DBUA or Manual Upgrade ???

DataBase Upgrade Assistant or Manual Upgrade ???  If this question was asked to me a year or two back , I would have opted to use manual upgrade of oracle databases. DBUA in the past from my experiences had many bugs and issues. 
Once such experiences was DBUA helped me to upgrade on the Test and Development databases. On the production upgrade day it pulled my legs , I have to use the manual approach which I did not plan for.


Did Oracle make the DBUA better ? I think so yes. I used DBUA to upgrade three databases to 11gR2 and all went fine. Also I have made sure that all the pre-upgrade tasks are completely met so that the upgrade is not disturbed because of incorrect setting of some kernel settings or some missed operating system patches. Applying the PSU or CPU to the new Oracle Home also addresses some of the issues.


What has to be done when DBUA fails to do the upgrade ?
Well there are lots of reasons for the failure , but DBUA would stop the upgrade and then give back the option to continue with the upgrade manually after fixing the issue. There are other options that may help you to use DBUA again and rather spending time doing the manual upgrade. One such is to create a restore point prior to the upgrade and incase if DBUA fails in between , then you can restore the database to the flashback restore point and then apply the fix , retry DBUA.

Oracle Database PSU 11.2.0.3.1

Are you applying CPU 11.2.0.3 then consider applying PSU 11.2.0.3.1 as it contains the latest CPU and all the one-off fixes that makes you in sync with Oracle Support. I always make a practice of applying the latest PSU when upgrading database to the next release.

Patch Set Updates (PSUs) are proactive cumulative patches containing recommended bug fixes that are released on a regular and predictable schedule. PSUs are on the same quarterly schedule as the Critical Patch Updates (CPU), specifically the Tuesday closest to the 17th of January, April, July, and October.

The PSUs serve as a new baseline version for reporting issues to Oracle.

There are two latest PSU available
Patch 13343438 DATABASE PATCH SET UPDATE 11.2.0.3.1 (INCLUDES CPU JAN2012)
Patch 13348650 GRID INFRASTRUCTURE PATCH SET UPDATE 11.2.0.3.1 (INCLUDES DB PSU 11.2.0.3.1)

If you are having the Grid Infrastructure home and other database home you can consider applying Patch 13348650 which includes PSU for both the GI and DB Home.

I applied on the Upgraded ASM Home (GI Home) as root user

cat root.sh 
export ORACLE_HOME=/oracle/product/asm11.2
export PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin:$ORACLE_HOME/OPatch:$PATH
export PATCHTOP=/dev/stage/if/stage/11gR2/patchset
opatch auto $PATCHTOP -oh $ORACLE_HOME -ocmrf $ORACLE_HOME/asmocm.rsp

oracle@devdb[+ASM]$ sudo /home/oracle/root.sh
Last successful login:       Tue Feb  7 14:48:15 UTC 2012 
Last authentication failure: Tue Feb  7 13:22:14 UTC 2012 
Executing /usr/bin/perl /oracle/product/asm11.2/OPatch/crs/patch112.pl -patchdir /dev/stage/if/stage/11gR2 -patchn patchset -oh /oracle/product/asm11.2 -ocmrf /oracle/product/asm11.2/asmocm.rsp -paramfile /oracle/product/asm11.2/crs/install/crsconfig_params
opatch auto log file location is /oracle/product/asm11.2/OPatch/crs/../../cfgtoollogs/opatchauto2012-02-07_15-51-25.log
Detected Oracle Restart install
Using configuration parameter file: /oracle/product/asm11.2/crs/install/crsconfig_params
Successfully unlock /oracle/product/asm11.2
patch /dev/stage/if/stage/11gR2/patchset/13348650  apply successful for home  /oracle/product/asm11.2
patch /dev/stage/if/stage/11gR2/patchset/13343438  apply successful for home  /oracle/product/asm11.2
CRS-4123: Oracle High Availability Services has been started.
oracle@devdb[+ASM]$


The procedure can be used to apply the PSU on the DB Homes as well.




oracle@devdb[+ASM]$ $ORACLE_HOME/OPatch/opatch lsinventory|grep "Patch Set Update"
Patch Description:  "Database Patch Set Update : 11.2.0.3.1 (13343438)"
Patch Description:  "Grid Infrastructure Patch Set Update : 11.2.0.3.1 (13348650)"
oracle@devdb[+ASM]$

ASM 11g Release 2 and HP Disk Owner Patch

It is always fun with ASM. When upgrading from 11gR1 to 11gR2 ASM might not work properly in discovering the disks. There are some relevant bugs reported with the disk discovery issue when upgrading to 11.2.0.2

The fix is to apply PHCO_41479 which is the latest patch. In my case the server had a much lower version yet the same diskowner patch PHCO_40381.

11.2.0.3 did not have any issue when upgrade and discovering the asm disk with PHCO_40381.
Saved a big downtime in getting the September 2011 HPUX Bundle Patch

It is Database Upgrade Time !!!

With Database 11.1.0.7 Premier Support ending on August 2012 , I have signed up with my existing customer for Database Upgrade to 11.2.0.3. There are two productive environment with each having a test and development environment. Both the environment uses Oracle Warehouse Builder and Fusion Middleware BI Platforms. In total there are going to be 18 database upgrade on HPUX and SUSE platform.

Looks interesting but a lot of planning ahead.

Have started most of the necessary pre-work. I started my career with 10g Release 1 and have done a lots of upgrade. Now here with 11.2.0.3 I believe life is going to be easier with the upgrade process.

I will write about interesting facts that I come across the database upgrade. It is a two months project and I hope will be sharing my experience with the upgrade.