The following enhancements have been added for the hardware and software:

• Enhancements for Sun Datacenter InfiniBand Switch 36 switches

  • Sun Datacenter InfiniBand Switch 36 switches in Oracle Exadata are upgraded in a rolling manner using the patchmgr utility. See Understanding Rolling and Non-Rolling Updates for additional information.

  • Switch software release 2.1.3-4 includes the ability to automatically disable intermittent links. The InfiniBand specification stipulates that the bit error rate on a link must be less than 10¹². If the number of symbol errors is greater than 3546 bit errors per day, or 144 bit errors per hour, then the link is disabled. The InfiniBand switch software provides the autodisable command, and the patchmgr utility automatically enables this feature when the switch is upgraded to release 2.1.3-4.

  • The new switch software release 2.1.3-4 can create fat-tree topologies with two switches, or with an unbalanced number of links across multiple spine switches in the fabric.

  • The amount of time taken to perform a subnet manager failover has been reduced to subseconds even on multi-rack configurations.

• Enhancements for Patch Application

  • The patchmgr utility provides the ability to send e-mail messages upon completion of patching, as well as the status of rolling and non-rolling patch application. See Patchmgr syntax, and the patch set for additional information.

  • Firmware upgrades on database servers for ILOM/BIOS, InfiniBand HCA, and disk controller happen automatically during component replacements on racks running Oracle Linux and Oracle Solaris.

• Enhancements for Hardware Robustness

  • The time to recover from a bad sector on a hard disk has been reduced by 12 times.

  • The failure state of a hard drive or flash drive is rarely Boolean. Most devices slow down considerably before they fail. Slow and intermittent drives are detected much earlier, and failed by Oracle Exadata System Software before the drives reach predictive failure or a hard failure state.

  • If the ILOM on a storage server stops responding, then the management software can automatically reset the ILOM.

• Support for Oracle Solaris 11.1 (SRU 9.5.1)

  This release supports Oracle Solaris 11.1 SRU 9.5.1 on the database servers.