ORAchk 12.1.0.4 released – a MUST USE Tool

I have blogged a while back in March 2015 about ORAchk 12.1.0.3  as it had added the support for Oracle Restart amongst other great features.

ORAchk (short for: ORA check) is such a great tool to check your environment before any upgrade, but also on a regular basis for almost everything. I’d call it a MUST USE Tool not only for Oracle Grid Infrastructure or Oracle Restart upgrades or patches or changes. But also for EM Cloud Control 12c, EBS, Siebel, and of course your hardware.

The newest version of ORAchk 12.1.0.4 has been released.

The new ORAchk release 12.1.0.2.4 is now available to download.

General ORAchk features

• Proactively scans for the most impactful problems across the various layers of your stack
• Simplifies and streamlines how to investigate and analyze which known issues present a risk to you
• Lightweight tool that runs within your environment without requiring config data to be sent to Oracle
• High level reports show your system health risks with the ability to drill down into specific problems and understand their resolutions
• Can be configured to send email notifications when it detects problems
• Collection Manager, a companion Application Express web app, provides a single dashboard view of collections across your entire enterprise
• It does not cost anything!!!

Details of new features in ORAchk 12.1.0.2.4

Auto update ORAchk when newer version is available

New in this release, if ORAchk is older than 120 days and a newer version is not available locally it will check to see if a newer version is available on My Oracle Support and automatically download and upgrade.

Download of latest version directly from My Oracle Support can also be specifically triggered with “./orachk –download”.

If ORAchk is running in automated mode the daemon will automatically upgrade from local location defined by RAT_UPGRADE_LOC just before the next scheduled run. Email notification will be sent about the upgrade then ORAchk will continue with the scheduled run using the upgraded version, all without requiring you to restart the ORAchk daemon.

Expanded Oracle Product Support

ORAchk 12.1.0.2.4 now brings wider and deeper support throughout the Oracle product stack, with newly added support for the following product areas:

• Enterprise Manager OMS
• E-Business Suite Oracle Fixed Assets
• E-Business Suite Oracle Human Resources
• E-Business Suite Oracle Receivables
• Siebel CRM Application

See Document 1268927.2 for further details of the new product support.

Over 60 New Health Checks

This release of ORAchk adds new checks for some of the most impactful problems seen to Oracle Customer Support specifically in the areas of:

• Systems hardware settings to optimize encryption performance for the Database and E-Business Suite.
• Solaris & Siebel CRM Object Manager to ensure page sizes are set appropriately for Siebel CRM to handle large numbers of users.
• Database optimization of memory and resource related configurations and Application Continuity checks.
• Enterprise Manager OMS High impact problems that cause functional failure or difficulty with patching or upgrade.
• E-Business Suite Receivables detection of non-validated Receivables Accounting Definitions, which might prevent the Create Accounting process from functioning.
• E-Business Suite Fixed Assets checks for any books with an errored or incomplete depreciation run, to allow for resolution prior to month end close.
• E-Business Suite Human Resources verification of Setup Business Group configuration.
• Siebel Applications verification of the database configuration for stability, best practices and performance optimization.

–Mike