This chapter lists changes in Oracle Real Application Clusters Installation Guide.
The following are changes in Oracle Real Application Clusters Installation Guide for Oracle Database 12c Release 1.
Standard Edition Replacement
Starting with Oracle Database 12c Release 1(12.1.0.2), Standard Edition 2 (SE2) replaces Standard Edition. Standard Edition 2 can run on systems with up to two sockets and can support a two-node Oracle RAC cluster.
See Also:
My Oracle Support Note 2027072.1 for more information:https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/DocumentDisplay?id=2027072.1&displayIndex=1
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. It is used by Oracle ASM to specify the parameters to validate all I/O requests.
The filter driver rejects any I/O requests that are not determined to be valid. This action eliminates accidental overwrites of Oracle ASM disks that would cause corruption in an Oracle ASM disk and files within the disk group. For example, the driver filters out all non-Oracle I/O requests that could cause accidental overwrites.
See Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide for more information about configuration and administration of Oracle ASMFD.
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 Server (RHPS) clusters provide gold images to Rapid Home Provisioning Clients (RHPC).
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.
Database Upgrade Automation Using DBUA
There are three areas that are being enhanced for upgrade ease-of-use. First, in the pre-upgrade phase, the existing manual steps are eliminated and give more explicit advice or even generate a fix-up script to find issues identified in the pre-upgrade phase. Second, in the post-upgrade phase, there is a post-upgrade health check that indicates that the upgrade was successful. Finally, partner documents (such as SAP) and major customer upgrade documents are used to further identify manual steps that may be automated and generalized to a wider customer base.
Automating the upgrade process provides major improvements in usability and ease-of-use. There is also better integration of database upgrade with Oracle Grid Infrastructure for a cluster and Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control.
DBCA Support for Multitenant Container Database and Pluggable Database Configurations
Starting with Oracle Database 12c Release 1 (12.1), Oracle Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA) allows you to create either a multitenant container database (CDB) or a non-CDB. You can create the CDB with zero, one, or more pluggable databases (PDBs).
You can also create a CDB with one PDB during the database installation.
Enhancements to Cluster Health Monitor (CHM)
CHM has been enhanced to be more efficient to support Oracle Flex Clusters implementations. These enhancements ensure that Oracle Flex Clusters run smoothly while minimizing the required resources to monitor the stack.
Oracle Flex ASM Servers
Oracle Flex ASM enables the Oracle ASM instance to run on a separate physical server from the database servers. Many Oracle ASM instances can be clustered to support a large number of database clients.
Note that Oracle Flex ASM can apply to a collection of databases, each one a single instance but running in a Flex ASM Cluster.
See Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide.
Oracle Flex Clusters
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.
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 connects to the appropriate database listener for the IP protocol of the client request.
Multiprocess Multithreaded Oracle Database
Starting with Oracle Database 12c, Oracle Database may use operating system threads to allow resource sharing and reduce resource consumption.
Oracle ACFS Auditing and Support for Importing Auditing Data into Oracle Audit Vault Server
This feature provides auditing for Oracle ACFS security and encryption. In addition, this feature also generates an XML file containing Oracle ACFS audit trail data which can be imported by Oracle Audit Vault Server.
See Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide.
Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Express 12c
Oracle Database 12c introduces Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Express, a web management product built into Oracle Database without any need for special installation or management. Using Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Express, you can perform administrative tasks such as managing user security, and managing database memory and storage. You can also view performance and status information about your database.
Note that starting with Oracle Database 12c, Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control is deprecated.
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.
Simplified Oracle Database Vault Installation
Starting with Oracle Database 12c, Oracle Database Vault is installed by default as part of the Oracle Database installation. However, you can configure, enable, or disable Oracle Database Vault after the Oracle Database installation, either using DBCA, or by running SQL statements.
Support for Separation of Database Administration Duties
Oracle Database 12c 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.
Unified Database Audit Configuration
Starting with Oracle Database 12c, you can create named audit policies. An audit policy contains a set of audit options, which is stored in the database as an object. The advantage of creating a named audit policy is that it reduces the number of commands that are required to create a database audit policy, and it simplifies the implementation of an audit configuration for security and compliance with conditional auditing. This new audit policy framework is included with the database installation.
The following features are deprecated in this release, and may be desupported in another 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.
Deprecation of single-letter SRVCTL command-line interface (CLI) options
All SRVCTL commands have been enhanced to accept full-word options instead of the single-letter options. All new SRVCTL command options added in this release support full-word options, only, and do not have single-letter equivalents. The use of single-letter options with SRVCTL commands might be desupported in a future release.
Change for Standalone Deinstallation Tool
The deinstallation tool is now integrated with the database installation media.
Deprecation of -cleanupOBase
The -cleanupOBase flag of the deinstallation tool is deprecated in this release. There is no replacement for this flag.
Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control is replaced by Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Express.
The deinstall standalone utility is replaced with a deinstall option using Oracle Universal Installer (OUI).
The following features are no longer supported by Oracle. See Oracle Database Upgrade Guide for a complete list of features desupported in this release.
Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control
CLEANUP_ORACLE_BASE property removed and does not support an Oracle base removal during silent or response file mode deinstalls.
The following are additional changes in the release:
Oracle Grid Infrastructure and Oracle Real Application Clusters are not supported for 32-bit hardware platforms.
PMON (process monitor) has been replaced with LREG (listener registration process) to notify listeners about instances, services, handlers and endpoints.