Thanks Tim for coming up with this idea! Pretty neat… And THANK YOU OTN!!
There are quite a few features I like in the Oracle Database, but today I choose ORAchk (and EXAchk). Troubleshooting and diagnostics are my favorite area and I was amazed by the enhancements Oracle made in integrating the various diagnostics tools and preserving history. And ORA/EXAchk is a no-cost tool, provided by Oracle, enhanced every quarter with more and more health checks…
ORAchk and EXAchk tools started as just another configuration verification tool (used to be called RACcheck). ORAchk (for non-Engineered systems) and EXAchk (for engineered systems) grown into a “product” from a “tool”. This is evident in 12.2, as the documentation from a simple MOS note grown into a full document User Guide.
What’s cool is that ORAchk and EXAchk can be daemonized to run these checks periodically. The daemon can also purge old reports based on the retention policy you set. The most favorite enhancement I like is the ability to compare two reports. Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk automatically compare the two most recent HTML reports and generate a difference report, when run in an automated daemon mode.
To manually compare two reports, orachk (or exachk) can be invoked with the -diff option.
$ ./orachk –diff report1 report2 $ ./exachk –diff report1 report2
The comparison report’s sections are very appropriate.
- Difference between report 1 and report 2 (status change of checks)
- Unique findings in report 1 (issues that were fixed)
- Unique findings in report 2 (new issues after report 1)
- Common findings in report 1 and 2 (issues that were not fixed)
Oracle Health Check Collections Manager is another cool application that comes with these tools, where the ORAchk (and EXAchk) results can be uploaded to an Oracle database APEX workspace for analysis and reporting. ORAchk (and EXAchk) can be configured to automatically upload check results to the Oracle Health Check Collections Manager database. Specify the connection string and the password to connect to the database to upload collection results. Oracle Health Check Collections Manager stores the connection details in an encrypted wallet.
If you have not run ORAchk recently, it’s time to download and run the check today. And, don’t forget to schedule it! Forgot to mention, since 12.1.0.2.5 version you have the ability to Create User Defined Checks too!
Download ORAchk – My Oracle Support Note 1268927.2
While you are there, check out TFA (Trace File Analyzer: MOS 1513912.2) and CHM (Cluster Health Monitor: MOS 1328466.1) as well!