The GPnP profile is a XML file located at location <GRID_HOME/gpnp/<hostname>/profiles/peer as profile.xml. Each node of the cluster maintains a copy of this profile locally and is maintained by GPnP daemon along with mdns daemon.

Now before understanding why Oracle came up with GPnP profile, we need to focus on what it contains.

GPnP defines a node’s meta data about network interfaces for public and private interconnect, the ASM server parameter file, and CSS voting disks. This profile is protected by a wallet against modification. If you have to manually modify the profile, it must first be unsigned with $GRID_HOME/bin/gpnptool, modified, and then signed again with the same utility, however there is a very slight chance you would ever be required to do so.

Now we’ll use the gpnptool with get option to dump this xml file into standard output. Below is the formatted output for the ease of readability.

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<gpnp:GPnP-Profile Version=”1.0″ xmlns=”http://www.xyz/gpnp-profile&#8221;
xmlns:gpnp=”http://xyz/gpnp-profile&#8221;
xmlns:orcl=”http://xyz/gpnp-profile&#8221;
xmlns:xsi=”http://xyz/XMLSchema-instance&#8221;
xsi:schemaLocation=”http://xyz/gpnp-profile gpnp-profile.xsd”
ProfileSequence=”3″ ClusterUId=”002c207a71cvaljgkcea7bea5b3a49″
ClusterName=”Cluster01″ PALocation=””>
<gpnp:Network-Profile>
<gpnp:HostNetwork id=”gen” HostName=”*”>
<gpnp:Network id=”net1″ IP=”xxx.xx.x.x” Adapter=”bond0″ Use=”public”/>
<gpnp:Network id=”net2″ IP=”xxx.xxx.x.x” Adapter=”bond1″
Use=”cluster_interconnect”/>
</gpnp:HostNetwork>
</gpnp:Network-Profile>
<orcl:CSS-Profile id=”css” DiscoveryString=”+asm” LeaseDuration=”400″ />
<orcl:ASM-Profile id=”asm” DiscoveryString=””
SPFile=”+DATA/prod/asmparameterfile/registry.253.699915959″ />
<ds:Signature…>…</ds:Signature>
</gpnp:GPnP-Profile>

So from the above dump we can see that GPnP profile contains following information:-

1) Cluster Name
2) Network Profile
3) CSS-Profile tag
4) ASM-Profile tag

Now that we have understood the content of a GPnP profile, we need to understand how the Clusterware uses this information to start. From 11gr2 you have the option of storing the OCR and Voting disk on ASM, but clusterware needs OCR and Voting disk to start crsd & cssd and both these files are on ASM which itself is a resource for the node. so how does the clusterware starts, which files it accesses to get the information needed to start clusterware, to resolve this Oracle came up with two local operating system files OLR & GPnP.

When a node of an Oracle Clusterware cluster restarts, OHASD is started by platform-specific means.OHASD has access to the OLR (Oracle Local Registry) stored on the local file system. OLR provides needed data (Would explain in another post) to complete OHASD initialization

OHASD brings up GPnP Daemon and CSS Daemon. CSS Daemon has access to the GPNP Profile stored on the local file system.
The Voting Files locations on ASM Disks are accessed by CSSD with well-known pointers in the ASM Disk headers and CSSD is able to complete initialization and start or join an existing cluster.
OHASD starts an ASM instance and ASM can now operate with CSSD initialized and operating. The ASM instance uses special code to locate the contents of the ASM SPFILE, assuming it is stored in a Diskgroup.
With an ASM instance operating and its Diskgroups mounted, access to Clusterware’s OCR is available to CRSD.OHASD starts CRSD with access to the OCR in an ASM Diskgroup.And thus Clusterware completes initialization and brings up other services under its control.

Thus with the use of GPnP profile several information stored in it along with the information in the OLR several tasks have been automated or eased for the administrators.

I hope the above information helps you in understanding the Grid plug and play profile, its content, its usage and why was it required. Please comment below if you need more information on GPnP as in the complete dump of the profile, how GPnP daemon and mdns daemon communicates to maintain the updated profile on all the nodes, how does oifcfg, crsctl, asmcmd and other utilities does uses IPC to alter the content of these files accordingly, etc.

Related Articles:-

GPnP Profile Internals

Network & Disk Heartbeat

OCR Internals

OLR Internals

SCAN Internals

Split Brain

Voting Disk Internals