Announcement of De-Support of using RAW devices in Oracle Database Version 12.1 (Doc ID 578455.1)

Last updated on MARCH 30, 2022

Applies to:

Details

De-Support of Raw

The purpose of this document is to announce the de-support of raw devices in Oracle Database 12.1release. This means, customers can no longer keep their data files, OCRs or Voting disks on raw devices in Oracle Database version 12.1 - not even during upgrades to this version. 

Reasons

In the past, clustered databases required raw devices. However raw devices were cumbersome to manage and are no longer required.  

Details of the Announcement

Starting with Oracle Database version 12.1 (release date TBD), support for storing data files, spfiles, controlfiles, online redo logfiles, OCRs and voting files on raw devices directly will end. This means commands such as the following will report an error while attempting to use raw devices directly in Oracle Database Version 12.1:

Actions

If raw devices are not being used directly in the current release then no further actions need to be taken. However, if raw devices are being used directly currently, then planning should be performed to migrate respective files off raw devices. There are many choices currently to replace raw devices, including Oracle ASM, NFS, and supported cluster file systems.


This announcement applies to both, Oracle Single Instance and Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) database.

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