Autonomous Health Framework Version 24.4 Released

Oracle Autonomous Health Framework is a diagnostic and system performance framework designed to keep database systems healthy and running while minimizing human reaction time.

It's the same technology Oracle uses in the cloud to keep the Autonomous Database running, and it's available for you at no extra cost as part of your existing software support agreement.

Autonomous Health Framework 24.4 is released and available to download.

New Features in 24.4

• Preserving Oracle Database 23ai Availability and Performance From Day One
• Node Eviction Detection and Resolution
• Ability to Downgrade
• Automatic Diagnostic Collection for Database Performance Anomalies
• Faster Insights Report Generation
• Accessibility Improvements for Insights
• Diagnose and Resolve ORA-04030
• New Best Practice Checks

Preserving Oracle Database 23ai Availability and Performance From Day One

Autonomous Health Framework is included and fully integrated with Oracle Database 23ai.

Oracle announced Database 23ai general availability, with a focus on three key areas:

• AI for Data
• Dev for Data
• Mission Critical for Data

Oracle Autonomous Health Framework is fully integrated and included with Database 23ai out of the box. The first version of Database 23ai ships with Autonomous Health Framework 24.2 and every future Release Update will include new Autonomous Health Framework releases.

Use Autonomous Health Framework Insights to:

• Proactively view 23ai Database health checks, which check for and recommend resolutions to drifts from best practice configuration.
• Take a bird’s-eye view of your 23ai Database system
• Explore 23ai Database diagnostics, with AI powered anomaly detection and timeline analysis

For more information about Oracle Database 23ai see Oracle Database 23ai Free.

Node Eviction Detection and Resolution

Autonomous Health Framework Insight now provides a single page problem summary for node evictions, showing the detected node restart, the cause, evidence, and resolution steps.

Node evictions are one of the most problematic Oracle Grid Infrastructure (GI) issues. They can have a huge impact on service performance and used to be difficult to resolve, often requiring long engagements with Oracle Support to diagnose.

Autonomous Health Framework now automatically detects node evictions and generates a diagnostic collection containing an AHF Insights report.

The Insights report provides a single page problem summary, which brings together all data from Autonomous Health Framework components to show simply and succinctly what happened and how to avoid it in the future.

Detected node evictions are shown in the Problems panel of the Insights dashboard. From there users can drill down to a specific node eviction.

The page presents the Problem Summary containing:

• Problem – including which node was restarted and at what time.
• Reason – explaining why the node was restarted.
• Cause – explaining the root cause.
• Evidence – providing a bullet list audit trail detailing relevant OS and Database resource metrics, which were out of normal range leading up to the event.
• Resolution Steps – detailing in simple terms exactly how to resolve the problem.

Evidence is expandable, showing charts or log details to confirm the evidence.

This release provides the ability to detect node evictions caused by HugePages over allocation. Future releases will continue to expand to identify other node eviction causes.

An Autonomous Health Framework Insights report can also be generated on-demand by running: 

ahf analysis create --type insights

For more information on see the AHF user guide.

Ability to downgrade Autonomous Health Framework

Autonomous Health Framework now supports downgrading to the last version previously upgraded from, as long as it is less than 6 months old.

Autonomous Health Framework is installed with Grid Infrastructure, which also supports downgrading, however after a GI downgrade AHF used to become unusable because of broken GI Python and JDK dependencies.

Additionally, customers who had performed an Autonomous Health Framework install outside of GI were unable to downgrade, without losing configuration and event data.

This was because the Autonomous Health Framework installer would prevent a new install if it found a more recent version on the system. Customers had to uninstall the current version and reinstall an older one, there was no way to retain configuration or event data, which resulted in its loss.

Now Autonomous Health Framework supports downgrading to the last version previously upgraded from, if it is less than 6 months old. 24.4 is the first version you will be able to downgrade to.

During the downgrade process Autonomous Health Framework will:

1. Export configuration and event data from the installed version.
2. Remove the installed binaries.
3. Install the older binaries.
4. Import the exported configuration and event data.

To perform a downgrade

1. Find your eligible downgrade target version by running:

ahf software get-downgrade-target [--version] [–location]

2. Validate Installer by running:

ahf software validate-downgrade-installer --installer <installer file>

3. Run the following command using the downgrade target AHF installer:

ahf_setup -downgrade

If you do not have access to the Autonomous Health Framework installer from the previous version, contact Oracle Support to obtain it.

For more information about downgrading see the user guide.

Automatic Diagnostic Collection for Database Performance Anomalies

Autonomous Health Framework can now be configured to automatically collect diagnostic collections whenever it detects database performance anomalies.

Often by the time database anomalies are reported, it can be too late to capture important real-time diagnostic data.

Autonomous Health Framework can now detect the following database anomalies and trigger an automatic diagnostic collection:

• Controlfile Enqueue Hang
• Log File Sync Hang

The resulting collection contains all real-time data required for Oracle Support to help resolve the problem, from first failure.

To enable automatic anomaly collection run:

tfactl set chaAutoCollect=<on|off> -c

For more information on diagnostic collections see the Autonomous Health Framework User Guide.

Faster Autonomous Health Framework Insights Report Generation

Insights report generation has been optimized to be twice as fast as previous releases.

Customers rely on Autonomous Health Framework Insights for a bird’s-eye view of the entire system. It helps spot problems, drill into their root cause and understand how to resolve.

Insights report generation has now been optimized to be much faster.

Internal testing shows Autonomous Health Framework Insights is now twice as fast as previous releases to generate the report.

Autonomous Health Framework Insights is automatically included within Autonomous Health Framework diagnostic collections. It can also be generated on-demand using the command:

ahf analysis create --type insights

Transfer the resulting zip to a system with browser support, extract it and open index.html.

See the user guide for more information about Insights.

Accessibility Improvements for Autonomous Health Framework Insights

Accessibility improvements have been made to Autonomous Health Framework Insights, home button, navigation, and drawers.

Accessibility refers to the design and implementation of digital products and environments that are usable by all people, regardless of their abilities or disabilities. This includes ensuring that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with digital content and interfaces effectively.

As part of the efforts to provide the most accessible experience to our users, we are happy to introduce the next accessibility features for 24.4:

Accessible Home Button

We’ve revamped the Home tab to make it more user-friendly, especially for those using screen readers. Now, it behaves exactly like a tab should, eliminating any confusion caused by its previous behavior as a button.

Accessible Navigation:

Following on from the accessible Insights Timeline scrollbar introduced in the last release, this has now been replicated across the rest of Insights.

The old pagination component has been replaced with a sleek new scrollbar, making it easier to navigate through content without losing focus. The new scrollbar ensures a seamless browsing experience, especially for the users using screen readers.

Here are all the sections that include the new scrollbar:

• CLUSTER
• RECOMMENDED SOFTWARE
• DATABASES
• RPM LIST
• DB PARAMETERS
• KERNEL PARAMS
• SPACE ANALYSIS

Introducing Drawers:

Insights now uses drawers instead of expanding rows. As well as enhancing accessibility with built-in support for screen readers, the new draws bring a more streamlined look to the page.

Here are the sections using drawers in this release:

• PATCH ANALYSIS
• DATABASES

To get started with Autonomous Health Framework Insights run: ahf analysis create --type insights in the resulting zip file open the index.html.

To learn more about Autonomous Health Framework Insights see the user guide.

Diagnose and Resolve ORA-04030 using Autonomous Health Framework

Oracle Database has published a new Fix Flow article and video, showing how to use Autonomous Health Framework to diagnose and resolve ORA-04030 errors.

The error “ORA-04030: out of process memory when trying to allocate bytes“, occurs when an Oracle process runs out of operating system memory.

The error is caused by either:

• Exhausting total machine physical memory
• Exhausting designated space in the Program Global Area (PGA).

The Autonomous Health Framework team have created a new Fix Flow article showing how to use Autonomous Health Framework to collect diagnostic collections for this error. The article explains why the error occurs and gives step-by-step guidance to use AHF to capture a diagnostic collection, then how to use it to either find a resolution or get more help from Oracle Support.

Read more about ORA-04030.

For more information for how Autonomous Health Framework can help resolve database issues see the user guide on resolving database issues.

New Best Practice Checks

24.4 includes new best practice checks for both Exachk and Orachk.

New checks common to both Exachk and Orachk:

1. Verify no obsolete patches installed in ORACLE_HOME.
2. Dedicated Tablespace for Unified Audit Trail

All checks can be explored in more detail via the Health Check Catalogs:

• Orachk Health Check Catalog
• Exachk Health Check Catalog

Read more about best practice compliance checking with Exachk and Orachk.

Get started with Autonomous Health Framework today

To get started today download Oracle Autonomous Health Framework.