Third Workshop on Grid Provisioning and Patch Automation

I just conducted a successful third workshop in the Oracle Office at Singapore
on Grid Provisioning and Patch Automation. There were a lot of attendees.
Many who could not attend are asking for repeat seminars.

In the workshop, I introduced the clients to sophisticated Oracle Grid
technology, including RAC, Weblogic server clusters, the Coherence
in-memory data grid, ASM, Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM.
I interested a lot of attendees in Oracle VM pools with Enterprise Linux
as a future platform for the Grid. I explained the various Enterprise
Manager Packs, especially the Configuration Management Pack and
the Provisioning and Patch Automation Pack.

Using an Amazon installation of Oracle Enterprise Manager
Grid Control Release 5 with the Provisioning and Patch
Automation pack - thanks to one of my friends who loaned me
this Amazon installation - I was able to successfully demonstrate
patching of twelve 10g databases with 5 patches, showing the
power of Grid Automation. The clients were suitably impressed
by the technology capabilities of Grid Control. At the same time
I told them about Oracle’s support of the Cloud.

I also successfully demonstrated a RAC Rolling Patch upgrade
of a two node RAC cluster, again using the Provisioning and
Patch Automation Pack on Oracle demonstration servers.

The DBA attendees asked for:

Ability to backup the db before the patch is applied – this feature is coming
Ability to rollback patches using Grid Control – this feature is coming
Ability to use PBRUN etc for security – which is already there
Ability to do offline download of patches – already there
Ability to keep a log of all changes done via the Grid Control console
Ability to do in Grid Control 10g what can be done in Database Control 11g eg. REPLAY

I have given this feedback to Oracle development.

Future workshops can be seen on:
http://www.si-asia.com/marketing/oracleworkshops2009/

Interesting questions on Grid Control Patching Automation

In a recent Grid Control Webinar, I heard some interesting questions
by clients that were answered by the Grid Control patching automation
expert in Oracle, Hari, who also writes on this EM Blog. The configuration
question was answered by another Grid expert, Shahid.

I am sharing these answers with you.

Question: Can rollback of patches be done using Grid Control?

Answer: As a part of the procedure, there are validate steps if the patch is
rightly applied or not. Rollback is not available Out-of-box for now, but
you could insert the step into the framework using the metalink note
info - :577557.1

Question: May I know that how frequently Grid Control gathers
configuration changes?

Answer: It is upto you. The interval is configurable. e.g. in the compliance
scenario you would want to gather changes at real time while for standard
application configuration it may be done once or twice a day.

Question: How do I get the details on how to use sudo etc. for patching?

Answer: See the Administrator's guide for provisioning and patching.

Some more feedback on the article

Some more feedback on the article:

Another DBA wrote: "Porus, you are the man ... would love to go through your articles. Digging my heels back in Oracle after a while and I intend to go through your articles while in the process. Great Stuff. Great Work."

Another Team leader said:

"I went through some of your papers and they are really amazing I must say. I like the article on Grid Control Architecture and RMAN very much, as we often get this questions from the customers but do not know where to look for. This really gives a very good insight."

Thanks guys for your appreciation of the articles. I wrote them specifically to convince customers that the time is right to use Grid Control. I am happy that you and other readers like them.

Patch a Thousand Databases, Using Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control

I am happy to announce that a brand-new article of mine has been published on the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) on 3rd Sept 2009. The article is titled :

"Patch a Thousand Databases, Using Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control".

You can read the full article with all the illustrations at the following URL:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/havewala-patch1000.html

The article will allow you to "Get a tour of the automated patching capabilities now available to Oracle DBAs", especially the fantastic new Deployment Procedures.

Please read and tell your friends about it. I am sure you will find it very interesting.

I have received many good comments about this article, one of them on a LINKEDIN.COM Oracle discussion group was from a DBA Team Leader:

"Great article. Very comprehensive with screenshots and covers every details
in patching thru the Grid Control. A must read for every DBA. Thanks."

Enterprise Manager Blog assists Akshaya Patra

The Enterprise Manager Blog, as a part of its social responsibilities, has decided to
assist a worthwhile charity doing good work in India - "Akshaya Patra" which is
feeding thousands of school children in India everyday with a noonday meal.
This in turn will help their education. Akshaya Patra is well known for doing
a great job in India in this regard.

The charity is currently trying to achieve a target in Global Giving, and we
are hosting their widget at the side of this blog. Please give what you can to
help achieve their target. The direct link is also below.

http://www.globalgiving.com/projects/sponsor-school-meals-of-200-000-children-in-india/?RF=widget_small3304

The Blog normally talks only about Oracle Enterprise Manager and related matters, but
we made an exception in this case, since it is a chance to do a lot of young children some good.

Second Workshop showed Grid Control creating and managing Dataguard

We just conducted a highly successful second workshop in
the Oracle Office at Singapore. A number of large banks attended
besides other large corporates in Singapore. We had Solution
Architects, Lead Engineers, Database Engineers, Database
Managers , Asst Vice Presidents, IT Directors, and EVPs.

We explained the disaster recovery options from Oracle, introducing
the attendees to powerful Oracle products such as Normal Dataguard,
Active Dataguard, RAC, Streams, Oracle Transparent Gateways,
Replication, Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) and the newly acquired
Oracle Golden Gate software.

The Enterprise Manager Grid Control interface was used to demonstrate
the management and performance monitoring of the Data Guard configuration,
as well as the command line interface of Data Guard “dgmgrl” for the switchover.
The power of Enterprise Manager Grid Control was emphasized for setting
up and managing Oracle Data Guard, as also the Provisioning Pack
to clone Oracle software and databases.

The attendees were excited about the Oracle technology explained
and showcased, and mentioned it was an “excellent” or “great” seminar.

Future workshops can be ssen on:
http://www.si-asia.com/marketing/oracleworkshops2009/

Revisiting Patch Management - Patch Set Updates

First of the PSU (more like a beta) was released on Jul 17th for Oracle DB 10.2.0.4 across specific platforms of Unix.   Oracle will release PSUs every quarter (starting with July 2009) along with quarterly CPUs across Databases and Middleware.  PSUs will be a superset of CPUs and will have additional recommended patches from Oracle. These set of patches are tested in cohesion.

First patch in the series is patch number : 8576156  applicable on 10.2.0.4 Database. The application of this patch can be identified from the inventory by running – opatch lsinventory. 

PSU provides all high value, recommended patches for the Oracle Software. Based on the Patch Management cycle, factor in PSU for the future cycles of patch management.  Suggest once you take up the PSU track,stay on the course. Without which, resolving conflicts, getting specific MLRs will require significant efforts.As the readme of the PSU note reads.. “Once a PSU has been installed, the recommended way to get future security content is to apply subsequent PSUs. Reverting from PSU back to CPU, while possible, would require significant effort, and so is not advised” 

Application of PSU can be automated through Deployment procedures. Refer to My Oracle Support note: 864316.1

For the future (October 2009 and onwards) you will get Out-of-Box support for the PSU across various versions.

 

Related Links:

854428.1 - Intro to Patch Set Updates (PSU)