Changes in This Release for Oracle Grid Infrastructure Installation Guide

New Features for Oracle Grid Infrastructure 12c Release 1 (12.1.0.2)

• Oracle ASM Filter Driver

  The Oracle ASM Filter Driver (Oracle ASMFD) is a kernel module that resides in the I/O path of the Oracle ASM disks. Oracle ASM uses the filter driver to validate write I/O requests to Oracle ASM disks.

  The Oracle ASM filter driver rejects any I/O requests that are invalid. This action eliminates accidental overwrites of Oracle ASM disks that would cause corruption in the disks and files within the disk group. For example, the Oracle ASM filter driver filters out all non-Oracle I/Os which could cause accidental overwrites.

  See Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide for more information about configuration and administration of Oracle ASMFD.

  Note:

  This feature is not supported on IBM: Linux on System z.

• 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.

  Note:

  This feature is not supported on IBM: Linux on System z.

• 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 Collector

• Automatic 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).

  Note:

  The Grid Infrastructure Management Repository is not available on IBM: Linux on System z.

• 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.

New Features for Oracle Grid Infrastructure 12c Release 1 (12.1.0.1)

• Cluster Health Monitor Enhancements for Oracle Flex Cluster

  Cluster Health Monitor (CHM) has been enhanced to provide a highly available server monitor service that provides improved detection of operating system and cluster resource-related degradation and failures. In addition, CHM supports Oracle Flex Cluster configurations, including the ability for data collectors to collect from every node of the cluster and provide a single cluster representation of the data.

  See Also:

  See Oracle Clusterware Administration and Deployment Guide

  Note:

  This feature is not supported on IBM: Linux on System z.

• Oracle Flex Cluster

  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 5.10, "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 deployment

  Note:

  This feature is not supported on IBM: Linux on System z.

• Oracle 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.

  See Section 5.4, "IPv4 and IPv6 Protocol Requirements"

• 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 Appendix B, "Performing Rolling Upgrade of Oracle ASM"

  See Also:

  Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide for more information about ASM rolling migrations and patches

• Oracle Flex ASM Server and Oracle CloudFS

  Oracle Flex ASM decouples the Oracle ASM instance from database servers and enables the Oracle ASM instance to run on a separate physical server from the database servers. Any number of Oracle ASM instances can be clustered to support numerous database clients. This is a component feature of Oracle CloudFS.

  Oracle CloudFS is a storage cloud infrastructure with resource pooling, network accessibility, rapid elasticity and rapid provisioning that are key requirements for cloud computing environments.

  This feature enables you to consolidate all storage requirements into a single set of disk groups. All these disk groups are managed by a small set of Oracle ASM instances running in a single Cluster Synchronization Services (CSS) cluster. Depending on the performance requirements, you can make policy decisions on how various Oracle ASM clients access its files in a disk group.

  Oracle Flex ASM supports Oracle Database 12c Release 1 (12.1) and later. Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2) or later through Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2) can continue to use ASM disk groups with no requirement to install patches.

  See Section 5.6, "About Oracle Flex ASM Clusters Networks"

  See Also:

  Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide for more information about using Oracle Flex ASM servers

• Policy-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 5.5, "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 6.1.8.3, "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

Deprecated Features

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.

Desupported Features

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

Other Changes

• 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 4.4, "Using Installation Fixup Scripts" and Appendix F, "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.