Database Reference
In-Depth Information
one or more ASM instances run different software releases and you are doing the rolling upgrade of the Oracle ASM
environment. Many of these rolling-upgrade features were available in releases prior to RAC 12c, but they are easier to
do with the GUI in Oracle 12cR1.
In order to apply the rolling upgrade for Oracle RAC software, the Oracle RAC home must be on a local file
system on each RAC node in the cluster, not in a shared file system. There are several types of patch for an Oracle RAC
database: interim patch, bundle patch, patch set upgrades (PSU), critical patch update (CPU), and diagnostic patch.
Before you apply a RAC database patch, check the readme to determine whether or not that patch is certified for the
rolling upgrade. You can also use the Opatch utility to check if the patch is a rolling patch:
$ opatch query -all <Patch_location> | grep rolling
If the patch is not a rolling patch, it will show the result “Patch is a rolling patch: false”; otherwise, it will show
“Patch is a rolling patch: true.”
You can use the OPatch utility to apply individual patches, not the patchset release to the RAC software. If the
upgrade can be performed using the rolling fashion, follow these steps to perform the rolling upgrade:
1.
Shut down the instance on one RAC node
2.
Shut down the CRS stack on this RAC node
3.
Apply the patch to the RAC home on that RAC node
4.
Start the CRS stack on the RAC node
5.
Start the RAC instance on the RAC node
6.
Repeat steps 1 to 4 on each of the other RAC nodes in the cluster
There is a special type of interim patch or diagnostic patch. These patches contain a single shared library, and do
not require shutting down the instance or relinking the Oracle binary. These patches are called online patches or hot
patches. To determine whether a patch is an online patch, check if there is an online directory under the patch and if
the README file has specified this patch to be online patchable. You can use the Opatch tool to apply an online patch
without shutting down the Oracle instance that you are patching. For example, Patch 10188727 is an online patch, as
shown in the patch directory:
$ cd <PATCH_TOP>/10188727
$ ls
etc/ files/ online/ README.txt
You also can query if the patch is an online patch by going to the patch direcory and running the following
command:
$ opatch query -all online
If the patch is an online patch, you should see something like this in the result for this command: “Patch is an
online patch: true.” You should not confuse this result with the query result of a rolling patch result, "Patch is a
rolling patch: true."
You should be aware that very few patches are online patches. Usually, online patches are used when a patch
needs to be applied urgently before the database can be shut down. It is highly recommended that at the next
database downtime the all-online patches should be rolled back and replaced with offline version of the patches.
Refer to MOS note ID 761111.1 for all the best practices when using online patches.
For those patches that are not certified for the rolling upgrade, if you have a physical standby configuration for
the database, you can use the Oracle Data Guard SQL apply feature and Oracle 11g Transient Logical standby feature
 
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