Acknowledgments

I would like to dedicate this book to my parents (Mrs. and Mr. Saifulla), my wife Ayesha, my three little champs (Ashfaq, Arfan, and Aahil), and the entire Oracle community.

First and foremost, I would like to thank the Almighty for everything and giving me such a wonderful life. Also, my parents for teaching me all the good things in my life and making me what I am today. I owe a very big thank-you to my wife and kids for sacrificing their family time and letting me concentrate on this assignment, and encouraging me all through this phase. Beyond a doubt, this project wouldn’t have been possible without the tremendous moral support and encouragement from my wife, friends, and colleagues. Thank you everyone once again.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank my management (Khalid Al-Qathany, Hussain Mobarak AlKalifah, and Majed Saleh AlShuaibi), my dearest friends (Khusro Khan, Mohammed Farooqui, Naresh Kumar, Shaukat Ali, Ahmed, Mohammed Abdul Kaleem, Mohammed Arifuddin Ghori, Haris Afsar Ahmed, Sachin, Ibrahim Ali, Chand Basha, Mohammed Anees, Asgar Ali, Gaffar Baig, Hakeem, Mohsin), my fellow colleagues, well-wishers, supporters, nears and dears for their immense support and constant encouragement.

I am also very thankful from the bottom of my heart to the official technical reviewers (Sandesh Rao and Arup Nanda) for taking some time out from their busy schedule to review our book and for providing their valuable inputs. I can’t conclude the list without mentioning the efforts by the official members of Apress, who put everything into this project. This is for every individual who was involved on this project on behalf of Apress: “You people just rock and have been of great help to us during the book-writing journey; looking forward to working with the team in future; thank you everyone.” A very special thanks to Jonathan Gennick for having confidence in us and giving us the opportunity to write for Apress Publications.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks to my unofficial technical reviewers, in no particular order, Jeff Smith, Bernhard de Cock Buning, Asad Khan, Yury Veli Kanov, Khusro Khan, Shautkat, Aman Sharma, and Inam Ullah Bukhary, who helped me a lot, in terms of reviewing my part of chapters, providing their inputs, plus correcting my grammar.

I would like to conclude this by thanking my fellow coauthors, Riyaj Shamsudeen, Kai Yu, and Tariq Farooq, for the immense contribution, dedication, and hard work that they have displayed over the past year on this book. The book wouldn’t have been feasible without your help/support/assistance/contribution. I really enjoyed working with you guys and am looking forward to other opportunities to work with you again in the coming times.

—Syed Jaffar Hussian

I would like to take this opportunity to express my endless gratitude and thanks to the Almighty, my parents (Mr. and Mrs. Abdullah Farooq), my wife (Ambreen), especially my kids (Sumaiya, Hafsa, Fatima, and Muhammad-Talha), and everyone else around me, both at home and at work, for continuing to stand behind me while I spent the better part of a year working on this project.

Authoring a book is a painstakingly lengthy and laborious process; this project would not have been possible without the help and guidance of the Apress team: many, many appreciative thanks to them and the book review team, particularly Jonathan Gennick. And finally, kudos and thanks to my awesome friends and coauthors (Syed, Kai, and Riyaj) for the amazing team effort and making this book happen.

—Tariq Farooq

I dedicate this book to you, the readers of the book. I thank my family—my wife Nisha and kids Shibi, Irfan, and Imran—for their great support and encouragement. Especially, I should thank my youngest son, Imran, for his understanding while Dad is busy writing “the book” (as he fondly quotes the book in the air!). My sincere thanks to Apress staff.

Many thanks to my current and past clients (you know who you are; I am thanking you without naming you) for giving me an opportunity to probe complex issues and learn so much more about RAC; Oracle-L listers and peers for asking me thought-provoking questions; and OakTable members for helping me to go to the next level when I am stuck on issues. My sincere thanks to the ContentConcepts guys (http://contentconcepts.in) for the preliminary editing of my chapters.

—Riyaj Shamsudeen

I want to thank all the people who have assisted this book, especially the Apress team of Acquisitions Editor Jonathan Gennick, Developmental Editor Tom Welsh, and Copy Editor Brendan Frost for their efforts, patience, and skills in transforming the technical writing into a finished book. I definitely would like to thank the technical reviewers, Arup Nanda and Sandesh Rao, for their time and effort in checking the technical content of the entire book as well as providing their very valuable comments and advice for improving the quality of this book.

I would like to dedicate this book to my parents, who encouraged me to pursue my education and career in computer technology. I would like to thank my wife Jin and my daughter Jessica for their consistent support and providing me the time to work on this book at night and on weekends.

I would like to thank my management at Dell—David Mar, Ibrahim Fashho, Dr. Reza Rooholamini—for their long-time support and encouragement and my colleagues in the Dell Oracle Solution Engineering team for their assistance and many great discussions on Oracle RAC, Red Hat Linux, and Oracle Linux and storage. I also want to specially thank my mentors in Oracle who really inspired me to work with the Oracle community: Dr. Nadia Bendjedou, a senior director from Oracle, and Erik Peterson, General Manager of Oracle Mexico Development Center. Last but certainly not least I would like to thank my coauthors Syed, Tariq, and Riyaj for the amazing teamwork. In particular, I want to thank Syed for his great leadership on the team and his confidence and encouragement.

—Kai Yu