RAC nodes fail with network heartbeat loss (gipcretConnectionLost) on Oracle Linux 8 (GCP VM, Podman environment)

[akshay-das]

Description

I’m following the RAC container setup documentation using the setup_rac_host.sh script to spin up RAC containers via Podman.

Environment details:

• Platform: Google Cloud Platform (GCP) VM
• OS: Oracle Linux 8

Reference: OracleDatabase/RAC/OracleRealApplicationClusters

The script successfully provisions the RAC nodes (racnodep1, racnodep2), but during the cluster startup phase, I encounter repeated gipcretConnectionLost and no network HB messages, indicating the interconnect heartbeat is failing.

Observed Logs

Below is a snippet of the recurring error messages from racnodep2:

2025-10-24 17:46:42.320 :    ONMD: [INFO] clssnmvDHBValidateNCopy: node 1, racnodep1, has a disk HB, but no network HB
2025-10-24 17:46:42.391 :GIPCHAUP: [INFO] gipchaUpperProcessDisconnect: processing DISCONNECT for hendp 0x7f140c03e570
2025-10-24 17:46:42.391 :GIPCGMOD: [INFO] gipcmodGipcCallbackDisconnect: Disconnect forced for endp 0x7f140c042c10
2025-10-24 17:46:43.391 :    ONMD: [INFO] clssnmDiscHelper: racnodep1 connection failed, endp (0x9d7)

Expected Behavior

RAC containers should establish stable interconnect communication (gipcha and clssnm layers) between nodes when configured through setup_rac_host.sh.

Request

Could the maintainers please:

• Confirm if RAC-on-Podman is supported on Oracle Linux 8 under GCP?
• Suggest any required network adjustments (bridge, MACVLAN, multicast) for the interconnect?

[psaini79]

@akshay-das

Oracle RAC on Podman is supported on Oracle Linux 8 (OL8). The errors you are encountering are expected, as Oracle RAC on Podman is not supported on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Support for Oracle RAC on Podman is limited to on-premises environments.

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Param

[akshay-das]

@psaini79 Would it be possible to setup Oracle RAC on docker in GCP environment?

[psaini79]

@akshay-das As of today Oracle RAC on Podman is limited to on-premises environments.

[akshay-das]

@psaini79 Just to clarify- my last question was about running Oracle RAC on Docker, not Podman.

[psaini79]

@akshay-das RACon Docker is supported till OL7. Also, Oracle RAC on docker support is limited to on-premises environments.

[sramshek]

I am looking into setting up Oracle RAC for testing purpose with 2-nodes on Oracle-8 GCP VM.
I got racnode1 running, but when adding racnode2, see
CRS-1609: This node is unable to communicate with other nodes in the cluster and is going down to preserve cluster integrity error on rac2

[s1saurabh]

I believe its already clarified "As of today Oracle RAC on Podman is limited to on-premises environments." You are testing on GCP Cloud based VM's and not on premises