Database Reference
In-Depth Information
The patching process consists of three phases, and those phases provide a certain level of flexibility. For example,
an application and a functional team may decide to adopt a six-month patching cycle, and the infrastructure group
still could patch the infrastructure components on a three-month basis. Such an approach of skipping alternating
patches to the database may reduce application testing activities if an organization decides that such is necessary.
Patching Flow
The following two subsections discuss the overall flow of patching in the ODA environment. The first section gives the
general sort of flow one might normally encounter. The second section specifically focuses on the three steps specific
to the ODA.
General Patching Flow
Figure
8-1
represents the Oracle Database Appliance general patching process flow. It isn't too different from a
traditional system's patching cycle. As with any system, testing the patch's application process is an important step
in the Oracle Database Appliance patching life cycle. Your team should get comfortable with the patching process
steps, document them, and measure the downtime necessary each time you patch. The functional team
should do a reasonable amount of testing in the test and development environments before moving patches to the
production system.
Figure 8-1.
Patching in the general case
