December 21, 2018

ODA Server Patch 18.3 available - and installed ...

Since today, Oracle Database Appliance software release 18.3.0.0.0 is available ... I took the chance to download and install the new release - this is the story:

Initial Situation:

I tested the update on an ODA X7-2M with system version 12.2.1.4.0, running five databases (12.1). There are three vlans configured on that system.

Documentation used:

Installation Instruction was taken from docs.oracle.com, Oracle Database Appliance, Release 18.3, X7-2 Deployment and User's Guide for Linux x86-64, Chapter 7 Patching Oracle Database Appliance, subchapter 'Patching Oracle Database Appliance Using the CLI'

Remarks:

- You have to download about 15GB - just for the system update, DB 18.x is around 4GB
- do not copy the update software to a NFS share and do not run the update from this directory
- if You are using NFS shares, be sure that a df -h comes back immediately. With my testsystem I had two NFS Filesystems which were not reachable at all, resulting in a 'never-come-back' df -h - this, in turn, resulted in a stuck Server Patching at step 'Configuring GI'. After I umounted those FS (by using the -f switch), the patching continued
- qosmserver has to run and a crs resource ora.net1.network has to be configured
- the patch documentation is missing the hint to first update dcsagent (odacli upgrade-dcsagent -v 18.3.0.0.0), but it's a prerequisite
- remove any 'non-default' entries from oracle's .bash_profile prior to the update
- Step 'Setting AUDIT SYSLOG LEVEL' had a status 'Failure' at the end of the update process - overall status of the update was - nevertheless - successful (will check the reason for that failure later)
- Installation documentation says after step 'apply the server update' to check if the update was successful and then to issue an 'odacli update-storage'. ATTENTION! After a successful update, the server will reboot! Wait until the system is up again before You start the update-storage command!
- Server reboot took about 10 Minutes with my X7-2M
- Documentation example for 'Update the storage components' is not correct: use '--rolling' or '-r' instead of '-rolling'
- update-storage using the '--rolling' option is not supported on ODAlite

That's it

The whole process took slightly more than one hour - and remember: the system reboots after an successful 'odacli update-server' (!)



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December 7, 2018

ODA - Update to 12.2.1.4 - issue with ora.net1.network

Yesterday, I had to update an ODA from Release 12.1.2.12 to 12.2.1.4 . All prerequisite checks including prepatchreport were successful ... but the update itself not!

During the update, at stage 'GI Home Cloning', the update process failed and left the system in an 'unknown' state. A detailled analysis has shown the root cause: crs service qosmserver is missing. So, I tried to setup this missing link to a successful update:

srvctl add qosmserver
srvctl status qosmserver
srvctl start qosmserver

But, qosmserver could not be started - resource 'ora.net1.network' is missing. Well, that's absolutely true - we do not have such a resource defined for our ODAs. Finally changed the first of our vlan definitions to ora.net1.network and could start qosmserver.

Unfortunately and because of the interrupted update, GI is now using its 12.2 home, but odacli describe-component shows, that the current home is the old 12.1 - that finally results in a situation where I cannot run update-server again (GI Home Cloning fails, because the new GI Home already exists)

Outcome: As additional prerequisite, check, wether or not the resource ora.net1.network exists on Your ODA and be sure qosmserver is up and running BEFORE starting an 'odacli update-server'.



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