About Oracle Cluster Domain and Oracle Domain Services Cluster

An Oracle Cluster Domain is a choice of deployment architecture for new clusters, introduced in Oracle Clusterware 12c Release 2.

Starting with Oracle Grid Infrastructure 21c, Domain Services Clusters (DSC), which is part of the Oracle Cluster Domain architecture, are deprecated.

Deprecating certain clustering features with limited adoption enables Oracle to focus on improving core scaling, availability, and manageability across all features and functionality. Oracle Cluster Domains consist of a Domain Services Cluster (DSC) and Member Clusters. Member Clusters were deprecated in Oracle Grid Infrastructure 19c. The DSC continues to be available to provide services to production clusters. However, with most of those services no longer requiring the DSC for hosting, installation of DSCs are deprecated, and can be desupported in a future release. Oracle recommends that you use any cluster or system of your choice for services previously hosted on the DSC, if applicable. Oracle will continue to support the DSC for hosting shared services, until each service can be used on alternative systems.

Oracle Cluster Domain enables you to standardize, centralize, and optimize your Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) deployment for the private database cloud. Multiple cluster configurations are grouped under an Oracle Cluster Domain for management purposes and make use of shared services available within that Oracle Cluster Domain.

The Oracle Domain Services Cluster provides centralized services to other clusters within the Oracle Cluster Domain. These services include:

• A centralized Grid Infrastructure Management Repository (housing the data repository for each of the clusters within the Oracle Cluster Domain)

• Trace File Analyzer (TFA) services, for targeted diagnostic data collection for Oracle Clusterware and Oracle Database

• Consolidated Oracle ASM storage management service, including the use of Oracle ACFS.

• An optional Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning Service to install clusters, and provision, patch, and upgrade Oracle Grid Infrastructure and Oracle Database homes. When you configure the Oracle Domain Services Cluster, you can also choose to configure the Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning Server.