The Grumpy DBA Blogs . . .

11gR2 is Available! September 1, 2009

Finally! I have been holding my breath on this announcement for almost 18 months since I was invited to be on the RAC/ASM Beta test team for 11gR2. It has been a long road and have had to keep my mouth shut myriad times at Openworld last year and IOUG Collaborate back in May.  I have not been this excited about a release since Oracle 10g.  This is what a grid is supposed to be.  The changes to RAC and ASM alone will take me several posts, but I will get out as much information as I can as quickly as I can.

Let’s just start this way, for RAC, 11gR2 is a quantum shift. 11gR1 is essentially the same clusterware as 10gR2, fixes but no major changes. R2 redefines the game. While you can use the old style RAC clusters, R2 offers the way out of defining nodes by name and number and allows on the fly provisioning across clusters. Other new features include:

1. moving ASM into the cluster (one less Oracle_Home to worrry about)
2. storing OCR and voting disks within ASM
3. the use of a SCAN to remove the need of clients knowing VIPs
4. the use of GNS (Grid Naming Service) to take advantage of Grid Plug’n'Play in expanding a cluster on the fly
5. ASM filesystem (ACFS)

I will delve more into these and other subjects in the near future.  I have been working on 11gR2 for quite a while now and while there are lofty expectations, 11gR2 will be there to meet them all.

A word of warning, however, don’t click the video tab on the link above, or you will have to stare at my mug! I couldn’t see a thing without my glasses while being filmed!