Oracle Local Registry (OLR) in RAC - 11gR2

In 11gR2, addition to OCR, we have another component called OLR installed on each node in the cluster.
It is a local registry for node specific purposes. The OLR is not shared by other nodes in the cluster. It is
installed and configured when clusterware is installed.
Why OLR is used and why was it introduced.
In 10g, we cannot store OCRs in ASM and hence to startup the clusterware, oracle uses OCR but what
happens when OCR is stored is ASM in 11g.
OCR should be accessible to find out the resources that need to be started or not. But, if OCR is on ASM,
it cant read until ASM (which itself is the resource of the node and this information is stored in OCR) is
up.
To answer this, Oracle introduced a component called OLR.
It is the first file used to startup the clusterware when OCR is stored on ASM.
Information about the resources that needs to be started on a node is stored in an OS file called ORACLE
LOCAL REGISTRY (OLR).
Since OLR is an OS file, it can be accessed by various processes on the node for read/write irrespective of
the status of cluster (up/down).
When a node joins the cluster, OLR on that node is read, various resources, including ASM are started on
the node.
Once ASM is up, OCR is accessible and is used henceforth to manage all the cluster nodes. If OLR is
missing or corrupted, clusterware cant be started on that node.

Where is OLR located

It is located $GRID_HOME/cdata/<hostname>.olr . The location of OLR is stored in /etc/oracle/olr.loc and
used by OHASD.
What does OLR contain
The OLR stores
Clusterware version info.
Clusterware configuration
Configuration of various resources which needs to be started on the node,etc.

To see the contents in the OLR file, we can use following commands and see the resources.
[root@rac1 ~]# ocrconfig -local -manualbackup
host01 2014/03/16 01:20:27
/u01/app/grid/11.2.0.3/product/grid_1/cdata/rac1/backup_20140316_012027.olr
[root@rac1 ~]# strings /u01/app/grid/11.2.0.3/product/grid_1/cdata/rac1/backup_20140316_012027.olr |
grep -v type |grep ora!
ora!drivers!acfs
ora!crsd
ora!asm

ora!evmd
ora!ctssd
ora!cssd
ora!cssdmonitor
ora!diskmon
ora!gpnpd
ora!gipcd
ora!mdnsd

OLR administration
Checking the status of the OLR file on each node.

$ ocrcheck local
OCRDUMP is used to dump the contents of the OLR to text terminal
$ocrdump local stdout
We can export and import the OLR file using OCRCONFIG
$ocrconfig local export <export file name>
$ocrconfig local import <file_name>
We can even the repair the OLR file if it corrupted.
$ocrconfig local repair olr <filename>
OLR is backed up at the end of the installation or an upgrade. After that time we need to manually backup
the OLR. Automatic backups are not supported for OLR.
$ocrconfig local manualbackup.
Viewing the contents of backup file
$ocrdump -local backupfile <olr_backup_file_name>
To change the OLR backup location
$ocrconfig local backuploc <new_backup_location>
To restore OLR
$crsctl stop crs
$ocrconfig local restore_file_name
$ocrcheck local
$crsctl start crs
$cluvfy comp olr -- to check the integrity of the OLR file which was restored.