Review the Oracle Database Upgrade Guide for deprecation and desupport information that may affect upgrade planning.

Oracle Database Upgrade Guide

Verify the current operating system is supported for the new release

Confirm that you are using a supported operating system, patch release, and all required operating system packages for the new Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation.

Upgrade to a later Oracle release if required

On the Windows platform, to upgrade Oracle Clusterware from releases 10.2.0.5 and 11.1.0.7 to release 12.1, you must perform an interim upgrade to 11.2.0.4 for Oracle Clusterware.

Patch set (recommended)

Install the latest patch set release for your existing installation. Upgrades from some earlier patchset releases might not be supported.

Move any files stored on OCFS for Windows or raw devices to a supported storage mechanism

Migrate OCR files from raw devices to Oracle ASM. Direct use of raw devices is not supported. OCFS on Windows is no longer supported.

Confirm Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR) file integrity. If this check fails, then repair the OCRs before proceeding.

Install user account

Confirm that the installation user you plan to use is the same as the installation user that was used to perform the installation you want to upgrade.

Oracle Home user

If the Oracle home from which you run the database upgrade uses a Windows Domain User as the Oracle Home User, then the Oracle Home User on the target version must use the same Windows Domain User.

Create a Grid home

Create a new Oracle Grid Infrastructure Oracle home (Grid home) where you can extract the image files. All Oracle Grid Infrastructure upgrades (upgrades of existing Oracle Clusterware and Oracle ASM installations) are out-of-place upgrades.

Instance names for Oracle ASM

Confirm that the Oracle Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM) instances use standard Oracle ASM instance names

The default ASM SID for a single-instance database is +ASM, and the default SID for ASM on Oracle Real Application Clusters nodes is +ASMnode#, where node# is the node number. With Oracle Grid Infrastructure 11.2.0.1 and later, nondefault Oracle ASM instance names are not supported.

If you have nondefault Oracle ASM instance names, then before you upgrade your cluster, use your existing release srvctl to remove individual Oracle ASM instances with nondefault names, and add Oracle ASM instances with default names.

Network Addresses for standard Oracle Grid Infrastructure deployments

For standard Oracle Grid Infrastructure installations, confirm the following network configuration:

• The private and public IP addresses are in unrelated, separate subnets. The private subnet should be in a dedicated private subnet.

• The public and virtual IP addresses, including SCAN addresses, are in the same subnet (the range of addresses permitted by the subnet mask for the subnet network).

• Neither private nor public IP addresses use a link local subnet (169.254.*.*).

CVU Upgrade Validation

Use Cluster Verification Utility (CVU) to assist you with system checks in preparation for starting an upgrade.

Unset Environment variables

As the user that will be performing the upgrade, unset the environment variables %ORACLE_HOME% and %ORACLE_SID% as follows:

C:\> set ORACLE_BASE=
C:\> set ORACLE_HOME=
C:\> set ORACLE_SID=

Check that the ORA_CRS_HOME environment variable is not set. Do not use ORA_CRS_HOME as an environment variable, except under explicit direction from Oracle Support.

RACcheck Upgrade Readiness Assessment

Download and run the RACcheck Upgrade Readiness Assessment to obtain automated upgrade-specific health check for upgrades to Oracle Grid Infrastructure. See My Oracle Support note 1457357.1, which is available at the following URL:

https://support.oracle.com/rs?type=doc&id=1457357.1

Back Up the Oracle Software Before Upgrades

Before you make any changes to the Oracle software, Oracle recommends that you create a backup of the Oracle software and databases.

For Oracle software running on Windows operating systems, you must also take a backup of the Windows registry.

Without a registry backup, you will not be able to restore the Oracle software to a working state if the upgrade of Oracle Grid Infrastructure or Oracle Database fails and you want to revert to the previous software installation.