This Oracle Key Vault release introduces new features that enhance the use of Oracle Key Vault in a large enterprise.

• New Privileges enable Regular Administrators to Manage Endpoints and Endpoint Groups
  Oracle Key Vault RESTful services are used for automated endpoint enrollment.

Oracle Key Vault RESTful services are used for automated endpoint enrollment.

Oracle Key Vault regular users can now be authorized to manage endpoints and endpoint groups without having to grant them administrative roles. Previously, the user must have had the System Administrator role to manage endpoints and Key Administrator role to manage endpoint groups. These are powerful administrative roles. Not all Oracle Key Vault operations necessarily require all the functionality provided by these administrative roles. Users setting up the Oracle Key Vault endpoints using RESTful services need privileges for endpoint enrollment, provisioning and endpoint group setups. With Oracle Key Vault release 18.6, a regular user can be granted create endpoint, manage endpoint, create endpoint group and manage endpoint groups privileges to do just that. Furthermore, the new privileges enable isolation among users managing different set of endpoints and endpoint groups. These users get full control on the management of a set of endpoints and endpoint groups that they are authorized to manage, but they cannot affect any other endpoints or endpoint groups, unlike users with the administrative roles.

At any time, you can download the latest version of the Oracle Key Vault software and documentation.

• Downloading the Oracle Key Vault Installation Software
  
• Downloading the Oracle Key Vault Documentation
  

1. Use a web browser to access the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud portal:

   https://edelivery.oracle.com

2. Click Sign In, and if prompted, enter your User ID and Password.
3. In the All Categories menu, select Release. In the next field, enter Oracle Key Vault and then click Search.
4. From the list that is displayed, select Oracle Key Vault 18.6.0.0.0 or click the +Add to Cart button next to the Oracle Key Vault 18.6.0.0.0.
   The download is added to your cart. (To check the cart contents, click View Cart in the upper right of the screen.)
5. Click Checkout.
6. On the next page, verify the details of the installation package, and then click Continue.
7. In the Oracle Standard Terms and Restrictions page, after you have read the terms and restrictions and agree with them, select I have reviewed and accept the terms of the Commercial License, Special Programs License, and/or Trial License, and click Continue.

   The download page appears, which lists the following Oracle Key Vault ISO files:

   • Vpart_number.iso (Oracle Key Vault 18.6.0.0.0 - Disc 1)

   • Vpart_number.iso (Oracle Key Vault 18.6.0.0.0 - Disc 2)

   • Vpart_number.iso (Oracle Key Vault 18.6.0.0.0 - Disc 3)

8. To the right of the Print button, click View Digest Details.

   The listing for the three ISO files expands to display the SHA-1 and SHA-256 checksum reference numbers for each ISO file.

9. Copy the SHA-256 checksum reference numbers and store them for later reference.
10. Click Download and select a location to save the ISO files. 
    You can save each file individually by clicking its name and then specifying a location for the download.
11. Click Save.

    The combined size of both ISO files exceeds 4 GB, and will take time to download, depending on the network speed. The estimated download time and speed are displayed in the File Download dialog box.

12. After the ISO files are downloaded to the specified location, verify the SHA-256 checksums of the downloaded files:
    1. From a Linux or Unix machine, generate a SHA256 checksum for the first Vpart_number.iso:

       $ sha256sum Vpart_number.iso

       Ensure that the checksum matches the value that you copied from the File Download dialog box in step 9.

    2. Generate a SHA-256 checksum for the second Vpart_number.iso:

       $ sha256sum Vpart_number.iso

       Ensure that the checksum matches the value that you copied from the File Download dialog box in step 9.

13. Optionally, burn each of the three Vpart_number.iso files to a DVD-ROM disc and then label the discs:

    • OKV 18.6 Disc 1

    • OKV 18.6 Disc 2

    • OKV 18.6 Disc 3

1. Access the Oracle documentation site.

   https://docs.oracle.com/en/database/

2. Select Oracle Database Related Products.
3. In the Database Security section, search for and download the most current version of the Oracle Key Vault 18.6 documentation, including these release notes.

At the time of this release, there are issues with Oracle Key Vault that could occur in rare circumstances. For each issue, a workaround is provided.

• General Issues
  
• Upgrade Issues
  
• Primary-Standby Issues
  
• Multi-Master Cluster Issues
  

This section describes general Oracle Key Vault issues.

• On HP-UX System, SELECT FROM V$ENCRYPTION_KEYS May Return ORA-28407 Occasionally
  
• User Gets Locked and Expired with Multiple Failed Logins
  
• OKV Alerts Still Show in the List After Fixing the Problem
  
• Private Keys Are Not Overwritten When a Java Keystore Is Uploaded Using the -o Option of the okvutil Utility
  
• Oracle Key Vault Boot-Time Warnings When in FIPS Mode
  

Issue: On HP-UX operating system, a Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) query such as the following that is executed in a long-running database process or session may occasionally result in an ORA-28407 Hardware Security Module error detected error:

SELECT * FROM V$ENCRYPTION_KEYS;

This is because the system could not create another thread-specific data key because the process had reached or exceeded the system-imposed limit on the total number of keys per process, which is controlled by the PTHREAD_KEYS_MAX setting. PTHREAD_KEYS_MAX is typically set to 128.

Workaround: Switch the database sessions and execute the TDE query again. If it is not convenient to switch the sessions, then set PTHREAD_USER_KEYS_MAX to 16384 before starting the database and the listener.

Bug Number: 28270280

Issue: The current password policy locks the user account for a day if the user has incorrectly entered the password more than three consecutive times. Therefore, the user will be able to log in only after the 24-hour lockout period expires.

Workaround: Make a note of the password and keep it accessible and secure.

Bug Number: 23300720

Issue: User password expiration alerts are still showing even after the user changes their password.

Workaround: In the Oracle Key Vault management console, select Reports and then Configure Reports. Then uncheck the User Password Expiration option. Alternatively, ignore the alert.

Bug Number: 27620622

Issue: When you upload a Java keystore (JKS) or Java Cryptography Extension keystore (JCEKS) to the Oracle Key Vault server using the -o option of the okvutil upload command, user-defined keys are not overwritten.

Workaround: Remove the private key from the wallet and then upload the keystore again.

Bug Number: 26887060

Warning : Error inserting
    serpent_avx2(/lib/modules/4.1.12-124.34.1.1.el6uek.x86_64/kernerl/arch/x86/crypto/serpent_avx2):
    No such device

These are informational messages thrown on screen indicating that instruction sets for ciphers that are not available or not supported in FIPS mode are not being loaded. These warnings can be safely ignored.

Workaround: None.

Bug Number: 30844891

This section describes issues related to upgrading Oracle Key Vault.

• Pre-Upgrade Script When Upgrading From 18.1 Incorrectly Determines If a Node Has a Read-Write Peer
  
• Unpair of Upgraded Primary-Standby Oracle Key Vault 18.x Servers May Fail Due to Permission Issues
  
• OKV SYSTEMS That Were Unpaired Before Being Upgraded Need a DB_UNIQUE_NAME Reset
  

Blocking user operations on the UI...
Stopping the downstream extract...
Patching downstream extract parameter file...
Restarting the downstream extract...
Sleeping for 10 to let the extract finish starting...
Error: finished applying files but failed to restart the downstream extract.
Restart it by navigating to the monitoring page and pressing the "Restart Serivces" button.

Workaround: If you encounter this message, but the node on which you executed the pre-upgrade script does not currently have a read-write peer, the error message can be ignored, and you can proceed with the rest of the upgrade as usual. If you encounter this message on a node that does currently have a read-write peer, this message should not be ignored.

Bug Number: 32539731

ORA-48141: error creating directory during ADR initialization: [/var/lib/oracle/diag/rdbms/dbfwdb/dbfwdb/metadata_pv]
ORA-48189: OS command to create directory failed

Bug Number: 29693700

Issue: Oracle Key Vault systems that were part of an Oracle Key Vault 12.2 high availability (now primary-standby) configuration before being unpaired, and then upgraded, have their DB_UNIQUE_NAME parameters set to 'DBFWDB_HA1' or 'DBFWDB_HA2'. This parameter needs to be reset to 'DBFWDB' before the system is converted to cluster mode, as attempting to add the node to a cluster would otherwise fail.

Bug Number: 29696058

This section describes Oracle Key Vault issues specific to a primary-standby configuration.

• Audit Trail is not Sent To Remote Syslog on Switchover in Primary-Standby Pair
  
• SSH Tunnel Status Shows as Disabled on Failover Case in Primary-Standby
  
• Re-pair After Un-pair from HA 12.2 BP5 to new OKV Server Still Shows Standalone
  
• Failover Issues When Primary OKV Experiences a Controlled Shutdown
  
• HA Setup Succeeds with Different Primary & Standby RO Restricted Mode Config
  

Description: With syslog configured on the primary, the audit logs are also written to the syslog. On switchover, the audit logs may not be written to the syslog. This is because the syslog has not been configured on the standby. Syslog needs to be configured on primary and standby separately.

Workaround: Configure the syslog on standby after switchover to enable write of audit logs to syslog.

Bug Number: 28790364

Issue: After a failover operation, the new Oracle Key Vault primary server does not show the correct status of the SSH tunnel. It shows the SSH tunnel as disabled when the SSH tunnel is available. The dashboard also shows an alert, warning that the setup of an SSH tunnel failed. This is because after the failover operation, Oracle Key Vault tried to establish two SSH tunnels to the same database as a service endpoint, resulting in the incorrect status and dashboard alert. The second SSH tunnel to the database as a service endpoint does not affect connectivity between the Oracle Key Vault server and the database as a service endpoint. The first SSH tunnel to the database as a service endpoint is functional and available after the failover.

Workaround: After a failover, the new Oracle Key Vault primary server shows the correct SSH status as available and connected to the database as a service endpoints. You also can use the okvutil list on the database as a service endpoint to check the status of the SSH tunnel.

Bug Number: 24679516

Issue: When an unpaired Oracle Key Vault primary server running Oracle Key Vault 12.2.0.5.0 or later is paired with a newly installed Oracle Key Vault server, the Current status on the Primary-Standby page shows that the server is in standalone mode. The Standalone status indicates that the primary-standby configuration has failed. The primary-standby setup fails because the SSH configuration on the primary server is not re-enabled.

Workaround: Before pairing an unpaired Oracle Key Vault primary server running Oracle Key Vault, disable and re-enable the SSH configuration. You should disable and then re-enable the SSH configuration after you perform the primary-standby configuration on the primary server after unpairing it with the standby server.

Bug Number: 26617880

Issue: Periodically, the primary Oracle Key Vault node in a primary-standby pair has a controlled shutdown. For example, a user performs the shutdown by pressing a power off button in the management console or executes the shutdown command from the terminal. When this happens, there will be no failover operation and the standby Oracle Key Vault node will not take over as the primary server. This can be predicted by the existence of the file /var/lock/subsys/dbfwdb on the primary Oracle Key Vault node. If the file exists on the primary at the time of the controlled shutdown, there will not be a failover. If it does not exist, then a failover should occur.

Note that failover still does occur in other situations such as power loss on the primary or database failure, regardless of the file's existence.

Workaround: If performing a controlled shutdown in an attempt to cause the standby node to take over as the new primary node, instead perform a switchover.

Bug Number: 29666606

Issue: For a primary-standby configuration, before pairing if read-only restricted mode is enabled on one Oracle Key Vault server and not on the other Oracle Key Vault server, then the configuration succeeds. This mismatch can lead to issues and confusion in a primary-standby deployment.

Workaround: Use the Oracle Key Vault management console to ensure that both servers have the same read-only restricted mode state applied. To do so, select the System tab, then Primary-Standby. Select the Allow Read-Only Restricted Mode option. Only then apply the primary-standby configuration on each server.

Bug Number: 26536033

This section describes Oracle Key Vault issues specific to a multi-master cluster configuration.

• Replication May Fail to Resume After Multiple System Failures in OKV Cluster
  
• System Settings Changed on an OKV Node After Conversion to a Candidate Node Do Not Reflect On The Controller Node
  
• Read-Write Nodes in Read-Only Restricted Mode After a Reboot
  
• RMAN Automatically Cleans Up Archivelogs Still Necessary for OGG
  
• Oracle Key Vault Should Prevent Enabling From Finishing If It Takes Longer Than MDND
  
• Certificate Must Be Rotated Before Converting To Cluster If Upgrading From 12.2 BP4 or Older
  
• After Force-Deleting A Read-Write Node In 18.1 Cluster And Then Upgrading, May Not Be Able To Replace Force-Deleted Node In Higher Version
  
• Backup From Oracle Key Vault 18.1, 18.2 or 18.3 Cluster Node That Is Then Upgraded and Used To Make Another Cluster May Not Be Able To Add A Read-Write Peer
  
• Cluster Service Status Is Down After Rotating Server Certificate
  
• Attempting to Create the First Node of a Cluster While a Backup Is Running Causes the UI to Be Unusable Until Reboot
  

Issue: Due to GoldenGate Bug 29624366, after multiple system failures in an Oracle Key Vault cluster, replication from some nodes may fail to resume. Specifically, GoldenGate replicats will terminate and not be able to process new change logs in the GoldenGate trail file when it happens.

Workaround: Manually reposition such replicats to skip erroneous records in the trail file or forcefully delete the troubled Oracle Key Vault nodes from the cluster and add new nodes to replace them.

Bug Number: 29700647

Issue: If system settings are changed on an Oracle Key Vault node after it has been converted to a candidate node, and after the controller node's initial attempt to verify the candidate node's settings has failed, the updated settings do not reflect on the controller node. The pairing process must be aborted on both the controller and candidate nodes.

Workaround: None. Verify that the system settings of the Oracle Key Vault node match with those of the cluster before attempting to convert it into a candidate node and induct it into a cluster.

Bug Number: 29430349

Issue: After rebooting a read-write node, sometimes the node or its read-write peer will become stuck in read-only restricted mode.

Workaround: When you reboot a node, it is normal for a node's read-write peer node to temporarily run in read-only restricted mode. However, soon after the node finishes booting, the read-write peer should transition back to read-write mode within a few minutes. The node that was rebooted may come up in read-only restricted mode, but should also transition back to read-write mode within a few minutes. However, if either a node or its read-write peer does not leave read-only restricted mode, redo shipping may be stuck. It may be fixed by rebooting the node still in read-only restricted mode.

Bug Number: 30589921

Issue: RMAN automatically manages the archivelogs in the fast recovery area. Under normal circumstances, RMAN will not delete archivelogs that may still be needed by Oracle GoldenGate. However, under space pressure, RMAN may clean up the needed archivelogs. These archivelogs getting cleaned up will break replication from the current node to all other nodes except the node's read-write peer node. Oracle Key Vault attempts to mitigate this issue by performing regular clean up of the fast recovery area, but under rare circumstances, the fast recovery area may be filled up and this issue may occur.

Workaround: Identify the source of space pressure in the fast recovery area and remedy the issue. You may identify space pressure in the fast recovery area by keeping tabs on the disk space. The fast recovery area is located under /var/lib/oracle/fast_recovery_area/.

Bug Number: 30558372

Issue: If you enable or disable an Oracle Key Vault node before the Maximum Disable Node Duration time limit, but the enabling does not finish before the Maximum Disable Node Duration time limit expires, it is possible that there could be cleanup of archivelogs and trail files that would cause inconsistency in the cluster. Don't allow the enabling process to finish in this case.

Workaround: Delete or force delete the node from the cluster if it takes longer than the Maximum Disable Node Duration amount of time to finish enabling.

Bug Number: 30533066

Issue: If you attempt to upgrade to Oracle Key Vault 18.4 from Oracle Key Vault 12.2 BP4 through 18.2 and do not generate a new certificate before the upgrade, you will receive the following error message:

Failed to convert server to cluster node, detected use of weak signature
algorithms in OKV server credentials. Please perform a certificate rotation
operation before converting this server to a cluster node.

Bug Number: 30673249

Issue: When force-deleting a read-write node, it should be shutdown first. However, due to GoldenGate bug 30413969, if the force-deleted node is shut down, the downstream extract on the deleted node's read-write peer node is not fully cleaned up. The workaround for this bug is present in Oracle Key Vault versions 18.2 and higher. However, if upgrading from an Oracle Key Vault 18.1 multi-master cluster that has had a read-write node force-deleted, if attempting to replace it after upgrade, it will still not succeed because the cleanup was not executed when the force-delete happened in version 18.1.

Workaround: The following steps are to be executed with caution. Executing these steps on the wrong Oracle Key Vault server will break replication and result in having to force-delete the node on which they were executed.

ssh support@Oracle_Key_Vault_IP_address
su - root
su - oracle
/var/lib/oracle/dbfw/bin/sqlplus / as sysdba
exec sys.dbms_xstream_adm.drop_outbound('OGG$OKV_DEXT');
exec sys.dbms_streams_adm.remove_queue('OGG$Q_OKV_DEXT', TRUE, TRUE);

After the above steps are successfully executed on Node A, it can be used as the controller node to add another node to the cluster as Node A's read-write peer.

Bug Number: 31216736

Issue: When restoring a backup taken on a cluster node to a standalone Oracle Key Vault server, the global_name of the database on Oracle Key Vault may be either DBFWDB.DBFWDB or DBFWDB_HA2.DBFWDB, depending on the global_name of the cluster node on which the backup was taken. If the global_name is DBFWDB_HA2.DBFWDB, and the standalone Oracle Key Vault server is converted to a cluster node, then it will not be able to successfully add a read-write peer node due to the global_name mismatch. The global name is fixed during backup restore in versions 18.4 and higher, but if the backup was taken and restored on a lower version, the issue will persist even after upgrading to 18.4 or higher.

ssh support@Oracle_Key_Vault_IP_address
su - root
su - oracle
/var/lib/oracle/dbfw/bin/sqlplus / as sysdba
select global_name from global_name;
alter database rename global_name to DBFWDB.DBFWDB;

Bug Number: 31241245

Issue: Rotating the server certificate will stop multiple processes in order to replace the certificates. However, under normal circumstances, they are restarted soon after they are stopped. During or after certificate rotation, on the Monitoring page under the Cluster tab, the Cluster Services Status may show a downward arrow, indicating that one or more cluster services are not running. This will cause replication to be broken to and from this node. If it persists for more than a few minutes, it is likely that this bug has occurred.

Workaround: If this issue occurs, try to restart the cluster services by clicking the Restart Cluster Services button on the Monitoring page. After a few minutes, refresh the page. If the Cluster Service Status still shows a red downward arrow, contact Oracle Support.

Bug Number: 31371440

Issue: When converting a standalone Oracle Key Vault server into the first node of a multi-master cluster, if there is currently an ongoing backup, the interactions between the two operations can cause the user interface to malfunction and both operations to fail. Afterward, navigating to the user interface will bring up the login page; however, attempting to log in will fail and eventually show a Server Error 500 message.

Workaround: If you encounter this issue, you should restart the Oracle Key Vault server. This should allow you to log in once again. You can retry the backup and the conversion to a cluster node as necessary.

Bug Number: 31891079

Below are details and changes of behavior of Oracle Key Vault 18.6.

• Oracle TDE and Oracle Key Vault Integration
  
• Reports are Affected by Audit Replication in a Multi-Master Cluster
  
• Updates in a Multi-Master Cluster are Slower Than in a Single Instance
  

Depending on the Oracle Database version used and on the feature of TDE used, there might be a need to patch the Oracle database for smooth operations.

Refer to the MOS-NOTE with Doc ID 2535751.1 to ascertain if your deployment needs a database patch.

The MOS-NOTE lists known issues with Oracle Database Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) feature when it is configured to use Oracle Key Vault as the keystore. The document also lists the fixes that resolve the issues enabling smoother integration between Oracle Database TDE and Oracle Key Vault. The issues could be defects, reducing the user burden with simplified operations, or improving the integration between TDE and OKV. The document is for Database Administrators and others tasked with managing the TDE Master Keys with Oracle Key Vault.

Oracle Key Vault reports and details in the home page are generated from Oracle Key Vault audit records. Each node will show reports of the operations specifically done on that node if audit replication is turned off. Each node will show reports of the operations done on all nodes in the cluster if audit replication is turned on.

The recommendation is to turn off audit replication and use a security information and event management (SIEM) solution like Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall (AVDF) to collect audit records from all nodes.

An update in a multi-master cluster might check for an object's existence, which may result in a scan of all nodes in the cluster slowing down the update operation. The time will increase proportional to the number of nodes in the cluster. The update could take several minutes to complete.

Setting and rotating the TDE master encryption key are examples of update operations.

The following versions of Oracle Database are supported with Oracle Key Vault 18.6:

• Oracle DB 11.2 with the compatible parameter set to 11.2
• Oracle DB 12.1 with the compatible parameter set to 11.2
• Oracle DB 12.2
• Oracle DB 18c
• Oracle DB 19c

Oracle Key Vault release 18.6 updated the underlying infrastructure to incorporate the October 2020 Release Update for Oracle Database 18 (18.12 DB RU) - October Release Update. Please sign in for full details.

https://www.oracle.com/security-alerts/cpuoct2020.html

Oracle Key Vault release 18.6 also includes security and stability fixes for Java and Oracle Linux (OL) operating system.

For information about Oracle's commitment to accessibility, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program website at http://www.oracle.com/pls/topic/lookup?ctx=acc&id=docacc.