Oracle 11g Release 2 – Overview

• Oracle Database 11g Release 2 released on 1st September 2009
• Download from http://otn.oracle.com (requires registration but no support identifier)
• Currently available platforms:
  • Linux x86 (32-bit)
  • Linux x86_64 (64-bit)
  • Windows 32-bit (no RAC available!)
  • Windows 64-bit
  • Solaris SPARC 64-bit
  • Solaris Intel x86-64
  • UP-UX Itanium
  • AIX (PPC64)
• Announcement on OTN:
  www.oracle.com/global/de/community/dbadmin/tipps/11gr2/index.html

New Features

• New Features - a non-complete overview:
  • Automatic Block repair in data guard scenarios (i.e. Replace defective block on standby with valid block from primary database or vice versa)
  • Automatic determance of parallelism degree based on object size, query complexity and hardware resouces
  • RAC installation complexity dramatically reduced – we will evaluate this :-)
  • Storage of Oracle Cluster Registry and Voting Disk in ASM
  • Oracle Restart (automatically (re)starts database instance, ASM, listener and so on)
  • Utility for complete uninstallation of Oracle RAC
  • Reduced (“zero downtime”) for patching RAC clusters
  • Instance Caging: Limit number of CPUs used
  • Scheduler improvements (emailing, file watch, run procedures on remote db)
  • ACFS (ASM Cluster File System): Cluster file system based on ASM for non-database datafiles, i.e. (Oracle) Binary installations, trace files, alert logs and so on
  • ASM Dynamic Volume Manager: create volumes out of disk groups and use it to create a file system (ext3, reiserfs, etc pp) on top of it
  • ASM FS Snapshots
  • Intelligent data placement: frequently accessed blocks are placed on the edge of the disk where I/O performance is higher by ASM
  • ASM File Access Control
  • New compression algorithm (LZO) offers fast compression and de-compression
  • most “cool” ASM features require 11g release 2 database and asm compatible level (= everything 11.2)

Oracle 11g R 2 – Components

• Oracle Database
  • traditional database (rdbms)
  • ASM module
  • Listener et al

• Oracle Infrastructure (=foundation for Oracle RAC), includes:
  • Clusterware
  • ASM Module
  • Oracle Restart

?? Is 11g Release 2 ready for production yet ??

• From the Authors point of view: NO!
• Release of 11g Release 2 was driven by marketing and promise “release in September 2009″
• Latest beta of 11g R2 (released two weeks before “productive release” still contained critical bugs
• 11.2.0.1.0 good for testing and educational purpose

• For productive environments:
  • Wait at least until 11.2.0.2.0! (i.e. The first patchset)

Oracle 11g Release 2 was released on 1st of September 2009. From my point of view this version will be the next widely used version after 10 Release 2. In myopinion 11g Release 1 is a quite good and stable version – but it is a “Release 1″ and many ISVs waited for 11g R2 to apperas to certify their products against.

I am investigating Oracle 11g Release 2 over the next few weeks starting with a single database installation, installing a 2-node-rac with ASM, testing ADVM and ACFS. Finally i will investigate database features, for instance advanced compression.

I will continuously publish my experiences on this blog.

At this point (14th September) the document covers:

• oracle 11g release overview
• new features
• single database installation
• grid infrastructure installation (formerly known as “clusterware”)
• Installing Oracle 11g Release 2 database binaries on ACFS
• How to size ASM disk groups of OCR and Voting disks correctly

The most recent version can be found here:

oracle-11g-release2-installguide-2009-09-14

Hopefully today i will add the creation of a rac database as well.

Please leave me a note or send me an email if you have any feedback.