This release contains several changes that simplify system and user configuration and maintenance, and upload health check collection results.

• Bulk Mapping Systems to Business Units
  
• Selectively Capturing Users During Log In
  
• Configuring Details for Upload of Health Check Collection Results
  
• Viewing and Reattempting Failed Uploads
  
• Managing Oracle Health Check Collection Purges
  

Use the Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk option –fileattr to track changes to file attributes.

If run with the –fileattr option, then Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk search all files within Oracle Grid Infrastructure and Oracle Database homes by default. Also, specify the list of directories, subdirectories, and files to monitor, and then compare snapshots for changes.

Use the new privileged user filter to identify health checks that require a privileged user to run.

Health check support has been broadened to include Linux operating system health checks (Oracle ORAchk only), External ZFS Storage Appliance health checks (Oracle EXAchk on Exalogic only), and Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 13.1.

Run Oracle EXAchk from Oracle Exadata storage servers without SSH connectivity from the database server to the storage server.

New health checks have been included for:

• Oracle Exadata

• Oracle SuperCluster

• Oracle Exalogic

• Oracle ZFS Storage

• Oracle Enterprise Linux

• Oracle Solaris Cluster

• Oracle Database and Oracle Grid Infrastructure

• Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Oracle Management Service (OMS) and Repository

Refer to My Oracle Support note 1268927.2, click the Health Check Catalog tab to download and view the list of health checks.

Oracle Health Check Collections Manager has been enhanced with a new easier to navigate interface based on the Oracle Application Express (APEX) 5 theme.

This new interface is available only if you have APEX 5 installed on your database. Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk continue to include the APEX 4 based Oracle Health Check Collections Manager application. However, all enhancements in new releases go into the APEX 5 Oracle Health Check Collections Manager application.

Upgrade Oracle Health Check Collections Manager from Oracle ORAchk or Oracle EXAchk. Oracle Health Check Collections Manager upgrades to the latest version of whichever application your database supports. You get the new theme interface only if you have APEX 5.

If the Oracle Health Check Collections Manager schema changes in the future and if Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk require Oracle Health Check Collections Manager upgrade, then Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk prompt you to upgrade Oracle Health Check Collections Manager.

During upgrade, Oracle Health Check Collections Manager goes offline and is not available to receive new collections. If any collection fails to upload during upgrade, then you can upload them again by viewing and reattempting to upload the failed uploads.

You can now sort all collection reports by any column no matter what APEX version you are using, making it easier to analyze results.

The Purge job feature has been improved to run daily rather than every three months to remove data older than three months.

Bulk mapping of business units is now easier as Oracle Health Check Collections Manager automatically creates any new business units found in the uploaded XML mapping file.

Ability to change the location of script used for running root checks, a different location from other temp files.

A large number of the Oracle stack health checks do not require root  access. However, a subset of health checks need to run with root  privileges.

The script used to run these root privilege checks is root_orachk.sh or root_exachk.sh depending on the tool you are using. By default, this root script is created in the temporary directory, that is, $HOME. You can change the location by setting the RAT_TMPDIR environment variable.

export RAT_ROOT_SH_DIR=/orahome/oradb/

export RAT_ROOT_SH_DIR=/mylocation

oracle ALL=(root) NOPASSWD:/mylocation/root_orachk.sh

Beginning with release 12.2.0.1.1, Oracle ORAchk adds support for the latest version of IBM AIX 7.2 and Oracle Database Appliances Small and Medium.

• Support for AIX 7.2

  Oracle ORAchk adds support for the latest version of IBM AIX 7.2 in addition to the existing support for versions 5.2, 5.3, 6.1, and 7.1.

• Support for New Oracle Database Appliances

  Oracle ORAchk adds support for new Oracle Database Appliances Small and Medium in addition to the existing support for Oracle Database Appliance HA.

Beginning with release 12.2.0.1.1, Oracle EXAchk adds support for the newest Oracle Engineered Systems, Role Based Access Control (RBAC) for Oracle EXAchk on SuperCluster, and send email from storage cells.

• Support for Newest Oracle Engineered Systems

  Oracle EXAchk extends support to include some of the newest Oracle Engineered Systems and their software:

  • Oracle MiniCluster – The latest addition to the Oracle Super Cluster family of Engineered Systems

  • Oracle Exalytics Software release 2.0 – The latest software release for the Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine

• Oracle EXAchk on SuperCluster - Support for Role Based Access Control

  When running Oracle EXAchk on Oracle SuperCluster you can use Role Based Access Control (RBAC) to run root privileged checks without requiring a root user.

  Ensure that you run the root checks as a user with a root equivalent access role.

• Oracle EXAchk on Exadata – Send Email When Unable to Send from Storage Cells

  If the Oracle Exadata storage cells are unable to send email, then you can use the -usecompute option to send the email from the database server instead.

  For example:

  ./exachk -testemail "NOTIFICATION_EMAIL=some.person@example.com,another.person@example.com" -usecompute

  or

  ./exachk -sendemail "NOTIFICATION_EMAIL=some.person@example.com,another.person@example.com" -usecompute

The existing Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk integration with the Elastic Stack (previously called ELK stack) has been enhanced.

Many new field tags have been added to the Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk JSON output.

The extra tags allow dashboard filtering based on facts such as:

• Engineered System type

• Engineered System version

• Hardware type

• Node name

• Operating system version

• Rack identifier

• Rack type

• Database version

Use the Kibana dashboard to view health check compliance across the data center.

Now with these new field tags, you can also filter the results based on any combination of exposed system attributes.

A new filter, Health Score has been added to Oracle Health Check Collections Manager.

The Health Score filter enables you to filter the results to only show collections where the health score is less than or equal to the value specified.

The default value of the filter is 100, and therefore Oracle Health Check Collections Manager displays all the collections initially.

In addition, a number of other existing Oracle Health Check Collections Manager field labels have been renamed for ease of use.

Oracle EXAchk will now check the Oracle Platinum Services monitoring agent, the monitoring user, monitored databases, and their diagnostic directories.

This helps to ensure quality of Oracle Platinum Services monitoring and that relevant diagnostics can be supplied for faster fault resolution.

This release includes lots of new checks to help you when upgrading Oracle Database to 12.2.

New Checks include both pre- and post-upgrade verification to prevent problems related to:

• Operating system configuration

• Oracle Grid Infrastructure and Oracle Database patch prerequisites

• Oracle Database configuration

• Cluster configuration

Many new checks focus on the known issues in 12c Optimizer as well as SQL Plan Management.

The new checks target the problems such as:

• Wrong results returned

• High memory and CPU usage

• Errors such as ORA-00600 or ORA-07445

• Issues with cursor usage

• Other general SQL plan management problems

Customize Oracle Health Check Collections Manager email notification based on one or more business units.

By default, existing users who have already configured notification will receive notification for all business units.

It is now possible to delete or reload the sample data that Oracle Health Check Collections Manager ships with.

New checks to verify network configuration and operating system patching.

The Oracle Cluster Registry subnet records can become stale due to configuration changes. This can lead to various startup problems.

Additionally, vulnerability to certain operating system bugs can lead to corruption in clustered databases.

New checks detect an Exadata critical issue, which can cause node eviction.

In addition, various other Exadata best practice recommendations have been added.

New checks are now available for a critical issue and storage problems affecting Oracle SuperCluster.

These detect vulnerability to a critical issue affecting Oracle SuperCluster. As well as checks to prevent database memory corruption and storage related problems.

Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk have been rewritten with a focus on performance and extensibility.

Internal testing results show that this version runs up to 3 times faster than 12.2.0.1.3. Performance has improved in low-resource environments.

New option allows Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk to run only the checks that failed previously.

To run only the checks that failed previously:

• Generate a health check report

• Fix the issues identified

• Generate another health check report verifying only the issues that failed before

-failedchecks previous_result

Since Oracle ORAchk has been rewritten in Python, Cygwin on Microsoft Windows is no more a requirement.

Oracle ORAchk needs Python 2.7 software and libraries. The runtime provides details of what exactly the libraries it needs.

It is now possible to run multiple instances of Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk at the same time on the same machine.

As a result of this change the location of the root_orachk.sh and root_exachk.sh files have now changed. By default, they are created in the user's home directory.

If you run as non-root, then change this location in the /etc/sudoers file, for example,

oracle ALL=(root) NOPASSWD:/home/oracle/.orachk/root_orachk.sh

oracle ALL=(root) NOPASSWD:/home/oracle/root_orachk.sh

export RAT_ROOT_SH_DIR=/some/other/location

Oracle ORAchk now supports Oracle Grid Infrastructure stand-alone checks where no database is installed.

-nordbms

$ ./orachk -nordbms

$ ./exachk -nordbms

This release of Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk includes many new Oracle Stack Health Checks.

• Oracle ORAchk Health Check Catalog

• Oracle EXAchk Health Check Catalog

The Health Check Catalog is also contained within the download.