Diagnosability

General

Oracle Trace File Analyzer Support for Using an External SMTP Server for Notifications

In Oracle Database 19c, you can use an external Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server to receive Oracle Trace File Analyzer notifications.

In earlier releases of Oracle Trace File Analyzer, to deliver email notifications of alerts, you had to have monitored hosts configured with local sendmail or SMTP support. With external SMTP server notification support, Oracle Trace File Analyzer deployments can leverage complete notification functionality, helping to minimize downtime, and maximizing availability.

Oracle Cluster Health Advisor Integration into Oracle Trace File Analyzer

Oracle Trace File Analyzer now integrates with Oracle Cluster Health Advisor, and consumes the problem events that Oracle Cluster Health Advisor detects.

When Oracle Cluster Health Advisor detects a problem event, Oracle Trace File Analyzer automatically triggers the relevant diagnostic collection and sends an email notification. You can configure email notification through the standard Oracle Trace File Analyzer notification process.

Oracle Cluster Health Advisor provides early warnings for Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) database and cluster node related performance issues. Oracle Trace File Analyzer sends email notifications with root cause analysis and corrective recommendations, which enables you to prevent application performance and availability issues proactively.

Oracle Trace File Analyzer REST API Support

Oracle Trace File Analyzer now includes REpresentational State Transfer (REST) support, which enables invocation and query over HTTPS.

Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) is included within the installation to facilitate REST support. REST supports printing details, starting a diagnostic collection, and downloading collections.

The REST interface enables you to configure remote management, and automate data center operations. Oracle Trace File Analyzer when operating through REST APIs supports easy integration into your operations framework and thus improves diagnostic efficiency and reduces recovery time.

Oracle Trace File Analyzer Search Extended to Support Metadata Searches

Starting in this release, metadata stored in the Oracle Trace File Analyzer index is searchable using tfactl.

Oracle Trace File Analyzer searches log and trace file metadata using JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) formatted name-value pairs representing data types and events.

The ability to search log and trace file metadata is essential to minimize downtime and maximize availability and to efficiently diagnose and triage issues, especially the recurring issues across instances and nodes. In earlier releases of Oracle Trace File Analyzer, the search function was limited to log and trace file strings.

Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk REST Support

Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk now include REpresentational State Transfer (REST) support, which enables invocation and query over HTTPS.

Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) is included within the installation to facilitate REST support. The REST interface enables you to configure remote management, and automate data center operations. Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk, when operating through REST APIs, support easy integration into your operations framework and thus improve diagnostic efficiency and reduce recovery time.

Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk Support for Encrypting Collection Files

Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk diagnostic collection files may contain sensitive data. Starting in this release, you can encrypt and decrypt diagnostic collection ZIP files and protect them with a password.

Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk collections and their reports can include sensitive data. When you email or transfer these reports to repositories, it is critical that only the intended recipients can view the sensitive data. To prevent leaks, you can restrict access to sensitive data by encrypting the diagnostic collections and protecting them with a password. This feature is available only on Linux and Solaris platforms.

Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk Support for Remote Node Connections Without Requiring Passwordless SSH

Starting in this release, you can configure Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk to autogenerate the private key files for the remote nodes. Alternatively, you can provide a private key.

You can perform operations remotely to centrally manage many database servers or clusters. In many cases, corporate policies prevent passwordless Secure Shell (SSH) configuration. Using the private key authentication, you can run Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk remotely in these deployments and improve operational efficiency. In earlier releases of Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk, remotely running Oracle ORAchk or Oracle EXAchk required configuration of passwordless SSH between the remote nodes.

Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk Now Show Only the Most Critical Checks by Default

Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk generate reports and show only the most critical checks by default.

The critical checks are those that have the most severe potential effect. Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk still run all other checks and include them in the report. You can view the checks by selecting the appropriate option under the Show checks with the following status control.

In earlier releases of Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk, reports contained over one hundred checks and thus made the analysis more time-consuming. With the most critical checks, you can analyze the reports efficiently, and quickly resolve critical problems and prevent downtime or performance issues.

Oracle Trace File Analyzer Supports New Service Request Data Collections

This release adds additional database Service Request Data Collections (SRDCs) that cover more ORA errors and problems in the infrastructure such as Oracle Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM), Oracle Automatic Storage Management Cluster File System (Oracle ACFS), listeners, auditing, and Recovery Manager (RMAN).

When operations or Oracle Database issues occur that require Oracle Support Services, it is important that you collect and send all of the data and logs necessary to diagnose and resolve the issue in one compact complete archive. SRDCs simplify the collection of required logs and data for specific issues.