What's New in Oracle Cluster Software?

This section describes the new features, variables, parameters, views, and installation procedures introduced by Real Application Clusters.

Release 1 (9.0.1) Real Application Clusters Features

Real Application Clusters is a new architecture offering scalability and high availability features that exceed the capabilities of previous Oracle cluster-enabled software releases. Real Application Clusters introduces a new phase of Cache Fusion, a breakthrough technology that guarantees cache coherency among multiple cluster nodes without incurring disk I/O costs. The first phase of Cache Fusion was introduced in Oracle8i to improve read/write concurrent data access. Real Application Clusters extends that capability to optimize read/read, read/write, and write/write concurrency among multiple cluster nodes. The new features introduced in Real Application Clusters greatly enhance Oracle cluster software performance and scalability.

Real Application Clusters introduces a number of significant improvements. These improvements are divided into several categories:

• New Terminology

• Installation and Configuration

• Cache Fusion and Resource Management

• SRVCTL Utility

• Listener Load Balancing and Failover for Dedicated Servers

• Diagnostic Features

• Discovery

• High Availability Features

• Shutdown Transactional Local Command

• Quiesce Database Feature

• New SQL Script Names

• TRACE_ENABLED Parameter

• Changed Parameter Names

• Obsolete Parameters

• New View Names

• Revised View Names

• Previous Cluster Software Product Features

New Terminology

Real Application Clusters introduces a number of terms to more accurately reflect new functionality:

• Oracle Parallel Fail Safe (OPFS) was replaced by Oracle Real Application Clusters Guard.

• The term Distributed Lock Manager (DLM) is obsolete. The background processes that were formerly aggregated under the DLM in previous Oracle cluster software products still exist, but the DLM no longer manages resources in Real Application Clusters. The Global Cache Service (GCS) and Global Enqueue Service (GES) now handle the management functions that had been handled by the DLM in earlier Oracle cluster software releases.

  Note: The terms for background processes (LMON, LMD, LMSn, and so on) remain unchanged to ensure backward compatibility.

• The OPSCTL utility was replaced by SRVCTL.

• The Oracle Parallel Server Communications Daemon (OPSD) was replaced by the Global Services Daemon (GSD).

• Oracle Parallel Server Management (OPSM) was replaced by Server Management (SRVM)

• The term Parallel Cache Management (PCM) is obsolete. These operations have been replaced by Global Cache Service block requests.

• The term non-PCM is obsolete. The Global Enqueue Service now implements the resource management.

• Lock mastering is obsolete. The equivalent function in Real Application Clusters is resource mastering.

• The Lock Database is obsolete. The equivalent functions are handled by the Global Resource Directory.

Installation and Configuration

• There are new raw device requirements for Real Application Clusters. You must create a shared raw device to store Real Application Clusters server configuration information. In previous products, Oracle stored this information in the db_name.conf file on UNIX and in the Registry on Windows NT platforms.

• If you use the preconfigured database templates, you must also create several shared raw devices that were optional in previous products. Create these raw devices for the Oracle9i Sample Schemas, Online Analytical Processing (OLAP), Oracle9i interMedia, and for the automatic undo management feature. These requirements are in addition to previous raw device requirements, such as those for the SYSTEM, USERS, TEMP, and other tablespaces.

• The Oracle Universal Installer and the Oracle Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA) have been enhanced to offer simplified software installation and database creation for Real Application Clusters.
  • The Oracle Universal Installer offers the following database configuration types: General Purpose, Transaction Processing, Data Warehouse, Customized, and Software Only. The Customized database configuration type replaces the Custom installation type.

  • The DBCA also has templates named General Purpose, Transaction Processing, and Data Warehousing. These templates correspond to the Installer's configuration types. In addition, the DBCA has a New Database template that does not include datafiles and that is fully customizable.

  • To simplify installation, you can select the General Purpose, Transaction Processing, or Data Warehousing configuration type in the Universal Installer's Database Configuration screen. Providing you have configured your shared raw devices as described in Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Installation and Configuration, after completing the remaining Installer screens, the installation and DBCA database creation processes continue without further user input.

    See Also: Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Installation and Configuration for details on changes to configuration types, raw partitions, templates, Oracle Universal Installer, and DBCA options.

• The raw partition tablespace size requirements changed for Real Application Clusters. These tablespaces require greater capacities than the values that were published in previous product documentation.

  See Also: Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Installation and Configuration and the Release 1 (9.0.1) README file for details on raw partition tablespace size requirements

• Real Application Clusters supports cluster file systems to simplify Real Application Clusters installation and management.

  See Also: Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Administration for information on cluster file systems

• If you use the Oracle Managed Files option, your hardware server platform must support a cluster file system, and this cluster file system must be supported by Oracle. The Oracle Managed Files feature automatically creates and deletes files that Oracle requires to manage the database. Cluster file systems are only available for a limited number of system types.

  See Also: Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Administration and Oracle9i Database Administrator's Guide for information on Oracle Managed Files Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Installation and Configuration

• The Oracle Cluster Setup Wizard is available to install the Operating System-Dependent (OSD) Layer software on Windows NT and Windows 2000 operating systems.

  See Also: Oracle9i Database Installation Guide for Windows for information on OSD software installation

  Note: The term Windows is used generically in this manual for Microsoft Windows products. Real Application Clusters is compatible with the Windows NT and Windows 2000 operating systems, but not with Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows ME.

• Real Application Clusters and Oracle Fail Safe are integrated with Microsoft's Cluster Server (MSCS). This enables more flexibility in configuring them on Windows NT. They also make use of Internet Protocol (IP) failover and Microsoft's cluster management utilities.

  See Also: Oracle Fail Safe documentation for configuration instructions Microsoft Corporation documentation at www.microsoft.com for information on Microsoft's Cluster Server.

• The Oracle Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA) has administrative features such as instance and template management. Instance management enables you to add or delete instances. You can use the template management feature to manage and customize database creation scripts.

  See Also: Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Installation and Configuration for information on the DBCA

• The DBCA provides tools to create databases. As part of creating databases, it can create and display the contents server side server parameter files (SPFILEs).

  Oracle Corporation recommends that you use server parameter files when you implement Real Application Clusters.

  Oracle Corporation also recommends that you modify the default file location for server parameter files for Real Application Clusters environments if you are using raw devices.

  See Also: Chapter 8, "Real Application Clusters Storage Considerations" Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Installation and Configuration

• Beginning with Real Application Clusters, default user names expire. All default user names except SYS, SYSTEM, and SCOTT, expire upon installation. To use these names, you must explicitly unlock them.

Cache Fusion and Resource Management

• Cache Fusion is fully implemented in Real Application Clusters. This phase eliminates forced disk writes. Fixed locks have been eliminated. Although not normally recommended, it is possible to override the default configuration and implement releasable locks in special circumstances. However, the default Cache Fusion concurrency control provides exceptional performance and scalability for most applications.

  See Also: Chapter 5, "Cache Fusion and the Global Cache Service" for a description of Cache Fusion processing Appendix B, "Using Multi-Block Lock Assignments (Optional)" for information on using locks

• The new dynamic resource remastering feature is implemented in Real Application Clusters. Dynamic resource remastering is the ability of the Global Cache Service to move the ownership of a resource between instances of Real Application Clusters during runtime without affecting availability.

  See Also: Chapter 2, "Real Application Clusters Architecture" for a description of Dynamic resource remastering

Real Application Clusters employs resource affinity. Resource affinity is the use of dynamic resource remastering to move the location of the resource masters for a database file to the instance where operations are most frequently occurring.

See Also: Chapter 2, "Real Application Clusters Architecture" for a description of resource affinity

• Multiple Global Cache Service Processes (LMSn) are available to increase scalability for Global Cache Service processing. The number of LMS processes varies depending on the load and system resources. The Global Enqueue Service Daemon (LMD) process has been superseded by LMSn processes under most circumstances.

  See Also: Chapter 5, "Cache Fusion and the Global Cache Service" for information on LMSn processes.

• Block Server Processes (BSPn) were eliminated. These are replaced by Global Cache Service Processes (LMSn).

  See Also: Chapter 5, "Cache Fusion and the Global Cache Service" for information on LMSn processes.

• The LCK process has been simplified. Much of the LCK functionality in previous products is now handled by Global Cache Service Processes (LMSn). In Real Application Clusters, there is just one remaining LCK process. It is used for non-Cache Fusion operations such as instance requests and cross-instance call operations.

  See Also: Chapter 5, "Cache Fusion and the Global Cache Service" for information on LMSn processes.

SRVCTL Utility

• The OPSCTL utility was replaced by SRVCTL and is fully functional in Real Application Clusters. Oracle Corporation recommends that you use SRVCTL to administer your Real Application Clusters database environment. SRVCTL manages configuration information that is used by several Oracle tools. For example, Oracle Enterprise Manager and the Oracle Intelligent Agent use the configuration information that SRVCTL generates to discover and monitor nodes in your cluster.

  See Also: Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Administration for information on SRVCTL

• The additional instance_startup (Transport Network Services (TNS) entries that had been required for each instance are now obsolete.

Storage

• The automatic undo management mode offers the full range of functionality in Real Application Clusters as it does with single instance Oracle. That is, it manages undo tablespaces. With ALTER_SYSTEM, you can dynamically redirect an instance's undo processing from one undo tablespace to another.

  See Also: Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Administration for information on the Automatic Undo Management mode

Oracle Enterprise Manager

• Oracle Enterprise Manager has improved abilities to discover, start up, and shut down Real Application Clusters.

  See Also: Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Administration for information on Oracle Enterprise Manager

Listener Load Balancing and Failover for Dedicated Servers

• The Transport Network Services (TNS) listener previously provided load balancing across nodes only in shared servers (formerly called multithreaded servers). Starting with Real Application Clusters, load balancing and failover is provided for dedicated server configurations.

  See Also: Oracle9i Net Services Administrator's Guide for details on load balancing

Diagnostic Features

• A SID entry in the server parameter file identifies parameter settings that are different on specific instances within Real Application Clusters environments.

  See Also: Chapter 8, "Real Application Clusters Storage Considerations" and Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Installation and Configuration for information on server parameter files

• Real Application Clusters provides an improved Oracle Enterprise Manager console. Oracle Enterprise Manager's Performance Manager and Capacity Planner have 23 new Oracle Enterprise Manager statistics charts that are specific to Real Application Clusters.

  See Also: Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Deployment and Performance for details on the statistics charts

• Real Application Clusters employs a diagnosability daemon. This is a background process that captures diagnostic data on instance process failures. No user control is required for this daemon.

  See Also: Chapter 2, "Real Application Clusters Architecture" for a description of the diagnosability daemon

Discovery

• Database discovery has been integrated into the Oracle Intelligent Agent. The Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA) can add, remove, or rename instances from cluster databases.

  See Also: Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Administration for information on the Oracle Intelligent Agent and the DBCA.

• Real Application Clusters makes significant revisions to Auto Discovery, including Java implementations of the Global Services Daemon (GSD) (these functions were formerly performed by OPSD) for Unix, Windows NT, and Windows 2000. Note that GSD is installed by default.

  See Also: Chapter 2, "Real Application Clusters Architecture" for information on GSD

High Availability Features

Beginning with Release 1 (9.0.1), Oracle Parallel Fail Safe (OPFS) was replaced by Oracle Real Application Clusters Guard. It also became a feature of Real Application Clusters on UNIX platforms. Oracle Real Application Clusters Guard has these advantages:

• A simplified pack structure

• Takes advantage of Real Application Clusters instance roles. This enables preservation of primary/secondary roles. The resource mastering function is done locally on the primary instance. This improving performance.

• Packs (including IP addresses) float, minimizing TCP/IP timeouts

• Improved performance for pack failover

• Improved error and message logging

• Notifications are logged and sent when instances start up, shut down, or change roles

• Globalization Technology (formerly called National Language Support or NLS)

• Uptime and downtime logging and reporting capability

• Improved user interface and commands

• Improved installation

  See Also: Chapter 11 and Chapter 12 for information on Oracle Real Application Clusters Guard

• Real Application Clusters reduces the time required to remap resources following failover.

  See Also: Chapter 10, "High Availability Concepts and Best Practices" for information on high availability and failover recovery

• Real Application Clusters has a warming the library cache feature

To improve failover performance in Primary/Secondary instance configurations, use the DBMS_LIBCACHE package to transfer information from the library cache of the primary instance to the library cache of the secondary instance.

See Also: Chapter 10, "High Availability Concepts and Best Practices" and Oracle Real Application Clusters Guard Administration and Reference Guide for more information about the warming the library cache feature Oracle9i Supplied PL/SQL Packages Reference for more information about using DBMS_LIBCACHE

• Recovery Manager (RMAN) has new features that improve the manageability of backups and archive logs, and allow persistent configuration for many commonly used RMAN options.

  See Also: Oracle9i Recovery Manager User's Guide and Reference for information on RMAN

• The Block Media Recovery (BMR) feature enables you to recover specific data blocks.

  See Also: Oracle9i Recovery Manager User's Guide and Reference for information on BMR

Shutdown Transactional Local Command

• The SHUTDOWN TRANSACTIONAL LOCAL command was introduced as an option to the existing SHUTDOWN TRANSACTIONAL command. This new command can be used to prevent new transactions from starting locally, and to perform an immediate shutdown after all local transactions have completed. With the new command, you can gracefully move all sessions from one instance to another by shutting down selected instances transactionally.

Quiesce Database Feature

• The QUIESCE RESTRICTED clause was added. This new feature enables you to perform administrative tasks in isolation from concurrent user transactions or queries.

  See Also: Chapter 10, "High Availability Concepts and Best Practices" and Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Administration for information on the Quiesce Database feature

New SQL Scripts

A number of SQL scripts were replaced in Real Application Clusters.

• The utlopslt.sql script is replaced by utlclust.sql

• The catparr.sql script is replaced by catclust.sql

• The ops.sql script is replaced by clustdb.sql

TRACE_ENABLED Parameter

The TRACE_ENABLED parameter was added in Real Application Clusters. When enabled, this dynamic parameter provides low overhead memory tracing. It is enabled by default.

See Also: Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Deployment and Performance for information on the TRACE_ENABLED parameter.

New Parameters

There are three new cluster software parameters in Real Application Clusters.

• The OPS_INTERCONNECTS parameter is replaced by CLUSTER_INTERCONNECTS. Note that with Sun Clusters configurations the interconnect High Availability feature is not available.

• The PARALLEL_SERVER parameter is replaced by CLUSTER_DATABASE.

• The PARALLEL_SERVER_INSTANCES parameter is replaced by CLUSTER_DATABASE_INSTANCES.

  Note: If you parameters from previous cluster software products, you will likely get a warning message telling you that the parameter name has been deprecated. The CLUSTER_DATABASE parameter is required. The CLUSTER_DATABASE_INSTANCES parameter, however, is optional. It can be used for optimization

  See Also: Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Deployment and Performance for additional information on how to use the new CLUSTER_INTERCONNECTS,CLUSTER_DATABASE, and CLUSTER_DATABASE_INSTANCES parameters.

Obsolete Parameters

The following parameters are obsolete in Real Application Clusters:

• GC_DEFER_TIME

• GC_RELEASABLE_LOCKS

• GC_ROLLBACK_LOCKS

• LM_LOCKS

• LM_RESS

New Views

The following new views have been added to Oracle cluster software for Real Application Clusters. These views track the current and previous master instances and the number of re-masterings of enqueue (V$HVMASTER_INFO), global cache (V$GCSHVMASTER_INFO), and global cache resources belonging to a file accessed frequently by a single instance (V$GCSPFMASTER_INFO):

• V$HVMASTER_INFO for Global Enqueue Service resources

• V$GCSHVMASTER_INFO for Global Cache Service resources except those belonging to files mapped to a particular master.

• V$GCSPFMASTER_INFO for Global Cache Service resources belonging to files mapped to a particular master.

Replacement Views

The following views have been replaced in Real Application Clusters:

V/GV$DLM_MISC is replaced by V/GV$GES_STATISTICS

V/GV$DLM_LATCH is replaced by V/GV$GES_LATCH

V/GV$DLM_CONVERT_LOCAL is replaced by V/GV$GES_CONVERT_LOCAL

V/GV$DLM_CONVERT_REMOTE is replaced by V/GV$GES_CONVERT_REMOTE

V/GV$DLM_ALL_LOCKS is replaced by V/GV$GES_ENQUEUE

V/GV$DLM_LOCKS is replaced by V/GV$GES_BLOCKING_ENQUEUE

V/GV$DLM_RESS is replaced by V/GV$GES_RESOURCE

V/GV$DLM_TRAFFIC_CONTROLLER is replaced by V/GV$GES_TRAFFIC_CONTROLLER

V/GV$LOCK_ELEMENT is replaced by V/GV$GC_ELEMENT

V/GV$BSP is replaced by V/GV$CR_BLOCK_SERVER

V/GV$LOCKS_WITH_COLLISIONS is replaced by V/GV$GC_ELEMENTS_WITH_COLLISIONS

V/GV$FILE_PING is replaced by V/GV$FILE_CACHE_TRANSFER

V/GV$TEMP_PING is replaced by V/GV$TEMP_CACHE_TRANSFER

V/GV$CLASS_PING is now replaced by V/GV$CLASS_CACHE_TRANSFER

V/GV$PING is replaced by V/GV$CACHE_TRANSFER

Previous Cluster Software Product Features

The following sections describe the changes to previous Oracle cluster software products.

Oracle8i Release 3 (8.1.7) New Features

Beginning with release 8.1.7, Oracle Parallel Server had the following changes:

• Raw Partition Tablespace Size Requirements

Some of the raw partition tablespace size requirements changed for Oracle Parallel Server release 8.1.7 as shown in the following table. These tablespaces require slightly greater capacities than the values that were published in release 8.1.6 documentation.

Create a Raw Device for	With File Size
SYSTEM	275 MB
TEMP	78 MB for Online Transaction Processing environments 520 MB for Decision Support Systems
DRSYS	96 MB

• Connecting to Secondary Instances

The process of configuring Oracle Parallel Server to connect to secondary instances was simplified for release 8.1.7. Use the INSTANCE_ROLE parameter in the Connect Data portion of the connect descriptor to configure explicit secondary instance connections.

• Recovery Manager Procedures for Oracle Parallel Server

The procedures for connecting Recovery Manager (RMAN) to a target database in an Oracle Parallel Server cluster changed for release 8.1.7. For more information refer to Oracle9i Recovery Manager Reference.

• OPS_INTERCONNECTS Parameter for Solaris

OPS_INTERCONNECTS provides information about additional cluster interconnects for use in Oracle Parallel Server environments. Oracle uses the information from this parameter to distribute traffic among the various interfaces. You would normally use OPS_INTERCONNECTS when a single interconnect is insufficient to meet the bandwidth requirements of large Oracle Parallel Server databases.

OPS_INTERCONNECTS is an optional parameter. If you do not set it, then the current semantics that determine the appropriate interconnect for Oracle Parallel Server internode communication are preserved.

The syntax of the parameter is:

OPS_INTERCONNECTS = if1:if2:...:ifn

Where ifn is an IP address in standard dotted-decimal format, for example, 144.25.16.214. Subsequent platform implementations may specify interconnects with different syntaxes.

Note that when you set OPS_INTERCONNECTS in Sun Cluster configurations, the interconnect High Availability features are not available. In other words, an interconnect failure that is normally unnoticeable would instead cause an Oracle cluster failure.

Oracle8i Release 2 (8.1.6) New Features

Beginning with release 8.1.6, Oracle Parallel Server had the following changes:

• Primary/Secondary Feature

With the Primary/Secondary Configuration feature you can implement a basic high availability configuration using the Primary/Secondary Instance feature. This feature serves two-node Oracle Parallel Server environments. The primary instance on one node accepts user connections while the secondary instance on the other node only accepts connections when the primary node fails.

• Additional Statistics

The following statistics were added:

• global cache cr block send time - total time to send the block.

• global cache cr block log flushes - number of log flushes.

• global cache cr block log flush time - total time for log flushes.

• global cache prepare failures - the number of prepares that failed.

• Obsolete Statistics

The following statistics became obsolete:

• global cache consistent read from disk

• global cache fairness down converts

• Changes in Default Parameter Settings

The default setting for GC_ROLLBACK_LOCKS is "0-128=32!8REACH" This protects rollback segments 0 through 129 with locks.

• LM_LOCKS and LM_RESS Automatically Set by Oracle

Oracle automatically sets values for LM_LOCKS and LM_RESS based on settings in your initialization parameter files.

• Obsolete Parameter

The LM_PROCS parameter became obsolete in release 8.1.6.

See Also: Earlier editions of Oracle cluster software documentation for additional version history (Release 8.0.3 and earlier).