The Oracle PCA controller software allows you to add custom networks at the appliance level. This means that the Fabric Interconnects and other hardware components are reconfigured to enable the additional connectivity. These networks are then configured automatically in your Oracle VM environment, where they can be used for isolating and optimizing network traffic beyond the capabilities of the default network configuration.

All custom networks, both internal and public, are VLAN-enabled. For networks with external connectivity the Fabric Interconnect I/O ports must be specified so that these are reconfigured to route the external traffic. These ports must be cabled to create the physical uplink to the next-level switches in the data center.

Creating custom networks requires use of the CLI.

The Oracle PCA controller software contains a monitoring service, which is started and stopped with the ovca service on the active management node. It allows an administrator to verify the current health status at any time.

An inventory database is populated with information about the various components installed in the rack, including the IP addresses to be used for monitoring. With this information, the ping manager pings all known components every 3 minutes and updates the inventory database. When errors occur they are logged in the monitor database.

As the Oracle PCA software matures, the original management scripts are gradually consolidated in the Oracle PCA Command Line Interface. In Release 2.1.1 the controller software update and password management functionality has been integrated entirely into the CLI.

A finer-grained and more robust password management functionality has been implemented. It is exposed in a uniform way through both the Oracle PCA Dashboard browser interface and the CLI.

As part of the Oracle PCA software update, the firmware of the ZFS Storage Appliance is upgraded automatically. The firmware upgrades enable a number of new functions that are required by the latest appliance management software. At the same time the storage head cluster is reconfigured so that both controllers have an IP address in the appliance management network. This makes the storage hardware easier to service and maintain.

In case you need to upgrade the firmware of other appliance components, you must manually install the version provided as part of the Oracle PCA *.iso image.

The reconfiguration of the ZFS storage appliance networking begins when the standby management node is upgraded. The process adds approximately 90 minutes to the standard software update. During the firmware upgrade of the ZFS storage appliance some virtual machines may become read-only temporarily as a consequence of storage head failovers. Once the storage head cluster configuration has been updated the software update of the second management node will take much less time.

The installation of additional physical RAM is now supported. Different memory kits are available for the different generations of server hardware that may be installed in an Oracle PCA environment. The Oracle Server X5-2 has 16 free DIMM slots that may be filled with 8 or 16 additional RAM modules for a maximum total of 768GB per server.

The Oracle PCA Release 2.1.1 software detects the new RAM modules during reboot and makes the appropriate configuration changes automatically.

Oracle VM Manager and Oracle VM Server have been upgraded to Release 3.2.10, to include the latest security and errata bug fixes available.

The following table lists bugs that have been fixed in Oracle PCA Release 2.1.1.