About Performing an Upgrade

The information in this section is a general overview of the Upgrade Manager and the steps you take to upgrade a cluster. Specific details are provided by My Oracle Support.

When you upgrade a cluster, the Upgrade Manager uses upgrade scripts to automate the process wherever possible. The Upgrade Manager performs pre-upgrade checks, monitors and reports detailed progress of an upgrade, and prevents you from specifying invalid or unnecessary operations at each step in the process (by graying out invalid operations). You control an upgrade from the Upgrade Manager page. The Upgrade Manager automatically handles replication, synchronization, and the order in which servers are upgraded and failed over.

During the upgrade process, the Upgrade Manager reports on the progress of the upgrade on each server.

Though the upgrade process is automated, you retain control over actions that require operator approval. You can pause an upgrade at an operator action, resume the process later at your convenience, or roll back the upgrade from that point. You can also specify optional, advanced actions. (The Upgrade Manager prevents you from selecting invalid optional actions.)

During an upgrade, the Upgrade Manager asserts (that is, generates) and displays appropriate alarms, such as when servers go into forced standby, and clears the alarms when appropriate, such as when server upgrades are complete. The Upgrade Manager will also assert an alarm if an unexpected error prevents it from continuing the upgrade.

Note: An upgrade typically triggers minor, major, and critical alarms as servers are taken out of service or failed over. This is normal and to be expected.

In addition to recording all user and system upgrade activity in the audit log, the Upgrade Manager maintains a separate upgrade log so that you can track the history of an upgrade.

You must upgrade the CMP cluster (or, in a georedundant topology, the primary-site CMP cluster and then the secondary-site CMP cluster) before upgrading any other Policy Management systems.

You can upgrade up to four MPE or MRA clusters in parallel.