New TFA, ORAchk and EXAchk version 19.3 released

New Release
TFA, ORAchk & EXAchk 19.3
Now Available

ORAchk, EXAchk & TFA Combined into Autonomous Health Framework (AHF)

Oracle used to deliver three separate tools:

• ORAchk
• EXAchk
• Trace File Analyzer (TFA)

These are now combined into a single installer called Autonomous Health Framework (AHF).

This single platform specific installer for TFA, ORAchk and EXAchk can be installed either by root (recommended) or not-root users. The installer includes and builds on all functionality of the previous tools.

There is no change to the command-line tools, the same commands you used before will still work with this version.

orachk, exachk and tfactl can be found in the AHF_LOC/bin directory.

Engineered systems have AHF_LOC/bin/exachk and non-engineered systems have AHF_LOC/bin/orachk

TFA, ORAchk and EXAchk remain, a value add-on to the existing support contract. There is no extra fee or license required for use.

Automatic masking or sanitizing of sensitive information

After copies of diagnostic data are collected, TFA, ORAchk and EXAchk use Adaptive Classification and Redaction (ACR) to sanitize sensitive data in the collections.

ACR uses a machine learning based engine to redact a pre-defined set of entity types in a given set of files. ACR also sanitizes or masks entities that occur in path names.

• Sanitization replaces a sensitive value with random characters
• Masking replaces a sensitive value with a series of asterixes

ACR currently sanitizes the following entity types:

• Host names
• IP addresses
• MAC addresses
• Oracle Database names
• Tablespace names
• Service names
• Ports
• Operating system user names

ORAchk/EXAchk sanitization will convert sensitive data to a string of random characters.

To sanitize ORAchk/EXAchk output include the -sanitize option, e.g.:orachk -profile asm -sanitize

You can also sanitize post process by passing in an existing log, html report or zip file, i.e.: orachk -sanitize {file_name}

TFA diagnostic collections can be redacted (sanitized or masked). To enable automatic redaction use tfactl set redact=[mask|sanitize|none] (default is none)

Alternatively collections can be redacted on-demand e.g.: tfactl diagcollect -srdc ORA-00600 -mask or tfactl diagcollect -srdc ORA-00600 -sanitize

If you want to reverse lookup a sanitized value, use orachk/exachk -rmap e.g.: orachk -rmap pu406jKxg,kEvGFDT will print the real values associated with those sanitized values

Note: orachk -rmap can also be used to lookup a value sanitized by TFA.

Problem repair automation options

ORAchk and EXAchk now have the capability to automatically fix problems when found.

Certain checks have a repair command associated with them.

If you want to see what the repair command actually does you can use orachk -showrepair {check_id}

To run the repair commands include one of the following options:

orachk -repaircheck all

orachk -repaircheck {check_id},[{check_id},{check_id}..]

orachk -repaircheck {file}

Where {check_id} refers to specific check(s) you want to repair or {file} contains a list of check ids to be repaired

Performance improvements in diagnostic collection & DBA tools

TFA indexes diagnostic data, which is used for DBA tools and diagnostic collections. The indexing has been changed to improve the performance.

This change results in lower CPU usage and faster average execution times for diagnostic collections and the running of DBA tools such as ls, grep, tail, vi etc.

If you do not use the DBA tools and are prepared to wait longer for DBA tool execution to complete, you can disable this indexing by running

tfactl set indexInventory=false

Additionally when TFA is run on an Exadata machine cell collection now takes place in parallel and uses EXAchk to call diagpack for improved performance.

New Service Request Data Collections (SRDCs)

This release includes new SRDCs.

As with all other SRDCs use tfactl diagcollect -srdc srdc_name.

• ahf: Oracle ORAchk or Oracle EXAchk problems (to be run after running with -debug)
• dbacl: Problems with Access Control Lists (ACLs)
• dbaqgen: Problems in an Oracle Advanced Queuing Environment
• dbaqmon: Queue Monitor (QMON) problems
• dbaqnotify: Notification problems in an Oracle Advanced Queuing Environment
• dbaqperf: Performance problems in an Oracle Advanced Queuing Environment
• dbparameters: Oracle Database single instance shutdown problems
• emagtpatchdeploy: Enterprise Manager 13c Agent patch deployment problems
• emagentperf: Enterprise Manager 13c Agent performance problems
• emagentstartup: Enterprise Manager 13c Agent startup problems
• emfleetpatching: Enterprise Manager Fleet Maintenance Patching problems
• empatchplancrt: Enterprise Manager patch plan creation problems
• exservice: Exadata: Storage software service or offload server service problems
• ORA-25319: for ORA-25319 problems
• ORA-01000: for ORA-01000 problems
• ORA-00018: for ORA-00018 problems

ORAchk and EXAchk integration with Database AutoUpgrade & Cluster Verification Utility (CVU)

Both CVU and the database AutoUpgrade tool (in analyze mode) are run by ORAchk & EXAchk in -preupgrade mode

All findings from AutoUpgrade and CVU are cross verified to avoid duplication and contradiction.

Results are included in the ORAchk/EXAchk report output.

CVU checks are only run when a CVU version of 11.2.0.4 or greater if found on the system.

CVU related options:

• -cvuhome where to find the CVU installation
• -cvuonly only run CVU checks

ORAchk support for ODA X8 machines

ORAchk now provides support for ODA X8 machines.

ORAchk and EXAchk support for generic asymmetrical oracle_homes

ORAchk and EXAchk used to require all oracle homes to be present on all database servers. If they were not you would see issues such as skipped checks.

ORAchk and EXAchk now support asymmetrical oracle_homes, so it does not require the same oracle_home to exist on each node of the cluster.

EXAchk support for Oracle Exadata using RoCE InfiniBand

RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) is a network protocol that allows remote direct memory access (RDMA) over an Ethernet network.

EXAchk release 19.3 adds support for RoCE InfiniBand for Oracle Exadata. There are no checks for InfiniBand switches and fabrics when run on RoCE InfiniBand for Oracle Exadata. If the -profile switch is used, it will throw an error saying it is not a supported profile.