An Oracle RAC deployment on Dell PowerEdge should be designed for high availability, low latency, and predictable performance. For enterprise Oracle RAC (19c/21c), the common best practice is:

2–4 Dell PowerEdge nodes + Linux + shared storage + Oracle Grid Infrastructure + ASM

A successful RAC deployment depends heavily on:

Network design + shared storage + cluster configuration

—not just server hardware.

Dell publishes reference architectures for Oracle RAC on PowerEdge with shared storage such as PowerStore and VMware or bare metal deployments.

1. Recommended Oracle RAC Architecture on Dell PowerEdge

Compute Layer

Recommended:

• 2-node RAC minimum
• Dell PowerEdge R760 / R750 class (or equivalent current generation)
• 2-socket configuration
• High-frequency CPUs
• Moderate core count

Typical enterprise sizing:

• 24–32 cores per node
• 512 GB–1 TB RAM per node

Goal:

Performance per Oracle licensed core

Avoid oversizing CPU unnecessarily due to Oracle licensing.

2. Operating System

Recommended:

• RHEL 8/9
  or
• Oracle Linux 8/9 (UEK)

Why?

• Certified Oracle support
• Better RAC compatibility
• Easier patching and automation

Keep OS versions consistent across all nodes.

3. Network Design (Critical for RAC)

Oracle RAC performance depends heavily on network latency.

Recommended network separation:

For RAC private interconnect:

25 GbE minimum preferred for enterprise workloads.

Dell reference architectures use dedicated low-latency networking between RAC nodes and storage.

Best practice:

• Bonded interfaces
• Redundant switches
• Dedicated RAC private VLAN

4. Shared Storage Design

RAC requires shared storage.

Recommended Dell storage:

• Dell PowerStore → common enterprise choice
• Dell PowerMax → high-end enterprise
• Dell PowerFlex → software-defined/HCI

Typical Oracle RAC layout:

Recommended:

Oracle ASM

for:

• Striping
• Disk management
• RAC optimization

Dell RAC reference designs commonly separate storage tiers for PROD and DEV environments.

5. BIOS & Server Settings

On Dell PowerEdge:

Recommended BIOS profile:

System Profile = Performance

Enable:

• NUMA awareness
• Hyper-Threading (validate workload)
• UEFI
• CPU performance mode

Dell guidance for RAC deployments recommends performance-oriented BIOS settings on PowerEdge servers.

6. Oracle RAC Installation Flow

Step 1: Prepare Linux Nodes

Configure:

• Hostname/FQDN
• DNS
• NTP/Chrony
• SSH equivalence
• Kernel parameters
• HugePages

Validate prerequisites:

cluvfy stage -pre crsinst -n node1,node2

Step 2: Configure Shared Storage

Present shared LUNs to both nodes.

Create ASM disk groups:

Example:

• +DATA
• +REDO
• +FRA

Step 3: Install Grid Infrastructure

Install:

Oracle Grid Infrastructure 19c

Components:

• Oracle Clusterware
• ASM
• SCAN listeners
• Voting disks
• OCR

Step 4: Configure RAC Network

Set:

• Public IP
• VIP
• Private interconnect
• SCAN name/IP

Example:

node1
node1-vip
node2
node2-vip
scan-cluster

Step 5: Install Oracle Database Software

Install Oracle DB binaries on shared RAC home.

Create:
RAC database

Choose:

• RAC database
• ASM disk groups
• Services

Step 6: Validate Cluster Health

Useful commands:

crsctl stat res -t
srvctl status database
olsnodes -n

7. High Availability Best Practices

Recommended:

RAC + Data Guard

RAC handles:
node failure

Data Guard handles:
site failure

Enterprise architecture:

Primary RAC site → DR RAC/standby site

8. Performance Best Practices

For Oracle RAC on Dell:

Focus on:

1. Low interconnect latency
2. Dedicated redo storage
3. Fast shared NVMe storage
4. SQL tuning before CPU scaling
5. Balanced node sizing

Common bottlenecks:

• Slow interconnect
• Storage contention
• Bad SQL execution plans

Recommended Enterprise Oracle RAC on Dell

2-node Dell PowerEdge cluster
RHEL/Oracle Linux
Oracle 19c RAC
ASM

All-flash NVMe shared storage

25 GbE private interconnect