• Direct NFS Dispatcher Support

  Starting with Oracle Grid Infrastructure 12c release 2 (12.2), Oracle Direct NFS Client supports adding a dispatcher or I/O slave infrastructure. For very large database deployments running Oracle Direct NFS Client, this feature facilitates scaling of sockets and TCP connections to multi-path and clustered NFS storage.

  See Configuring Direct NFS Client for Oracle RAC Data Files

• Kerberos Authentication for Direct NFS

  Oracle Database now supports Kerberos implementation with Direct NFS communication. This feature solves the problem of authentication, message integrity, and optional encryption over unsecured networks for data exchange between Oracle Database and NFS servers using Direct NFS protocols.

  See Configuring Direct NFS Client for Oracle RAC Data Files.

• Oracle Automatic Storage Management Cluster File System (Oracle ACFS) and Oracle ASM Dynamic Volume Manager (Oracle ADVM) Improvements

  The following new features have been added to Oracle ACFS and Oracle ADVM: Snapshot Enhancements, Snapshot-Based Replication, Oracle ACFS Compression, Oracle ACFS Defragger, Support for 4K Sectors, Automatic Resize, Metadata Acceleration, NAS Maximum Availability eXtensions, Plugins for File Content, Sparse Files, Scrubbing Functionality, Loopback Functionality, and Diagnostic Commands.

• Oracle Flex ASM Clusters

  In Oracle Clusterware 12c release 2 (12.2), all clusters are configured as Oracle Flex ASM Clusters, meaning that a cluster is configured with one or more Hub Nodes and can support a large number of Leaf Nodes. Clusters currently configured under older versions of Oracle Clusterware are converted in place as part of the upgrade process, including the activation of Oracle Flex ASM (which is a requirement for Oracle Flex ASM Clusters).

  See Oracle Clusterware Administration and Deployment Guide.

• Parallel NFS Support in Oracle Direct NFS Client

  Starting with Oracle Grid Infrastructure 12c release 2 (12.2), Oracle Direct NFS Client supports parallel NFS. Parallel NFS is an NFS v4.1 option that allows direct client access to file servers, enabling scalable distributed storage.

  See Configuring Direct NFS Client for Oracle RAC Data Files

• Postinstallation Configuration of Oracle Software using the -executeConfigTools option

  Starting with Oracle Database 12c release 2 (12.2), you can perform postinstallation configuration of Oracle products by running 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.

• SCAN Listener Supports HTTP Protocol

  Starting with Oracle Database 12c release 2 (12.2), SCAN listener enables connections for the recovery server coming over HTTP to be redirected to different machines based on the load on the recovery server machines.

  See Oracle Clusterware Administration and Deployment Guide.

• Separation of Duty for Administering Oracle Real Application Clusters

  Starting with Oracle Database 12c release 2 (12.2), Oracle Database provides support for separation of duty best practices when administering Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) by introducing the SYSRAC administrative privilege for the clusterware agent. This feature removes the need to use the powerful SYSDBA administrative privilege for Oracle RAC.

  SYSRAC, like SYSDG, SYSBACKUP and SYSKM, helps enforce separation of duties and reduce reliance on the use of SYSDBA on production systems. This administrative privilege is the default mode for connecting to the database by the clusterware agent on behalf of the Oracle RAC utilities such as srvctl.

• Shared Grid Naming Service (GNS) High Availability

  Shared GNS High Availability provides high availability of lookup and other services to the clients by running multiple instances of GNS with primary and secondary roles.

• Support for IPv6 Based IP Addresses for the Oracle Cluster Interconnect

  Starting with Oracle Grid Infrastructure 12c release 2 (12.2), you can use either IPv4 or IPv6 based IP addresses to configure cluster nodes on the private network. You can use more than one private network for the cluster.

• Support for Oracle Extended Clusters

  Starting with Oracle Grid Infrastructure 12c release 2 (12.2), Oracle Grid Infrastructure installer supports the option of configuring cluster nodes in different locations as an Oracle Extended Cluster. An Oracle Extended Cluster consists of HUB nodes that are located in multiple locations called sites.

• Support for UDP on Windows Operating System

  Starting with Oracle Database 12c release 2 (12.2), the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is supported on Windows. The UDP protocol allows for larger clusters.

• Support for Windows Group Managed Service Accounts

  Starting with Oracle Database 12c release 2 (12.2), support of Group Managed Services Account (gMSA) for installing Oracle Grid Infrastructure and Oracle RAC provides additional options to create and manage database services without passwords. The gMSA is a domain level account that can be used by multiple servers in a domain to run the services using this account.

• Zip Image based Grid Infrastructure Installation

  Starting with Oracle Grid Infrastructure 12c release 2 (12.2), the installation media is replaced with a zip file for the Oracle Grid Infrastructure installer. Run the installation wizard after extracting the zip file into the target home path.

  See Installing Oracle Grid Infrastructure for a New Cluster

The following feature is 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 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. The Oracle Clusterware files are now 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 disks devices, then you must create Oracle ASM disks on the shared 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.

• 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).

• Cluster and Oracle RAC Diagnosability Tools Enhancements

  Oracle Clusterware uses Oracle Database fault diagnosability infrastructure to manage diagnostic data and its alert log. As a result, most diagnostic data resides in the Automatic Diagnostic Repository (ADR), a collection of directories and files located under a base directory that you specify during installation.

  Note:

  The Oracle Trace File Analyzer (TFA) Collector is not supported on Windows operating systems.

• 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.

• Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 are supported with this release

• Oracle ASM File Access Control Enhancements on Windows

  You can now use access control to separate roles in Windows environments. With Oracle Database services running with the privileges of an Oracle home user rather than Local System, the Oracle ASM access control feature is enabled to support role separation on Windows. In earlier releases, this feature was disabled on Windows because all Oracle services run as Local System.

  You can change the identity of an Oracle ASM user from one operating system user to another operating system user without having to drop and re-create the user, which requires dropping all the files a user owns, which improves the manageability of Oracle ASM users and the files they own.

  You can modify Windows file access controls while files are open using ASMCMD file access control commands, such as chgrp,chmod, and chown.

  See Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide and Oracle Database Platform Guide for Microsoft Windows.

• Cluster Health Monitor Enhancements

  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.

  See Oracle Clusterware Administration and Deployment Guide.

• Support for Storing the Oracle Cluster Registry Backup in an Oracle ASM Disk Group

  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.

• 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.

  See Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide

• Oracle Home User Support for Oracle Database and Oracle Grid Infrastructure

  Starting with Oracle Database 12c release 1 (12.1), Oracle Database supports the use of an Oracle Home User, which can be specified at installation time. The Oracle Home User can be a Built-in Account or a Windows Domain User Account. If you specify a Windows User Account, then the user should be a standard (non-Administrator) account to ensure that the Oracle Home User has a limited set of privileges. Using an Oracle Home User ensures that Oracle Database services have only those privileges required to run Oracle products.

  See Oracle Database Platform Guide for Microsoft Windows

• Oracle RAC Hang Detection and Node Eviction Protection

  Slowdowns in the cluster, mainly affecting the Oracle Database instances, are detected and classified as a hung process or instance and removed accordingly to prevent unnecessary node evictions as a consequence. While the occasional eviction of a node in an Oracle RAC cluster is mostly transparent to the application, this feature minimizes its occurrence. Also, the Global Conflict Resolution (GCR) process has been enhanced to provide better detection and avoidance of issues causing node evictions.

• 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.

• Shared Grid Naming Service (GNS) Across Multiple Clusters

  In earlier 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.

• 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 system privilege. These new system privileges are: SYSBACKUP for backup and recovery, SYSDG for Oracle Data Guard, and SYSKM for encryption key management.

  See "Managing Administrative Privileges" in Oracle Database Security Guide and "Extended Oracle Database Administration Groups for Job Role Separation"

• Updates to Oracle ASM File Access Control Commands and Open Files Support

  This features enables the modification of Windows file access controls while files are open. This features supports updates to ASMCMD file access control commands, such as chgrp, chmod, and chown.

  See Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide.

The following features are deprecated in this release, and may be desupported in a future release:

• Standalone Deinstallation Tool

  The deinstallation tool is now integrated with the installation media.

• The -cleanupOBase option of the deinstallation tool

  The -cleanupOBase option is deprecated in this release. There is no replacement for this option.

The following features are no longer supported by Oracle:

• Direct use of raw devices with Oracle Clusterware and Oracle Database

• Oracle Cluster File System (OCFS) for Windows

• Oracle Objects for OLE

• Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control

For a complete list of desupported features, see:

Oracle Database Upgrade Guide

• Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 R2 are not supported with this release

• Document Structure Changes

  This book is redesigned to provide an installation checklist to assist with preparing for installation, and chapters that subdivide preinstallation tasks into category topics.