Following are the new features for Oracle Clusterware 12c Release 2 (12.2) and Oracle Automatic Storage Management 12c Release 2 (12.2):

• Automatic Configuration of Oracle ASM Filter Driver

  Oracle ASMFD simplifies the configuration and management of disk devices by eliminating the need to rebind disk devices used with Oracle ASM each time the system is restarted. The configuration for Oracle ASM Filter Driver (Oracle ASMFD) can now be enabled with a check box to be an automated process during Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation.

  Note:

  Oracle ASMFD is supported on Linux x86–64 and Oracle Solaris operating systems.

  See Also:

  About Oracle ASM with Oracle ASM Filter Driver

• Oracle IOServer

  Oracle IOServer (IOS) provides connectivity for Oracle Database instances on nodes of member clusters that do not have connectivity to Oracle ASM managed disks. Oracle IOServer provides network-based file access to Oracle ASM disk groups.

  See Also:

  About Oracle Flex ASM Clusters Networks

• Oracle ASM Flex Disk Groups and File Groups

  Oracle ASM provides database-oriented storage management with flex disk groups. Flex disk groups support Oracle ASM file groups and quota groups.

  See Also:

  Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide

• Oracle ACFS Snapshot-Based Replication

  The new Oracle ACFS snapshot-based replication feature uses ACFS snapshot technology to transfer the differences between successive snapshots to the standby file system using standard ssh transport protocol. ACFS Snapshot-based replication is more efficient with higher performance,lower overhead, and ease of management.

  See Also:

  Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide

• Oracle ACFS Compression

  Oracle ACFS provides file system compression functionality reducing storage requirement, resulting in lowering cost. Oracle ACFS compression is managed using the new acfsutil compress commands and updates to the acfsutil info command.

  See Also:

  Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide

• Oracle ACFS Defragger

  Databases that share storage with snapshots or with the base of the file system can become fragmented under active online transaction processing (OLTP) workloads. This fragmentation can cause the location of the data in the volume to be discontiguous for sequential scans. Oracle ACFS automatically defragments these files in the background.

  See Also:

  Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide

• Oracle ACFS Support for 4K Sectors

  Oracle ACFS supports I/O requests in multiples of 4K logical sector sizes as well as continued support for 512-byte logical sector size I/O requests. The i 4096 option is provided with the acfsformat command on Windows and the mkfs command in Linux and Oracle Solaris environments.

  See Also:

  Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide

• Oracle ACFS Automatic Resize

  Oracle ACFS provides an automatic resize option with the acfsutil size command. This command enables you to specify an increment by which an Oracle ACFS file system grows automatically if the amount of available free space in the file system falls below a specified amount. There is also an option to specify the maxiOracle ACFS plugins support file content data collection. Both polling and interval based capture are supported with the file content collection.mum size allowed when using the automatic resize option. The output of the acfsutil info fs command displays the automatic resize increment and maximum amounts.

  See Also:

  Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide

• Oracle ACFS Metadata Acceleration

  Oracle ACFS supports accelerator metadata storage. This support enables many critical Oracle ACFS metadata structures, including extent metadata, storage bitmaps, volume logs, and some snapshot metadata to be placed on accelerator storage.

  See Also:

  Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide

• Oracle ACFS Plugins for File Content Data Collection

  Oracle ACFS plugins support file content data collection. Both polling and interval based capture are supported with the file content collection.

  See Also:

  Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide

• Oracle ACFS Sparse Files

  Oracle ACFS provides support for sparse files. Oracle ACFS sparse files greatly benefit NFS client write operations which are commonly received out of order by the NFS server and the associated Oracle ACFS file system.

  See Also:

  Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide

• Oracle ACFS Scrubbing Functionality

  Oracle ACFS provides scrubbing functionality with the acfsutil scrub command to check for and report any inconsistencies in the metadata or file data.

  See Also:

  Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide

• High Availability Common Internet File System (HACIFS)

  Oracle ACFS Common Internet File System (CIFS) features are enhanced to provide high availability for the exported file systems, with the Oracle ACFS NAS Maximum Availability eXtensions (NAS MAX) technology. High Availability Common Internet File System (HACIFS) and High Availability Network File System (HANFS) now both provide comprehensive Network Attach Storage solutions for Oracle ACFS customers.

  See Also:

  Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide

The following feature is 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 of configToolAllCommands script

  The configToolAllCommands script runs in the response file mode to configure Oracle products after installation and uses a separate password response file. Starting with Oracle Database 12c Release 2 (12.2), the configToolAllCommands script is deprecated and is subject to desupport in a future release.

  To perform postinstallation configuration of Oracle products, you can now run the Oracle Database or Oracle Grid Infrastructure installer with the -executeConfigTools option. You can use the same response file created during installation to complete postinstallation configuration.

The following feature is desupported in this release. See Oracle Database Upgrade Guide for a complete list of features desupported in this release.

• Desupport of Direct File System Placement for Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR) and Voting Files

  Starting with Oracle Grid Infrastructure 12c Release 2 (12.2), the placement of Oracle Clusterware files: the Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR), and the Voting Files, directly on a shared file system is desupported in favor of having Oracle Clusterware files managed by Oracle Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM). You cannot place Oracle Clusterware files directly on a shared file system. If you need to use a supported shared file system, either a Network File System, or a shared cluster file system instead of native disk devices, then you must create Oracle ASM disks on supported network file systems that you plan to use for hosting Oracle Clusterware files before installing Oracle Grid Infrastructure. You can then use the Oracle ASM disks in an Oracle ASM disk group to manage Oracle Clusterware files.

  If your Oracle Database files are stored on a shared file system, then you can continue to use shared file system storage for database files, instead of moving them to Oracle ASM storage.

• Automated Root Privilege Delegation to Scripts During Installation

  You can continue to run scripts as root manually during installation, or you can enable OUI to run root scripts as needed during installation, using one of three methods: 1) providing the root password to the installer; 2) configuring Sudo access to the Oracle installation owner; 3) configuring PowerBroker access to the Oracle Installation owner.

• 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 clusters provide gold images to Rapid Home Provisioning Clients.

  See Also:

  Oracle Clusterware Administration and Deployment 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 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).

• 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.

• Automated Root Privilege Delegation to Scripts During Installation

  You can continue to run scripts as root manually during installation, or you can enable OUI to run root scripts as needed during installation, using one of three methods: 1) providing the root password to the installer; 2) configuring Sudo access to the Oracle installation owner; 3) configuring PowerBroker access to the Oracle Installation owner.

• 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.

  See Oracle Database Upgrade Guide.

• 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.

  See Oracle Database Administrator's Guide.

• 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 an Oracle 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. 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 Oracle Clusterware Administration and Deployment Guide.

• 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.

  See Oracle Grid Infrastructure Installation Guide.

• Multiprocess Multithreaded Oracle Database

  Starting with Oracle Database 12c, Oracle Database may use operating system threads to allow resource sharing and reduce resource consumption.

  See Oracle Database Concepts.

• 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.

  See Oracle Database 2 Day DBA.

• 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.

• 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.

  See Oracle Database Vault Administrator's Guide.

• 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.

  See Oracle Database Security Guide.

• 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.

  See Oracle Database Security Guide.

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 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.