The following features are new in this release:
See Also:
Oracle Database New Features Guide for a complete description of the features in Oracle Database 12c
Cluster Health Monitor Enhancements for Oracle Flex Clusters
Cluster Health Monitor (CHM) has been enhanced to provide a highly available server monitor service that provides improved detection and analysis of operating system and cluster resource-related degradation and failures. In addition, CHM supports Oracle Flex Clusters 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:
"Cluster Health Monitor" for more information
Cluster Resources for Oracle ACFS and Oracle ADVM
Oracle Clusterware resource support includes enhancements for Oracle homes stored on Oracle Automatic Storage Management Cluster File System (Oracle ACFS), Oracle ACFS General Purpose file systems for Grid homes, and Oracle ASM Dynamic Volume Manager (Oracle ADVM) volumes. These resources, managed by Oracle Clusterware, support automatic loading of Oracle ACFS, Oracle ADVM and OKS drivers, disk group mounts, dynamic volume enablement, and automatic Oracle ACFS file system mounts.
See Also:
Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide for more information
Oracle Flex Clusters
Oracle Flex Clusters 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. 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 Also:
Oracle Flex Clusters for more information
IPv6 Support for Public Networks
Oracle Clusterware 12c 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.
Shared Grid Naming Service
One instance of Grid Naming Service (GNS) can provide name resolution service for any number of clusters.
See Also:
"Oracle Clusterware Network Configuration Concepts" for more information
Oracle Grid Infrastructure User Support on Windows
Starting with Oracle Database 12c, Oracle Database supports the use of an Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation owner account (Grid user) to own the Oracle Grid Infrastructure home, which you can specify during installation time. The Grid user can be either a built-in account or a Windows user account. A Windows Grid user account should be a low-privileged (non-Administrator) account, so that the Grid user has a limited set of privileges. Installing Oracle Grid Infrastructure using a Grid user account helps to ensure that Oracle Database services have only those privileges required to run Oracle products.
In prior releases on Windows operating systems, Oracle services ran as local system privileges which are fully privileged. This feature allows the services to run with user privileges to allow tighter control of security. Oracle creates the Windows database service for the Oracle Grid Infrastructure management repository under the security context of the Windows user specified when installing the Oracle Grid Infrastructure, which is the Grid user referred to in the previous paragraph.
In support of this feature, Oracle enhanced some Cluster Verification Utility (CVU) commands and added CRSCTL commands for managing wallets.
Oracle Grid Infrastructure Rolling Migration for One-Off Patches
Oracle Grid Infrastructure one-off patch rolling migration and upgrade for Oracle Automatic Storage Management (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.
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 cluster configuration policy. In addition, a cluster configuration policy set enables different cluster configuration policies to be applied to the cluster over time as required. You can define cluster configuration policies 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 Also:
"Overview of Cluster Configuration Policies and the Policy Set" for more information
Oracle Clusterware 12c includes a generic_application resource type for fast integration and high availability for any type of application.
See Also:
"Oracle Clusterware Resource Types" for more information about the generic_application resource type
Oracle Flex ASM
Oracle Flex ASM enables the Oracle ASM instance to run on a separate physical server from the database servers. Any number of Oracle ASM servers can be clustered to support much larger database clients, thereby eliminating a single point of failure.
See Also:
Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide for more information about Oracle Flex ASM
Restricting Service Registration with Valid Node Checking
A standalone Oracle Database listener restricts clients from accessing a database registered with this listener using various conditions, such as the subnet, from which these clients are connecting. Listeners that Oracle Grid Infrastructure manages can now be configured, accordingly.
What-If Command Evaluation
Oracle Clusterware 12c provides a set of evaluation commands and APIs to determine the impact of a certain operation before the respective operation is actually executed.
See Also:
for more information about the evaluation commands
"What-If APIs" for more information about the APIs
Online Resource Attribute Modification
Oracle Clusterware manages hardware and software components for high availability using a resource model. You use resource attributes to define how Oracle Clusterware manages those resources. You can modify certain resource attributes and implement those changes without having to restart the resource using online resource attribute modification. You manage online resource attribute modification with certain SRVCTL and CRSCTL commands.
Oracle Cluster Registry Backup in Oracle 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.