1. Release Notes for Release 2.4.3.2
  2. Feature Overview

2 Feature Overview

This chapter provides an overview of the key features of Oracle Private Cloud Appliance.

Changes and Improvements in Release 2.4.3.2

This section describes functional changes, improvements, and bug fixes compared to the previous release.

Upgrading to Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Release 2.4.3.2

For specific instructions for upgrading to Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Release 2.4.3.2, see the My Oracle Support document [PCA 2.4.3.2] Upgrade Guide (Doc ID 2947058.1).

You can upgrade from either Private Cloud Appliance Release 2.4.3 or Private Cloud Appliance Release 2.4.3.1.

To review the general upgrade procedure and command output see the Updating Oracle Private Cloud Appliance chapter in the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Administrator's Guide for Release 2.4.3.

ULN Patching Provides Updates Between Full Releases

In addition to upgrading a Private Cloud Appliance to a new software release using the Upgrader Tool, you can patch a Private Cloud Appliance using dedicated channels on the Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN). Patching provides security updates, kernel changes, and bug fixes between larger ISO releases, for both management and compute nodes. See Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Patching Guide for Release 2.4.3.x and Release 2.4.4.x.

Enable Phone Home Command Line Interface

By default, Phone Home is disabled in Private Cloud Appliance. With Release 2.4.3.2, you can use the Service CLI to enable Phone Home in the Fault Monitoring service.

Use the set system-property command to set the Phone Home property. Execute the following command on both the active and passive management nodes: 

[root@ovcamn05r1 ~]# pca-admin
Welcome to PCA! Release: 2.4.3.2
PCA> set system-property phonehome enable
Status: Success

This command does not require you to restart the ovca service. The next fault monitoring run will automatically recognize the new phone home service state value.

Bugs Fixed in Release 2.4.3.2

The following table lists bugs that have been fixed in Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Release 2.4.3.2.

Bug ID Description

34711736

[X5-2] request to block pca-admin command from non root user

34467608

[X5-2] Update pca-diag to run and collect pca-faultmonitor

34467590

[X5-2] add base rack name to the pca-diag output

34329938

[X5-2] pca_upgrader precheck should be a super set of checks that would fail if the healthcheck fails

34329831

[X5-2] PCA: The pca_healthchecker Gets java.lang.IllegalArgumentException If Compute Node IPMI Not Enabled

34329781

[X5-2] PCA Healthcheck - Root disk need not always be on /dev/sda - Remove assumption

34318780

[X5-2] During boot of CN, RAID Card failure caused provisioning to overwrite FC LUN Repo

34288067

[PCA X5-2] pca-backup failing to backup local OVCA files post 2.4.3.1 upgrade

34263354

PCA Daily backup needs include XMS database

33858644

[X5-2] Healthcheck should not fail if a CN in a custom tenant group is presented to NFS storage repository

32049362

[X5-2] Sort the outputs in pca-admin show network

Changes and Improvements in Release 2.4.3.1

This section describes functional changes, improvements and bug fixes compared to the previous release.

Infiniband-based Rack Update Only

The 2.4.3.1 software update is designed for the Infiniband-based Oracle Private Cloud Appliance racks. Your Infiniband-based rack must be at version 2.4.3 before you can upgrade to version 2.4.3.1. For upgrade information, see Updating Oracle Private Cloud Appliance.

Enhanced Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Fault Monitoring

The new fault monitoring architecture brings together the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance health check, the Oracle VM health check, and the PCA pre-upgrade checks under one service. In addition, you can configure health checking to integrate with ZFS Phone Home service to send reports on a weekly basis to Oracle Service for monitoring, using Oracle Auto Service Request (ASR) infrastructure. For documentation about enhanced fault monitoring, see Health Monitoring.

Bugs Fixed in Release 2.4.3.1

The following table lists notable bugs that have been fixed in Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Release 2.4.3.1.

Table 2-1 List of Fixed Bugs

Bug ID Description

34070793

"PCA 2.4.3.1 upgrade VM migrated to upgraded CNs lose physical disk access"

33503785

"[PCA] pca_healthcheck reports [Network Interface on Compute Node ()] Failed on unexpected eth port/bondPort"

33744446

"[PCA X4-2] Inconsistency found in tenant db during upgrade to 2.4.3"

32160612

"PCA 2.4.3 growing number of defunct processes on active MN"

33369304

"PCA Compute Node: size of /var/log/messages* are increasing"

33508716

"[PCA] pca-diag hangs while collecting SCSI and partition data"

32680908

"Backport: PCA upgrade fails to detect running OVMM when JAVA_HOME is declared pointing to incorrect location"

33369347

"Dashboard not updating /etc/ovca-resolv.conf if a DNS field is left blank."

33765249

"PCA Hung requiring a stop and start of all compute nodes"

33368674

"Compute node crashes when generating an sosreport"

32664405

"PCA 2.4.3 - Remove obsolete checks from PCA Healthcheck tool"

33369189

"pca-admin show a network which doesn't exist in CN node"

Changes and Improvements in Release 2.4.3

This section describes functional changes, improvements and bug fixes compared to the previous release.

Kubernetes as a Service - DEPRECATED FEATURE

The Oracle Private Cloud Appliance now supports Kubernetes as a Service. Kubernetes as a Service automates the provisioning of Oracle VM infrastructure and Kubernetes components to provide an integrated solution for Oracle Private Cloud Appliance.

Enhanced Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Fault Monitoring

The new fault monitoring architecture brings together the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance health check, the Oracle VM health check, and the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance pre-upgrade checks under one service. In addition, you can configure health checking to integrate with ZFS Phone Home service to send reports on a weekly basis to Oracle Service for monitoring, using Oracle Auto Service Request (ASR) infrastructure.

Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Cloud Backup

The Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Cloud Backup service automates the backup of critical components and configuration data to your customer tenancy in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). This feature is designed to recover an Oracle Private Cloud Appliance to a running state after a catastrophic event.

Support for Oracle VM Exporter Appliance on Oracle Private Cloud Appliance

An Oracle VM Exporter Appliance is a special type of virtual machine used to export another virtual machine from the Oracle VM environment to a tenancy account in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Storage Network Provides Internal Access to ZFS Storage Appliance

Oracle Private Cloud Appliance administrators can now create custom networks that enable users to access iSCSI and NFS shares on the internal ZFS Storage Appliance from within their individual Oracle VM guests hosted on the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance. Ensure you have 60 TB of free space on the ZFS Storage Appliance to use this feature.

Bugs Fixed in Release 2.4.3

The following table lists bugs that have been fixed in Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Release 2.4.3.

Table 2-2 List of Fixed Bugs

Bug ID Description

31683379

"PCA health check failed "Multicast Route Check" from one spine switch "

31133075

"check_storage_space always fails after a given failure scenario"

30594475

"PCA 2.4.2 pca_upgrader fails ERROR (precheck:148) [OVMM Default Network Check (Checking default OVMM networks exist on the management nodes)] Failed "

Additional checks have been added to verify the system network configuration.

31176592

"MySql lock issues on the active management node"

31157042

"Timezone: Incorrect java version in /usr/bin/java for PCA 2.4.3 "

31607588

"Pick up the July CPU for JRE 8 on PCA MN"

The latest component firmware is incorporated.

30982691

"UI:Dashboard javascript library requires update"

The latest UI update is incorporated.

31629904

"Tracking - Pick up OVM Manager build 3.4.6.2684 "

The latest component firmware is incorporated.

31350870

"Deprecated SSH settings "

Changes and Improvements in Release 2.4.2

This section describes functional changes, improvements and bug fixes compared to the previous release.

Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Release 2.4.2 Software Supports Both Platform Architectures

Controller Software Release 2.4.2 supports both Ethernet-based and InfiniBand-based Oracle Private Cloud Appliances, which includes these enhancements:

  • The Command Line Interface supports both architectures and displays only the applicable commands based on the system in question.

  • The Upgrader has been improved to include more automated checks and works on both architectures by determining the rack type.

  • A version of the Oracle Server X8-2 expansion node is available for each architecture.

Optional Fibre Channel Cards Available

Oracle Server X8-2 compute nodes can be ordered with optional physical FC cards with dual 32Gbit HBAs. This option is available for both architectures. Note that Fibre Channel HBAs can be installed in existing compute nodes. One or two HBAs are supported per Oracle Server X8-2 compute node. If adding Fibre Channel HBAs to Oracle Server X7-2 or older compute nodes, do not use Fibre Channel connections from the Infiniband hardware to those compute nodes.

Oracle JET User Interface

The Oracle JavaScript Extension Toolkit (JET) user interface leverages popular open-source technologies, and features a rich set of modern UI components with built-in accessibility and mobile support.

Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Health Check Utility

The Health Check utility is built on the framework of the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Upgrader, and is included in the Upgrader package. It detects the appliance network architecture and runs the sets of health checks defined for the system in question.

Bugs Fixed in Release 2.4.2

The following table lists bugs that have been fixed in Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Release 2.4.2.

Table 2-3 List of Fixed Bugs

Bug ID Description

26679231

"Error running chgnetid "ImportError: cannot import name disable_warnings""

An issue preventing the changing of network IDs has been fixed.

29681802

"Pickup AK8.8.6 to prevent discovery issue with SI plugin"

An issue was fixed that prevented the discovery of Oracle Private Cloud Appliance from Oracle Enterprise Manager, which results in the failures on both the internal and externally attached ZFS Storage Appliances.

26784732

"PCA 2.3.1 upgrade fails due to bond0 not configured"

Additional checks have been added to verify the system configuration on management nodes and compute nodes before upgrade.

29437665

"The PCA 2.3.4 upgrade process breaks ASR if it is installed."

A fix is provided that maintains the ASR installation through the upgrade process.

22720391

"Support listing backups in CLI"

29585636

"Unable to Use Uplink to Communicate With Server Out of Rack After Restarting Network"

The Cisco switches shipped with Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Release 2.4.2 (Ethernet-based systems) include the latest NX-OS I7(7) firmware, which fixes this connectivity issue.

For more information about this bug fix (CSCvj65578) and others, see the Cisco 9000 Series NX-OS Release Notes, Release 7.0(3)I7(7):

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/datacenter/nexus9000/sw/7-x/release/notes/70377_nxos_rn.html

Earlier Releases

For an overview of features, functional changes and bug fixes in earlier releases of Oracle Private Cloud Appliance, please refer to the release notes for the version in question. You can access the documentation libraries for all releases from the Documentation Overview page.