1. Release Notes for Release 3.0.2
  2. Feature Updates

2 Feature Updates

This section contains a list of the new features and changes to features that have been added to the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance software since its initial release. You can obtain the latest features and bug fixes by applying patches to your system. For more information, see the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Patching Guide.

Latest Features

Platform Images

Platform images are available to all compartments in all tenancies without being imported to any compartment by users.

The following platform images are delivered with this Private Cloud Appliance release:

Oracle Linux 8

uln-pca-Oracle-Linux-8-2022.08.29_0.oci

Oracle Linux 7.9

uln-pca-Oracle-Linux-7.9-2022.08.29_0.oci

Oracle Solaris 11.4

uln-pca-Oracle-Solaris-11.4.35-2021.09.20_0.oci

New platform images are delivered through Private Cloud Appliance installation, upgrade, and patch.

Important:

The Service Enclave administrator must import platform images after Private Cloud Appliance installation and should import platform images after every upgrade and patch in case new images were delivered. See "Providing Platform Images" in Hardware Administration in the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Administrator Guide.

The following Windows versions have been tested and are supported on this release of Oracle Private Cloud Appliance as custom images:

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2022
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2019
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2016
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2, with Window2k12 Datacenter R2 64 Bit
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2012, with Window2k12 Datacenter R2 64 Bit

Instance Backup and Restore

Oracle Private Cloud Appliance provides API commands that enable you to back up instances. The commands are flexible to suit a variety of use cases, including:

  • Back up instances and any attached block volumes.

  • Store the backups on another server for safekeeping.

  • Restore a faulty instance and any attached block volumes.

  • Use the backup to create matching instances.

  • Use the backup and restore feature to migrate instances to another tenancy, or to another appliance.

    Note:

    The maximum recommended object size supported is 10TB of total data and the maximum recommended object part size in a multipart upload is 5 GB.

For details see Instance Backup and Restore in the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Concepts Guide and Backing Up and Restoring an Instance in the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance User Guide.

Instance Shape Update

When you update an instance, you can change the shape. You can change from any shape to any other shape. If the flexible shape is specified, you can change the shape configuration. For more information, see "Updating an Instance" in Compute Instance Deployment in the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance User Guide.

Enhanced Compute Instance Availability

If a compute node is lost due to a failure, a new reboot migration process is invoked. Its purpose is to evacuate compute instances to other compute nodes. Fault domain preference is strictly enforced with instance migration. If a compute instance cannot be migrated to another compute node in the same fault domain due to insufficient capacity, the instance is stopped and must be restarted manually.

File System Clones

You can use the OCI CLI to create file system clones. A clone is a new file system that is created from a snapshot of an existing file system. Snapshots preserve the state of the data of a file system at a particular point in time. If you take snapshots of a file system at regular intervals, you can create clones of the file system as it existed at multiple points in its lifetime.

Cloned file systems are managed in the same way that any other file system is managed. See the File System Storage chapter in the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance User Guide.

Tags for Specifying Certain Property Values

Private Cloud Appliance provides defined tags that enable you to set values for some properties. Applying these tags is the only way to set these particular properties.

The following defined tags are in the OraclePCA tag namespace.

Note:

Do not create your own tags in the OraclePCA tag namespace.
Resource, Operation Tag Name Values

Block volume, create and update

logBias

LATENCY, THROUGHPUT

secondaryCache

ALL, METADATA, NONE

File system, create

databaseRecordSize

512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 32768, 65536, 131072, 262144, 524288, 1048576

You must use the OCI CLI to set these tags. See the OCI CLI procedures in "Working with Resource Tags" in Resource Tag Management in the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance User Guide.

For examples, see "Creating a Block Volume" in Block Volume Storage in the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance User Guide and "Creating a File System" in File System Storage in the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance User Guide.

Capacity Monitoring

Administrators have direct access to the current consumption of key physical resources: CPU, memory and storage space. For more information, see "Monitoring System Capacity" in the chapter Status and Health Monitoring of the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Administrator Guide.

Full Administration Network Segregation

In an environment with elevated security requirements, you can optionally segregate administrative appliance access from the data traffic. The administration network physically separates configuration and management traffic from the operational activity on the data network. In this configuration, only the administration network provides access to the Service Enclave, which includes the monitoring, metrics collection and alerting services, the API service, and all component management interfaces.

Service Request Diagnostic Data

If the Private Cloud Appliance is registered for Oracle Auto Service Request (ASR), certain hardware failures cause a service request and diagnostic data to be automatically sent to Oracle support. The collection of diagnostic data is also called a support bundle. A Service Enclave administrator can also create and send a service request and supporting diagnostic data separate from ASR. For more information about ASR and support bundles, see Status and Health Monitoring in the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Administrator Guide.

Features Released in Software Version 3.0.1-b741265 (November 2022)

Flexible Compute Shapes

A flexible compute shape lets you customize the number of OCPUs and the amount of memory when launching your instance. This flexibility lets you create instances that meet your workload requirements, while optimizing performance and using resources efficiently. For details see Standard Shapes in the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Concepts Guide.

GUI Support for Viewing CPU and Memory Metrics

As of this release, you can view Memory and CPU metrics at a fault domain level using the Service Enclave GUI. For details, see Viewing CPU and Memory Usage by Fault Domain in the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Administrator Guide.

Features Released in Software Version 3.0.1-b697160 (August 2022)

Compute Instance Availability

When compute instances go down because of a compute node reboot or failure, the system takes measures to recover the compute instances automatically. For details, see Compute Instance Availability in the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Concepts Guide.

Optimized NUMA Alignment

Algorithm optimizations are in place to ensure that the hypervisor assigns compute instances on physical resources (CPU and memory) with best possible alignment to compute node NUMA architecture. For details, see Physical Resource Allocation in the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Concepts Guide.

View CPU and Memory Metrics at the Fault Domain Level

Memory and CPU usage metrics are available at the compute nodes level already. Each node belongs to a fault domain. New functionality provides the option to view these metrics at a fault domain level. For details, see Fault Domain Observability in the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Concepts Guide, and Viewing CPU and Memory Usage by Fault Domain in the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Administrator Guide.

Secondary Private IP Addresses

After an instance is launched, you can attach secondary private IP addresses to the primary VNIC or to any secondary VNICs. These secondary private IP addresses are especially useful when running multiple services or endpoints on a single instance, or for instance failover scenarios.

For more information, see "About Secondary Private IPs" under "IP Addressing" in the Virtual Networking Overview section of the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Concepts Guide.

For procedures, see "Assigning a Secondary Private IP Address" in the Networking chapter of the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance User Guide.