This preface contains:
The following are changes in Oracle Grid Infrastructure Installation Guide for Oracle Grid Infrastructure 12c Release 1:
New Features for for Oracle Grid Infrastructure 12c Release 1 (12.1.0.2)
New Features for for Oracle Grid Infrastructure 12c Release 1 (12.1.0.1)
Rapid Home Provisioning
Rapid Home Provisioning is a method of deploying software homes to nodes in a cloud computing environment from a single cluster where you store home images (called gold images) of Oracle software, such as databases, middleware, and applications. Rapid Home Provisioning Servers (RHPS) clusters provide gold images to Rapid Home Provisioning Clients (RHPC).
See Oracle Clusterware Administration and Deployment Guide and Oracle Real Application Clusters Installation Guide.
Cluster and Oracle RAC Diagnosability Tools Enhancements
The Trace File Analyzer (TFA) Collector is installed automatically with Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation. The Trace File Analyzer Collector is a diagnostic collection utility to simplify diagnostic data collection on Oracle Grid Infrastructure and Oracle RAC systems.
See Also:
Oracle Clusterware Administration and Deployment Guide for information about using Trace File Analyzer CollectorAutomatic Installation of Grid Infrastructure Management Repository
The Grid Infrastructure Management Repository is automatically installed with Oracle Grid Infrastructure 12c Release 1 (12.1.0.2).
Oracle RAC Cache Fusion Accelerator
Oracle RAC uses its Cache Fusion protocol and Global Cache Service (GCS) to provide fast, reliable, and efficient inter-instance data communication in an Oracle RAC cluster, so that the individual memory buffer caches of multiple instances can function as one global cache for the database. Using Cache Fusion provides a nearly linear scalability for most applications. This release includes accelerations to the Cache Fusion protocol that provide enhanced scalability for all applications.
Oracle Flex Cluster is a new concept, which joins together a traditional closely coupled cluster with a modest node count with a large number of loosely coupled nodes. In order to support various configurations that can be established using this new concept, SRVCTL provides new commands and command options to ease the installation and configuration.
See Section 4.11, "Configuration Requirements for Oracle Flex Clusters"
See Also:
Oracle Clusterware Administration and Deployment Guide for more information about Oracle Flex Clusters, and Oracle Grid Infrastructure Installation Guide for more information about Oracle Flex Cluster deploymentOracle Cluster Registry Backup in ASM Disk Group Support
The Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR) backup mechanism enables storing the OCR backup in an Oracle ASM disk group. Storing the OCR backup in an Oracle ASM disk group simplifies OCR management by permitting access to the OCR backup from any node in the cluster should an OCR recovery become necessary.
IPv6 Support for Public Networks
Oracle Clusterware 12c Release 1 (12.1) supports IPv6-based public IP and VIP addresses.
IPv6-based IP addresses have become the latest standard for the information technology infrastructure in today's data centers. With this release, Oracle RAC and Oracle Grid Infrastructure support this standard. You can configure cluster nodes during installation with either IPv4 or IPv6 addresses on the same network. Database clients can connect to either IPv4 or IPv6 addresses. The Single Client Access Name (SCAN) listener automatically redirects client connection requests to the appropriate database listener for the IP protocol of the client request.
Grid Infrastructure Script Automation for Installation and Upgrade
This feature enables running any script requiring root privileges through the installer and other configuration assistants, so that you are no longer required to run root-based scripts manually during deployment.
Using script automation for installation and upgrade eliminates the need to run scripts manually on each node during the final steps of an Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation or upgrade.
See Section 1.1.2, "Oracle Grid Infrastructure and Oracle RAC Environment Checklist"
Oracle Grid Infrastructure Rolling Migration for One-Off Patches
Oracle Grid Infrastructure one-off patch rolling migration and upgrade for Oracle ASM and Oracle Clusterware enables you to independently upgrade or patch clustered Oracle Grid Infrastructure nodes with one-off patches, without affecting database availability. This feature provides greater uptime and patching flexibility. This release also introduces a new Cluster state, "Rolling Patch." Operations allowed in a patch quiesce state are similar to the existing "Rolling Upgrade" cluster state.
See Section B.9, "Performing Rolling Upgrade of Oracle ASM"
See Also:
Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide for more information about ASM rolling migrations and patchesPolicy-Based Cluster Management and Administration
Oracle Grid Infrastructure allows running multiple applications in one cluster. Using a policy-based approach, the workload introduced by these applications can be allocated across the cluster using a policy. In addition, a policy set enables different policies to be applied to the cluster over time as required. Policy sets can be defined using a web-based interface or a command-line interface.
Hosting various workloads in the same cluster helps to consolidate the workloads into a shared infrastructure that provides high availability and scalability. Using a centralized policy-based approach allows for dynamic resource reallocation and prioritization as the demand changes.
See Oracle Clusterware Administration and Deployment Guide for more information about managing applications with policies
Shared Grid Naming Service (GNS) Across Multiple Clusters
In previous releases, the Grid Naming Service (GNS) was dedicated to one Oracle Grid Infrastructure-based cluster, providing name resolution only for its own cluster member nodes. With this release, one Oracle GNS can now manage just the cluster member nodes in its own cluster, or GNS can provide naming resolution for all nodes across all clusters in the data center that are delegated to Oracle GNS for resolution.
Using only one Oracle GNS for all nodes that are part of an Oracle Grid Infrastructure cluster in the data center not only streamlines the naming convention, but also enables a data center cloud, minimizing day-to-day administration efforts.
See Section 4.5, "Oracle Grid Infrastructure IP Name and Address Requirements"
Support for Separation of Database Administration Duties
Oracle Database 12c Release 1 (12.1) provides support for separation of administrative duties for Oracle Database by introducing task-specific and least-privileged administrative privileges that do not require the SYSDBA administrative privilege. These new privileges are: SYSBACKUP for backup and recovery, SYSDG for Oracle Data Guard, and SYSKM for encryption key management.
See Section 5.1.8.3, "Extended Oracle Database Groups for Job Role Separation"
See Also:
Oracle Database Administrator's Guide for an overview of system privileges and operating system authentication
Oracle Database Security Guide for information about using system privileges
The following features are deprecated in this release, and may be desupported in a future release. See Oracle Database Upgrade Guide for a complete list of deprecated features in this release.
Deprecation Announcement for Oracle Restart
Oracle Restart is a feature provided as part of Oracle Grid Infrastructure. Oracle Restart monitors and can restart Oracle Database instances, Oracle Net Listeners, and Oracle ASM instances. Oracle Restart is currently restricted to manage single instance Oracle Databases and Oracle ASM instances only, and is subject to desupport in future releases. Oracle continues to provide Oracle ASM as part of the Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation for Standalone and Cluster deployments.
See Also:
My Oracle Support Note 1584742.1 for more information about Oracle Restart deprecation announcement and its replacement:https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/DocumentDisplay?id=1584742.1&displayIndex=1
Change for Standalone Deinstallation tool
The deinstallation tool is now integrated with the installation media.
Deprecation of -cleanupOBase
The -cleanupOBase flag of the deinstallation tool is deprecated in this release. There is no replacement for this flag.
The following features are no longer supported by Oracle. See Oracle Database Upgrade Guide for a complete list of desupported features.
Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control
CLEANUP_ORACLE_BASE Property Removed
Document Structure Changes
This book is redesigned to provide an installation checklist for Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation, which comprises Oracle Clusterware and Oracle Automatic Storage Management installation. Use the checklist to prepare for installation. For more details, refer to the chapters that subdivide preinstallation tasks into category topics.
Preinstallation Task Changes
To facilitate cluster deployment, Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) and Cluster Verification Utility (CVU) detects when minimum requirements for installation are not completed, and creates shell script programs, called Fixup scripts, to resolve many incomplete system configuration requirements. If OUI detects an incomplete task that is marked "fixable", then you can easily fix the issue by clicking Fix & Check Again to generate a Fixup script.
Fixup scripts do not replace system tuning, but they do reduce the amount of manual system configuration required for an initial deployment. For this reason, some manual tasks that Fixup scripts perform are now moved to an appendix. If you choose to, you can continue to configure your servers manually.
See Section 3.3, "Using Installation Fixup Scripts" and Appendix E, "How to Complete Preinstallation Tasks Manually"
Desupport of 32-bit Platforms
Oracle Grid Infrastructure and Oracle Real Application Clusters can no longer be installed on 32-bit systems.