Applying database and CRS patches on Exadata

A friend asked: "Could you share what is the best practise for appling rolling patches

on database, grid infrastructure and Storage cells on EXADATA environment, we

are using half rack node in our environment?"

My reply:

You can have a look at Enterprise Manager's Provisioning and Patch Automation pack,

which can automate the application of rolling patchs on database and Grid Infrastructure.

It is worthwhile to spend a few extra dollars on Enterprise Manager packs to aid

with managment of complicated Exadata machines - and EM managment of Exadata is

going to get better and better! Get the customer to agree on the management

software cost (EM). It will definitely help them in the long run. EM will be

able to centrally manage Exadata machines in the organization, find performance

issues, patch and upgrade the database, etc.

In reality, CRS/RAC patching is used extensively by Enterprise Manager Grid Control customers for RAC databases. We have had good success stories in the real world. In Exadata, there are mostly 8 nodes in the RAC database so It makes sense to use the automated patch deployment procedures in the Provisioning and Patch automation pack of Grid Control when we can have rolling patch upgrades automatically handled by the deployment procedure. It is not rocket science.

Remember to apply the OMS cumulative patches first, of course. Core DBAs should remember that this is a way to ease their manual work and their late nights, especially if CPU/PSU patches are to be applied every three months (as per Oracle recommendations) to the RAC databases. Fundamentally, give it a whirl. If the pre-reqs pass, the patching will work. If not, you can either fix the issues or do the patching manually if you prefer.

Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Forum

On 24th August, I spoke as one of the two Oracle speakers in the Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Forum, a large event held at St. Regis hotel, Singapore. My co-speaker was Peter Yu. We introduced a lot of people to the new capabilities of Enterprise Manager 11g, such as the Sun Ops Center, Business Transaction management, and Real User Experience Insight (RUEI). The attendees were astonished as to what is possible in Enterprise Manager today. Here are a few photos of the event.

Another comment on the new book

Comments from Sandesh Rao, Director, RAC Assurance team, Oracle on my new book on Grid Control:

Sandesh Rao said: "looking forward to it , would be interesting if you cover cases for upgrades for different versions of EM and would you be covering the recent 11.1 which was released as it changes with the installation procedure and having the Weblogic tier and db pre-ready before the install and other experiences of people with 10's of thousands of targets and what their upgrade experiences have been."

I replied:

"Sandesh, thanks for your kind words. Yes, I believe it wil be the very first book on Oracle Enterprise Manager that covers version 11.1 and also includes the Sun Ops center. Do recommend it to clients - it is a fantastic look at what Grid Control is capable of today, and would be of interest to a lot of IT people - DBAs, Sys Admins, IT Managers, Application Admins, and so on. Grid Control is the present and the future of Oracle management."