Managing HP Serviceguard Extension for SAP for Linux, December 2013

• The sections [Installations], [Databases], and [Runtime] are stored in separate
files Installations.ini, Databases.ini, and Runtimes.ini in the IndepData
path /sapdb/data/config.
• MaxDB 7.8 does not create SAP_DBTech.ini anymore. The [Globals] section is defined
in /etc/opt/sdb. With the concept of isolated installations , a DB installation contains its
own set of (version specific) executables (/sapdb/<DBSID>/db/bin), its own data directory
(/sapdb/<DBSID>/data), and a specific client directory (/sapdb/clients/<DBSID>).
At runtime, there will be a database specific set of x_server related processes.
NOTE: IndepDataPath and IndepProgramsPath are now referred as
GlobalDataPath and GlobalProgramPath respectively.
The following directories are of special interest:
• /sapdb/programs— This can be seen as a central directory with all MaxDB executables.
The directory is shared between all MaxDB instances that reside on the same host. It is also
possible to share the directory across hosts. But, it is not possible to use different executable
directories for two MaxDB instances on the same host. Furthermore, different SAPDB versions
could get installed on the same host. The files in /sapdb/programs must be the latest version
in any MaxDB on the cluster node. Files in /sapdb/programs are downwards compatible.
• /sapdb/data/config— This directory is also shared between instances, though you can
find lots of files that are Instance specific in here; for example,
/sapdb/data/config/<DBSID>.* According to SAP this path setting is static.
• /sapdb/data/wrk— The working directory of the main MaxDB processes is also a
subdirectory of the IndepData path for non-HA setups. If a SAPDB restarts after a crash, it
copies important files from this directory to a backup location. This information is then used
to determine the reason of the crash. In HA scenarios, for SAPDB/MaxDB lower than version
7.6, this directory must move with the package. Therefore, SAP provided a way to redefine
this path for each SAPBDB/MaxDB individually. SGeSAP expects this work directory to be
part of the database package. The mount point moves from/sapdb/data/wrk to
/sapdb/data/<DBSID>/wrk for the clustered setup. This directory must not be confused
with the directory /sapdb/data/<DBSID>/db/wrk that might also exist. Core files of the
kernel processes are written into the working directory. These core files have file sizes of
several Gigabytes. Sufficient free space needs to be configured for the shared logical volume
to allow core dumps.
For MaxDB version 7.8 or later, this directory is replaced by /sapdb/<DBSID>/data (private
data path).
NOTE: For MaxDB RDBMS starting with version 7.6, these limitations do not exist. The
working directory is utilized by all the instances (IndepData/wrk) and can be shared
globally.
• /etc/opt/sdb : Only exists when using MaxDB or liveCache 7.5 or later. Needs to be
local on each node together with entries in /etc/passwd and /etc/group.
• /var/spool/sql: For MaxDB version 7.5 or later, /var/spool/sql is created only for
compatibility with older versions. Depending on the versions installed it may not exist anymore
This directory hosts local runtime data of all locally running MaxDB instances. Most of the
data in this directory would become meaningless in the context of a different host after failover.
The only critical portion that still has to be accessible after failover is the initialization data in
/var/spool/sql/ini. This directory is usually very small (< 1 Megabyte). With MaxDB
and liveCache 7.5 or higher, the only local files are contained in /var/spool/sql/ini,
other paths are links to local runtime data in IndepData path:
4.4 MaxDB/liveCache storage considerations 45