Tag Archives: Patch

Patching OCW for OH

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If you search around about how to patch Oracle Database you will find a lot of blog posts teaching how to patch your Oracle Home (OH) (I will not put the list here because it will be enormous – but just follow Mike Dietrich). But most of them write nothing about OCW, how to patch it, or if it is needed to patch OCW.  And unfortunately, even Oracle is not clear about that.

Just to complement, recently Liron Amitzi got one issue related to OCW. And if you search more, you will find that Frits Hoogland wrote something about it too. But in the end, need I to concern about OCW? And, what is OCW?

OCW

OCW means Oracle Clusterware, and basically is the core for the Grid Infrastructure, it is everything there. But for OH is important too because if the database needs to communicate with GI Clusterware it uses the OCW binaries/libraries that are at OH (like srvctl, crstctl) to do that. So, if have some kind of bug at this portion of OCW, it needs to be patched.

The point is that the only place that you can find the OCW patch is under the GI RU patch. Look at the readme for last GI RU 19.8.0.0.200714 (Patch 31305339):

And if you look at the readme for DB RU 19.8.0.0.200714 (Patch 31281355) there is no reference to the OCW patch. So, if apply just the DB RU the OCW will not be updated.

And just to remember you that patch 31305087 does not exist alone to be downloaded:

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Patch ODA from 18.3 to 19.8. Part 4 – 19.7 to 19.8

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The process of patch ODA is not complicated but requires attention over some steps. The 19.6 version was the first that was possible to patch from 18.8 version, and the version that allows upgrades to newer. If you want to go directly to 19.5 you need to reimage of the appliance. In this post, I will cover the process that I made recently to patch from 18.3 to 19.8 version.

The fourth part covers the upgrade from 19.7 to 19.8. I separate so you can use this as a direct guide from 19.6 to 19.7 if you need to do just this update. Parts of this post are similar to the upgrade from 19.6 to 19.7 that I described in the previous post.

Patch Matrix

The matrix of what can be done can be found at this post from ODA blog, and you can check below:

Another important detail is to check the MOS note ODA: Quick Reference Matrix for Linux Release and Kernel by ODA Hardware Type and Version (Doc ID 2680219.1) and verify if your hardware is still compatible.

Remember that in this process, the ODA will reboot several times, so, you need to inform your teams that databases will be unavailable during the process.

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Patch ODA from 18.3 to 19.8. Part 3 – 19.6 to 19.7

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This is the third part of the ODA patch series, from 18.3 to 19.8. I separate in multiple parts and you can use this part as a direct guide to patch ODA from 19.6 to 19.7. Each part can be used alone since they cover all the needed steps. Some steps of this post are similar to the upgrade from 18.8 to 19.6 that I described in the previous post.

The process of patch ODA is not complicated but requires attention over some steps. The 19.6 version was the first that was possible to patch from 18.8 version, and the version that allows upgrades to newer. If you want to go directly to 19.5 you need to reimage of the appliance. In this post, I will cover the process that I made recently to patch from 18.3 to 19.8 version. 

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Patch ODA from 18.3 to 19.8. Part 2 – 18.8 to 19.6

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This is the second part of the ODA patch series, from 18.3 to 19.8. I separate in multiple parts and you can use this second as a direct guide to patch ODA from 18.8 to 19.6. Each part can be used alone since they cover all the needed steps. Parts of this post are similar to the upgrade from 18.3 to 18,8 that I described in my previous post.

The process of patch ODA is not complicated but requires attention over some steps. The 19.6 version was the first that was possible to patch from 18.8 version, and the version that allows upgrades to newer. If you want to go directly to 19.5 you need to reimage of the appliance. In this post, I will cover the process that I made recently to patch from 18.3 to 19.8 version.

Click here to read more…

Patch ODA from 18.3 to 19.8. Part 1 – 18.3 to 18.8

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The process of patch ODA is not complicated but requires attention over some steps. The 19.6 version was the first that was possible to patch from 18.8 version, and the version that allows upgrades to newer. If you want to go directly to 19.5 you need to reimage of the appliance. In this post, I will cover the process that I made recently to patch from 18.3 to 19.8 version.

The first part covers the upgrade from 18.3 to 18.8.

Patch Matrix

The matrix of what can be done can be found at this post from ODA blog, and you can check below:

Another important detail is to check the MOS note ODA: Quick Reference Matrix for Linux Release and Kernel by ODA Hardware Type and Version (Doc ID 2680219.1) and verify if your hardware is still compatible.

Remember that in this process, the ODA will reboot several times, so, you need to inform your teams that databases will be unavailable during the process.

Click here to read more…

ZDLRA, Patch/Update the Recovery Appliance

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The process of patch ZDLRA is not complicated, but it is important to be aware of some details. The most important is from where you are until where you want to go. This is crucial because it will define what commands you will need to execute.

If you read the previous post about the process, you can notice that I was running the ZDLRA 12.2 version, and forwarded to 19.2 version. In that case, I needed to use the upgrade path since I was changing the major release and the racli commands had the “upgrade” parameter.

In this post I will show how to do a simple update (or patch apply) for ZDLRA, this means that I will remain inside the same major release for recovery appliance library. Some steps and checks are the same.

Whatever you need to do (patch or upgrade), the startup point it is the note 1927416.1 that cover the supported versions for ZDLRA. There it is possible to find all the supported versions for the recovery appliance library as well as the Exadata versions. Please, not upgrade the Exadata stack with a version that is not listed on this page.

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Exadata and ZDLRA, Patch Exadata Stack

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The process to patch Exadata stack and software changed in the last years and it became easier. Now, with patchmgr to be used for all (database servers, storage cells, and switches) the process is much easier to control the steps. Here I will show the steps that are involved in this process.

Independent if it is ZDLRA or Exadata, the process for Engineering System is the same. So, this post can be used as a guide for the Exadata patch apply as well. In 2018 I already made a similar process about how to patch/upgrade Exadata to 18c (you can access here) and even made a partial/incomplete post for 12c in 2015.

The process will be very similar and can be done in rolling and non-rolling mode. In the first, the services continue to run and you don’t need to shutdown databases, but will take more time because the patchmgr applies server by server. At the second, you need to shutdown the entire GI and the patch is applied in parallel and will be faster.

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