New Features

These are new features for Oracle ASM release 18c, version 18.1.

• Converting Normal or High Redundancy Disk Groups to Flex Disk Groups without Restricted Mount

  You can convert a conventional disk group (disk group created before Oracle ASM 18c) to an Oracle ASM flex disk group without using the restrictive mount (MOUNTED RESTRICTED) option.

  Virtual Allocation Metadata (VAM) migration must be enabled and completed before converting without the use of a restrictive mount.

  See Also:

  • About Oracle ASM Flex Disk Groups for information about Oracle ASM flex disk groups

  • Managing Oracle ASM Flex Disk Groups for information about Oracle ASM flex disk groups, extended disk groups, and file groups

• Dropping Oracle ASM File Groups With a Cascade Option

  You can drop a file group and its associated files (drop including content) using the CASCADE keyword with ALTER DISKGROUP ... DROP FILEGROUP SQL statement.

  See Also:

  • About Oracle ASM File Groups for information about Oracle ASM file groups

  • Managing Oracle ASM Flex Disk Groups for information about Oracle ASM flex disk groups, extended disk groups, and file groups

• Oracle ASM Flex Disk Group Support for Multitenant Cloning

  You can create an Oracle ASM mirror clone of a multitenant database. Oracle ASM file group properties and the SQL syntax for administering pluggable databases have been updated.

  See Also:

  • About Point-In-Time Database Clones for information about point-in-time database clones

  • Managing Oracle ASM Flex Disk Groups for information about Oracle ASM flex disk groups, extended disk groups, and file groups

• Oracle ASM Miscellaneous Enhancements

  You can set the CONTENT_HARDCHECK.ENABLED disk group attribute to enable or disable Hardware Assisted Resilient Data (HARD) checking when performing data copy operations .

  The default value for the DISK_REPAIR_TIME disk group attribute has changed from 3.6 hours (3.6h) to 12 hours (12h).

  See Also:

  • Managing Disk Group Attributes for information about disk group attributes

• Storage Conversion for Member Clusters

  You can use ASMCMD commands to administer the configuration of member clusters. For example, you can change the storage method from direct Oracle ASM to indirect Oracle ASM, or change from indirect Oracle ASM to direct Oracle ASM.

  See Also:

  • Administering Oracle Flex ASM for information about administering Oracle Flex ASM

  • ASMCMD Member Cluster Management Commandsfor information about ASMCMD commands to manage member clusters

  • Oracle Clusterware Administration and Deployment Guide for information about member clusters

• Changes to ASMCMD showversion and showpatches Commands

  Additional options have been provided for ASMCMD showversion and showpatches commands.

  See Also:

  ASMCMD Instance Management Commands for information about ASMCMD commands to manage Oracle ASM instances

Deprecated Features

These are deprecated features for Oracle ASM release 18c, version 18.1:

• Deprecation of Oracle ASM Intelligent Data Placement

  The Oracle ASM Intelligent Data Placement (IDP) feature has been deprecated since Oracle ASM 12c Release 2 (12.2) and desupport is planned in a future release.

  Note:

  IDP is not supported when Virtual Allocation Metadata (VAM) migration is enabled.

Desupported Features

These are desupported features for Oracle ASM release 18c, version 18.1.

• Desupport os Oracle XDB Features

  Oracle XDB has features that have been desupported in Oracle Database release 18c, version 18.1.

• Desupport of STANDBY_ARCHIVE_DEST

  The STANDBY_ARCHIVE_DEST initialization parameter has been desupported in Oracle Database release 18c, version 18.1.

New Features

These are new features for Oracle ACFS and Oracle ADVM in Oracle ASM release 18c, version 18.1.

• Enhancements for Oracle ACFS Replication

  Oracle ACFS replication provides replication role reversal functionality and the designation of an Oracle ACFS snapshot as a storage location participating in replication. Oracle ACFS replication provides replication role reversal functionality, which enables the original primary and standby locations to reverse roles. Using the acfsutil repl reverse command, you can change the original primary to the new standby, and the original standby to the new primary.

  The role reversal functionality enhances replication to provide additional disaster recovery capabilities. With the designation of an Oracle ACFS snapshot as a replication primary or standby location, you can choose to replicate either a mounted file system or a snapshot of a mounted file system.

  Oracle recommends Oracle Data Guard and Oracle Golden Gate for database disaster recovery. In Oracle ASM 18c and Oracle ASM 12c release 2, Oracle ACFS replication can be used with Oracle Standard Edition for disaster recovery and for periodic refreshes of test and development environments.

  See Also:

  • Oracle ACFS Replication

  • Oracle ACFS Command-Line Tools for Replication

  • Configuring Oracle ACFS Snapshot-Based Replication

• Reducing the Size of an Oracle ACFS File System

  You can use the acfsutil size command to reduce the size of a file system whether or not the command must internally move user data or metadata to complete the action.

  See Also:

  • Oracle ACFS Command-Line Utilities

• Oracle ACFS Remote Service for Member Clusters

  In addition to support for Oracle member clusters with attached local storage, Oracle ACFS provides Oracle ACFS remote service for native Oracle ACFS functionality on member clusters with no attached local storage (indirect storage member clusters). Utilizing an Oracle ACFS deployment on the Oracle Domain Services Cluster (DSC), Oracle ACFS remote service can be used for both Oracle Application Clusters and database member clusters to enable a flexible and file system-based deployment of applications and databases. Unlike NFS-based exports, Oracle ACFS remote service fully supports advanced Oracle ACFS features; such as replication, snapshots, and tagging; on the destination member cluster.

  See Also:

  • About Oracle ACFS in the Cluster Domain

  • Oracle ACFS Remote Service in the Cluster Domain

  • Oracle ACFS Command-Line Tools for Oracle ACFS in the Cluster Domain

  • ASMCMD Member Cluster Management Commands

  • Managing Oracle Flex ASM

• Additional Information Displays for Oracle ACFS Storage Usage

  You can use theacfsutil info storage command to display a platform independent view that shows how the space in an Oracle ASM disk group is consumed by components of Oracle ASM, Oracle ACFS, and Oracle ADVM.

  See Also:

  • Oracle ACFS Command-Line Utilities

• Enhancements to Oracle ACFS Snapshot Commands

  Oracle ACFS acfsutil commands have been updated to provide better management of Oracle ACFS snapshots.

  • You can create or delete snapshot links with the acfsutil snap link command. A snapshot link provides access to the contents of a snapshot using an alternate path which does not include the .ACFS/snaps directory, the default location where snapshots are created.

  • The acfsutil snap dup apply command provides the —B option to specify the name of a generated backup snapshot.

  See Also:

  • Oracle ACFS Command-Line Tools for Snapshots

  • About Oracle ACFS Snapshots

• Temporarily Freezing Modification in an Oracle ACFS File System

  You can use the acfsutil freeze and acfsutil thaw commands to temporarily halt and resume modification activity in an Oracle ACFS file system. Using the acfsutil freeze command, you can create point-in-time images across different snapshots without stopping your applications. Cross-node communication ensures that all nodes perform a freeze operation. During the freeze, each node stops all modification operations on the specified file system, flushes user data and metadata, commits the data to disk, and then acknowledges when the operations are completed.

  See Also:

  • Oracle ACFS Command-Line Utilities

• Enhancements to Oracle ACFS Diagnostic Commands

  Oracle ACFS diagnostic commands, such as acfsutil meta, have been updated to provide improved diagnostic management of Oracle ACFS.

  See Also:

  • Oracle ACFS Diagnostic Commands

New Features

These are new features for Oracle ASM 12c Release 2 (12.2.0.1):

• Oracle ASM Flex Disk Groups

  Oracle ASM provides database-oriented storage management with Oracle ASM flex and extended disk groups. For information about Oracle ASM flex disk groups, extended disk groups, and file groups, refer to Managing Oracle ASM Flex Disk Groups.

• Prioritized Rebalancing for Oracle ASM File Groups

  Oracle ASM file groups have the ability to set priority levels for rebalancing with the PRIORITY property.

  For information about Oracle ASM file group properties, refer to About Oracle ASM File Group Properties.

• Oracle ASM Support for Preferred Read on Extended Clusters

  An Oracle extended cluster is special purpose Oracle flex cluster which contains nodes that span multiple physically separated locations. An Oracle flex cluster is a scalable cluster in which servers can be assigned specific roles for database or application functions.

  In an Oracle extended cluster, the PREFERRED_READ.ENABLED disk group attribute controls whether preferred read functionality is enabled for a disk group. If preferred read functionality is enabled, then this functionality enables an instance to determine and read from disks at the same site as itself, which can improve performance. For information about the PREFERRED_READ.ENABLED disk group attribute, refer to PREFERRED_READ.ENABLED.

• Oracle ASM Extended Support for 4K Sector Size

  This features provides the new disk group attribute LOGICAL_SECTOR_SIZE. This attribute sets the logical sector size of the disk group instead of the size that is estimated from the disks that are added to the disk group. The value specifies the smallest possible I/O that the disk group can accept, and also limits what kind of disks can join the disk group. A new column LOGICAL_SECTOR_SIZE is included in the V$ASM_DISKGROUP and V$ASM_DISK views. This column represents the logical sector size value of the disk group or disk in bytes.

  For information about extended support for 4K sector size, refer to Specifying the Logical and Physical Sector Size.

• Oracle IOServer

  An Oracle IOServer (IOS) instance provides Oracle ASM file access for Oracle Database instances on nodes of Oracle member clusters that do not have connectivity to Oracle ASM managed disks.

  For information about remote Oracle IOServer and Oracle Flex ASM, refer to Managing Oracle Flex ASM.

• Updates for Oracle ASM Filter Driver Installation and Configuration

  The installation and configuration for Oracle ASM Filter Driver (Oracle ASMFD) can now be enabled as an automated process during Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation.

  Oracle ASMFD is available on Solaris systems starting with Oracle Database 12c Release 2 (12.2.0.1).

  For more information about Oracle ASMFD, refer to "Administering Oracle ASM Filter Driver".

Deprecated Features

These are deprecated features for Oracle ASM 12c Release 2 (12.2.0.1).

• Deprecation of Oracle ASM Intelligent Data Placement

  The Oracle ASM Intelligent Data Placement (IDP) feature has been deprecated in Oracle ASM 12c Release 2 (12.2) and may be desupported in a future release.

• Deprecation of ASM_PREFERRED_READ_FAILURE_GROUPS Initialization Parameter

  The ASM_PREFERRED_READ_FAILURE_GROUPS initialization parameter has been deprecated in Oracle ASM 12c Release 2 (12.2) and may be desupported in a future release.

  In Oracle ASM 12c Release 2 (12.2), specifying the preferred read failure groups is done automatically, so the use of the ASM_PREFERRED_READ_FAILURE_GROUPS initialization parameter is no longer required. Starting with Oracle ASM 12c Release 2, the PREFERRED_READ.ENABLED disk group attribute controls whether the preferred read functionality is enabled.

  For information about the ASM_PREFERRED_READ_FAILURE_GROUPS initialization parameter, refer to ASM_PREFERRED_READ_FAILURE_GROUPS. For information about the PREFERRED_READ.ENABLED disk group attribute, refer to PREFERRED_READ.ENABLED.

New Features

These are new features for Oracle ACFS and Oracle ADVM in Oracle ASM 12c Release 2 (12.2.0.1).

• Oracle ACFS Snapshot-Based Replication

  Oracle ACFS snapshot-based replication transfers the differences between successive snapshots of the primary file system to the standby file system using the standard ssh protocol.

  For an overview of Oracle ACFS snapshot-based replication, refer to Oracle ACFS Replication. For information about Oracle ACFS replication commands, refer to Oracle ACFS Command-Line Tools for Replication.

  For information about converting an existing Oracle ACFS replication environment to snapshot-based replication, refer to Configuring Oracle ACFS Snapshot-Based Replication.

  Note:

  For information about the previous Oracle ACFS replication system available in Oracle Grid Infrastructure release 1 (12.1), refer to Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide in the Database Online Documentation 12c Release 1 (12.1) library.

• Oracle ACFS Snapshot Enhancements

  Oracle ACFS snapshot enhancements include acfsutil operating system commands to create and manage snapshot duplicates. Additional commands provide support for remastering, renaming, and setting quotas for snapshots.

  For information about Oracle ACFS snapshots, refer to About Oracle ACFS Snapshots. For information about acfsutil commands to manage Oracle ACFS snapshots, refer to Oracle ACFS Command-Line Tools for Snapshots.

• Oracle ACFS Compression

  Oracle ACFS provides file system compression functionality with acfsutil compress commands.

  Note:

  Oracle ACFS compression is not supported on Oracle Database files. Oracle ACFS file systems which are intended to hold database files should not be compressed with Oracle ACFS compression.

  For information about Oracle ACFS compression, refer to Oracle ACFS Compression.

• Oracle ACFS Defragger

  Databases that share storage with snapshots or with the base of the file system can become fragmented under active online transaction processing (OLTP) workloads. This fragmentation can cause the location of the data in the volume to be discontiguous for sequential scans. Oracle ACFS automatically defragments these files in the background. Fragmentation is reported through the acfsutil defrag dir and file commands, and it can also be viewed with the acfsutil info file command. The acfsutil defrag dir and file commands also enable on-demand defragmentation of a file in the event the automatic defragmentation does not occur quickly enough. Defragmentation may also be needed when database data files reside in file systems enabled with Oracle ACFS compression.

  For more information about database files on Oracle ACFS, refer to "About Oracle ACFS and Database Data Files". For information about the acfsutil defrag and acfsutil info commands, refer to Oracle ACFS Command-Line Utilities.

• Oracle ACFS Support for 4K Sectors

  Oracle ACFS supports I/O requests in multiples of 4K logical sector sizes as well as continued support for 512-byte logical sector size I/O requests. The i 4096 option is provided with the acfsformat command on Windows and the mkfs command in AIX, Linux and Solaris environments.

  For information about the Oracle ACFS mkfs command on Linux, refer to mkfs. For information about the Oracle ACFS acfsformat command, refer to acfsformat.

• Oracle ACFS Automatic Resize

  Oracle ACFS provides an automatic resize option with theacfsutil size command that enables you to specify an increment by which an Oracle ACFS file system grows automatically if the amount of available free space in the file system falls below a specified amount. There is also an option to specify the maximum size allowed when using the automatic resize option. The output of the acfsutil info fs command displays the automatic resize increment and maximum amounts.

  For more information about the acfsutil size command, refer to acfsutil size.

• Oracle ACFS Metadata Acceleration

  Oracle ACFS supports accelerator metadata storage. This support enables many critical Oracle ACFS metadata structures, including extent metadata, storage bitmaps, volume logs, and some snapshot metadata to be placed on accelerator storage.

  The accelerator volume can be created on Linux environments with the -a option of the mkfs command. To use the -a option, the value of COMPATIBLE.ADVM must be at least 12.2.

  For more information about the metadata storage, refer to Oracle ACFS Accelerator Volume. For information about specifying accelerator storage with the mkfs command, refer to mkfs. For commands that can be used to view information about accelerator storage, refer to acfsutil info file and acfsutil info fs.

• Oracle ACFS NAS Maximum Availability eXtensions

  Oracle ACFS provides enhancements to High Availability Common Internet File System (HACIFS) with Oracle ACFS NAS Maximum Availability eXtensions (Oracle ACFS NAS MAX).

  For more information, refer to Oracle ACFS NAS Maximum Availability eXtensions.

• Oracle ACFS Plugins for File Content Data Collection

  Oracle ACFS plugins support file content data collection. Both polling and interval based capture are supported with the file content data collection.

  For more information about Oracle ACFS plug-ins and the acfsfileid_lookup API, refer to Oracle ACFS Plug-in Generic Application Programming Interface.

• Oracle ACFS Sparse Files

  Oracle ACFS provides support for sparse files. Oracle ACFS sparse files greatly benefit NFS client write operations which are commonly received out of order by the NFS server and the associated Oracle ACFS file system.

  Usually when an application writes beyond the end of file, storage is allocated and zeroes inserted for the region of the file beyond the old end of file and the beginning of the new write. With this feature, rather than inserting zeroes, a hole remains in the file, which benefits NFS performance and also the performance and disk utilization of other applications that perform this type of writing intentionally. This feature also has storage savings benefits for files that are inherently sparse, meaning they have a lot of unused space, such as some image files for virtual machines. Oracle ACFS fills the holes in the file with zeroes in memory when the holes are read, rather than allocating storage for the zeroes.

  To use this feature, the COMPATIBLE.ADVM disk group attribute must be set to 12.2 or greater.

  For an overview of Oracle ACFS storage management, refer to Overview of Oracle ACFS.

• Oracle ACFS Scrubbing Functionality

  Oracle ACFS provides scrubbing functionality with the acfsutil scrub command to check for and report any inconsistencies in the metadata or file data.

  For information about the acfsutil scrub command, refer to Oracle ACFS Command-Line Utilities.

• Oracle ACFS Loopback Functionality

  Oracle ACFS supports loopback functionality on the Linux operating system, enabling Oracle ACFS files to be accessed as devices.

  For information about Oracle ACFS loopback support, refer to Oracle ACFS Loopback Support.

• Oracle ACFS Diagnostic Commands

  Oracle ACFS provides various acfsutil commands for diagnostic purposes. These commands are intended to be run only when requested by Oracle Support to generate diagnostic data for analysis.

  For information about the diagnostic commands, refer to Oracle ACFS Diagnostic Commands.