My favorite Oracle 12cR2 Multitenant Enhancements

Introduction

Oracle 12c Release 1 (12.1) introduced the new Multitenant architecture which is the highlight feature of Oracle 12c. The main purpose of Multitenant architecture is to simplify Database Consolidation by allowing to have multiple Pluggable Databases which are associated to the same instance or instances (in case of RAC). Each pluggable database is a self-contained, independent Database with its own schemas, data, etc. Pluggable Database is a “regular” Database from the application standpoint. This is a new paradigm compared to previous releases (i.e. pre 12c) which allowed to have only one single database associate to an Oracle instance. You can read more about Multitenant in my blog post here.

Oracle Multitenant 12c Release 1 - The Main Challenges

Even though Oracle 12c Multitenant announcement was very exciting, it still had several areas in the first release of Oracle 12c (i.e. 12cR1) which were problematic for DBAs - I've wrote a blog post this named "Where Oracle 12c Multitenant can (and should) be improved". The main items are:

• Flashback Database - In Oracle 12cR1 there is no PDB-level flashback database. It is only possible to flash back the entire Container Database (CDB) with all its associated PDBs. This effectively means that all the PDBs lose data during a Flashback Database operation.
• Memory Resource Management - Oracle 12c allows to ensure quality of service by defining resource plan via Oracle DBRM feature (Database Resource Manager) in order to prioritize CPU resources to pluggable databases across the container; however, in Oracle 12cR1 there is no way to limit or prioritize the memory usage by competing pluggable databases within the same CDB.
• PDB Cloning - Oracle 12c allows fast provisioning by cloning a PDB from another PDB within the same CDB or by cloning a PDB from another PDB in a remote CDB. The only problem is that Oracle 12cR1 support "cold cloning", i.e. the source PDB must be in a READ ONLY mode which essentially means that a down time is required during the clone operation. 

My Favorite Oracle Multitenant 12c Release 2 Enhancements

Based on Oracle's "Oracle Multitenant 12cR2 New Features" white paper, all of the above challenges were addressed in the latest 12cR2:

• Flashback Database - Flashback PDB is now fully supported with Oracle 12R2. In order to enable this feature, Oracle introduced the concept of local undo in 12cR2 which allows a PDB to have its own undo (In Oracle 12cR1 the undo was shared for the entire CDB). Please note that the shared undo mode is still supported in 12cR2.
• Memory Resource Management - Now with Oracle 12cR2, it is possible to set the following parameters at PDB level (which were previously modifiable only at CDB level):
• SGA_TARGET
• SGA_MIN_SIZE (new in 12.2)
• DB_CACHE_SIZE
• DB_SHARED_POOL_SIZE
• PGA_AGGREGATE_LIMIT
• PGA_AGGREGATE_TARGET
• PDB Cloning - "Hot Clone" is now supported with Oracle 12cR2, i.e. it is possible to clone a PDB while the source PDB is in OPEN READ WRITE mode; hence, the on-line cloning is available without interrupting operations in the source PDB. 

Additional cool 12cR2 Multitenant Enhancements 

Additional great 12c Multitenant features which I believe worth mentioning are:

• 4K PDBs Per Container - In Oracle 12cR1, the maximum number user pluggable databases per CDB was 252. Now with Oracle 12cR2, the limit has been increased to 4,096.
• Lockdown profiles - This feature allows to define granular control over network access, common users, common objects, and administrative features. For example, it can be used to limit developers that in a specific PDB, they can execute ALTER SYSTEM SET command only to set a specific parameter like plsql_warnings. This is done by defining a lockdown profile and apply it to the PDB. This feature could be very useful in some cases as we probably don't wont to grant the ALTER SYSTEM SET to developers as they should not have permissions to change other parameters.
• Character Set at PDB Level - In Oracle 12cR1, character set was defined at CDB level, i.e. all PDBs within the same CDB must be defined with the same character set. Now with Oracle 12cR2, it is possible to define different character sets for different PDBs with the same CDB.
• AWR at PDB Level - In Oracle 12cR1, all the AWR data was stored at the CDB root container (CDB$ROOT), meaning that if a DBA unplugs a PDB and plugs it into a different CDB, all the AWR data will be lost. Now with Oracle 12cR2, AWR data is available at PDB level.
• Data Guard Broker - Now allows to perform a "PDB" level failover. The way it is implemented is by having 2 pairs of CDBs in 2 servers - one pair for the primary and another pair for the standby, with replication in opposite directions. Once a PDB fails, the standby counterpart can be moved to the other CDB within the same server. Since no physical movement of copying files is required (as this involves shared storage), this process can be done with minimum downtime. This feature effectively allows a PDB-level failover to standby without having to fail over the entire CDB.
• Refreshebale PDB - This new feature allows to have a cloned PDB that can be refreshed from another PDB either manually (on-demand) or automatically (scheduled refresh). The way this works is by creating a full clone at first stage (which can be taken with no downtime now with the new 12cR2 hot clone feature), and then there is no need to perform a full clone again because this feature allows applying incremental redo since the last clone or the last refresh time. This could be very useful in scenarios that the source PDB is very large and we would like to avoid creating a full clone to the entire PDB from scratch every time, because this process takes a long time when the PDB is very large. By having to apply only the incremental redo since last refresh or last clone, the process of having up to date cloned PDB for dev/test purposes becomes much faster and easier.

Summary

Oracle 12cR2 introduced several significant Multitenant enhancements. In this post, I've listed my favorite Oracle 12cR2 Multitenant enhancements. Note that Oracle 12cR2 is currently available only in Oracle Cloud and not in "regular" on premise deployments.