27 Upgrading Shared Oracle Management Agent

This chapter explains how you can upgrade Oracle Management Agents (Management Agent) that were installed using the shared Oracle home of an existing Management Agent. In particular, this chapter covers the following:

• Overview

• Prerequisites

• Upgrade Procedure

• After You Upgrade

Overview

Shared Oracle Management Agent refers to Oracle Management Agents installed using either the Shared Agent Deployment Wizard or the nfsagentinstall script. Typically, when you use one of these installation methods to install a Management Agent, the software binaries from a shared Oracle home of an existing Management Agent are used, and an EMSTATE directory is configured on each of the remote hosts.

The Management Agent that shares its software binaries, in this context, is called the Master Agent, and the one that is configured with an EMSTATE directory on the remote host is called the Shared Agents or NFS Agents.

To upgrade a Shared Agent, you must first upgrade the Master Agent that shares its software binaries. Once you upgrade the Master Agent, its associated Shared Agents get automatically upgraded.

You can upgrade the Master Agent using one of the upgrade methods described in Part V, "Upgrading Enterprise Manager System" and Part VI, "Upgrading Oracle Management Agent".

The upgrade process on the Master Agent is an out-of-place upgrade, that is, a new agent11g Oracle home is created. However, the upgrade process for the Shared Agent is an in-place upgrade, that is, only the EMSTATE directory is upgraded without creating any new directories.

For information about the EMSTATE directory, see What Is EMSTATE Directory?.

Prerequisites

Before upgrading the Master Agent, ensure that you meet the following prerequisites:

• Meet the prerequisites described for the upgrade methodology you choose to use for upgrading the Master Agent:

  • If you choose to upgrade the Master Agent using the Agent Upgrade Wizard, then meet the prerequisites described in Chapter 24, "Upgrading Oracle Management Agent Using Agent Upgrade Wizard".

  • If you choose to upgrade the Master Agent using a response file, then meet the prerequisites described in Chapter 25, "Upgrading Oracle Management Agent Using a Response File".

  • If you choose to upgrade the Master Agent using the agentDownload script, then meet the prerequisites described in Chapter 26, "Upgrading Oracle Management Agent Using agentDownload Script".

• Ensure that the installation base directory of the upgraded Master Agent (agent11g) is mounted and is visible from all remote hosts. For information about installation base directory, see What Is Installation Base Directory?.

• Ensure that the inventory directory of the Master Agent is maintained as the inventory directory of the Shared Agent as well. For example, if the inventory directory of the Master Agent is /scratch/oraInventory, then ensure that the inventory directory of the Shared Agent also is /scratch/oraInventory.

• Ensure that the oraInst.loc is present in either the EMSTATE directory, the central inventory (/etc/oraInst.loc), or the user's home directory.

Upgrade Procedure

You can upgrade the Master Agent using the upgrade procedures described in Part V, "Upgrading Enterprise Manager System" and Part VI, "Upgrading Oracle Management Agent".

After the Master Agent is upgraded, the Oracle home of the Master Agent will be fully configured and will share its binaries to other Shared Agents.

After You Upgrade

Typically, when you upgrade a Master Agent, the associated Share Agents also get automatically upgraded. However, Oracle recommends you to verify if all the Shared Agents have been successfully upgraded. To do so, navigate to the EMSTATE directory of each of the Shared Agents and run the following command to verify each of them.

<EMSTATE>/bin/emctl status agent

1. If the status is UP and if it shows that the upgraded Management Agent is running, then you should see two EMSTATE directories, mainly <EMSTATE> and <EMSTATE>_<timestamp>. While the former represents the upgraded Shared Agent, the latter represents a backup of the old <EMSTATE> directory.

   Navigate to the <EMSTATE> directory of the upgraded Shared Agent and review the following log files:

   <EMSTATE>/nfslog/NFSAgentUpgrade_<timestamp>.log

   <EMSTATE>/nfslog/NFSAgentUpgrade_API_<timestamp>.log

   <EMSTATE>/nfslog/NFSAgentUpgrade_CfmLogger_<timestamp>.log

   Note:

   You can delete the <EMSTATE>_<timestamp> directory after verifying the upgrade.

2. If the status is DOWN or if it shows that the previous release of the Management Agent is up and running, then you should see two EMSTATE directories, mainly <EMSTATE> and <EMSTATE>_<timestamp>.Upgrade_Failed. While the former represents the old <EMSTATE> directory, the latter represents the new <EMSTATE> directory for which the Shared Agent upgrade failed.

   • Navigate to the <EMSTATE>_<timestamp>.Upgrade_Failed directory and review the following log files:

     <EMSTATE>_<timestamp>.Upgrade_Failed/nfslog/NFSAgentUpgrade_<timestamp>.log

     <EMSTATE>_<timestamp>.Upgrade_Failed/nfslog/NFSAgentUpgrade_API_<timestamp>.log

     <EMSTATE>_<timestamp>.Upgrade_Failed/nfslog/NFSAgentUpgrade_CfmLogger_<timestamp>.log

   • Fix the issues identified in the log files.

   • Navigate to the <EMSTATE> directory and remove the following file:

     <EMSTATE>/agentpatch/6867392

   • Navigate to the <EMSTATE> directory and stop the Shared Agent by running the following command:

     <EMSTATE>/bin/emctl stop agent

   • Now, restart the Shared Agent by running the following command:

     <EMSTATE>/bin/emctl start agent

   Note:

   You can delete the <EMSTATE>_<timestamp>.Upgrade_Failed directory after upgrading the Shared Agent.