount point specified in the oranfstab file represents the local path where the database files would reside normally, as if Direct NFS Client was not used. For example, if the location for the data files is C:\app\oracle\oradata\orcl and Direct NFS Client is not used, then specify C:\app\oracle\oradata\orcl as NFS virtual mount point in the corresponding oranfstab file.
Save the file to the Oracle_home\dbs directory.
When the oranfstab file is placed in Oracle_home\dbs, the entries in the file are specific to a single database.
If you have a nonshared Oracle home, copy the oranfstab file to the Oracle_home\dbs directory on all nodes in the cluster.
All instances that use the shared Oracle home use the same Oracle_home\dbs\oranfstab file.

For a nonshared Oracle home, you must keep the oranfstab file synchronized on all the nodes.

Note:

Direct NFS Client ignores a uid or gid value of 0. The exported path from the NFS server must be accessible for read/write/execute by the user with the uid, gid specified in oranfstab. If neither uid nor gid is listed, then the exported path must be accessible by the user with uid:65534 and gid:65534.
If you remove an NFS path from oranfstab, you must make the change in all oranfstab files used by the Oracle RAC database. Then, you must restart the database for the change to be effective. The mount point that you use for the file system must be identical on each node.

The following examples show three possible NFS server entries in oranfstab. A single oranfstab can have multiple NFS server entries.

Example 8-1 oranfstab File Using Local and Path NFS Server Entries

The following example of an oranfstab file shows an NFS server entry, where the NFS server, MyDataServer1, uses two network paths specified with IP addresses.

server: MyDataServer1
local: 192.0.2.0
path: 192.0.2.1
local: 192.0.100.0
path: 192.0.100.1
nfs_version: nfsv3
export: /vol/oradata1 mount: C:\APP\ORACLE\ORADATA\ORADATA1

Example 8-2 oranfstab File Using Network Names in Place of IP Addresses, with Multiple Exports, management and community

The following example of an oranfstab file shows an NFS server entry, where the NFS server, MyDataServer2, uses four network paths specified by the network interface to use, or the network connection name. Multiple export paths are also used in this example.

server: MyDataServer2
local: LocalInterface1
path: NfsPath1
local: LocalInterface2
path: NfsPath2
local: LocalInterface3
path: NfsPath3
local: LocalInterface4
path: NfsPath4
nfs_version: nfsv4
export: /vol/oradata2 mount: C:\APP\ORACLE\ORADATA\ORADATA2
export: /vol/oradata3 mount: C:\APP\ORACLE\ORADATA\ORADATA3
management: MgmtPath1
community: private

Example 8-3 oranfstab File Using Kerberos Authentication with Direct NFS Export

In this example, when specified, the security parameter overrides the value of the security_default parameter.

server:  nfsserver
 local: 198.51.100.02
 path: 10.0.0.0
 local: 198.51.100.03
 path: 10.0.0.3
 export: /private/oracle1/logs  mount: C:\APP\ORACLE\ORADATA\logs  security: krb5
 export: /private/oracle1/data  mount: C:\APP\ORACLE\ORADATA\data  security: krb5p
 export: /private/oracle1/archive mount: C:\APP\ORACLE\ORADATA\archive security: sys 
 export: /private/oracle1/data1 mount: C:\APP\ORACLE\ORADATA\data1
 security_default: krb5i