Oracle on RHEL 6 , using ASM with or without ASMLIB
A while ago, but worth mentioning it for those customers with a roadmap based on Red Hat Linux. The status regarding RHEL 6 is the following:
– Oracle has indeed certified RHEL 6 for the Oracle database, see also the comments in this article, and my seperate blogpost about it.
– Red Hat announced recently an extended lifecyle (support) of version 5 and 6, from 7 to 10 years.
– Red Hat is making things harder by shipping its RHEL 6 kernel source as one big tarball, without breaking out the patches. Distribution in this form satisfies the GPL, but it makes life hard for anybody else wanting to see what has been done with this kernel
Maybe as a result of this: regarding ASMLIB Oracle mentioned in note 1089399.1 :
For RHEL 6, Oracle will provide ASMLib software and updates only when configured with a kernel distributed by Oracle. Oracle will not provide ASMLib packages for kernels distributed by Red Hat as part of RHEL 6. ASMLib updates will be delivered via Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN), which is available to customers with Oracle Linux support. ULN works with both Oracle Linux or Red Hat Linux installations, but ASMLib usage will require replacing any Red Hat kernel with a kernel provided by Oracle.
Red Hat has written this general article about it and this technical article how to overcome this: using ASM with or without ASMLIB.
First I mentioned in this post that you could not use ASM with RHEL 6, but Tim Hall corrected me on this, read his comment on this post. Thanks (and cheers… ) !
Hope it helps somebody.
