Reviewing Operating System and Software Upgrade Best Practices

These topics provide general planning guidelines and platform-specific information about upgrades and migration.

General Upgrade Best Practices

Be aware of these guidelines as a best practice before you perform an upgrade.

If you have an existing Oracle Database installation, then do the following:

Record the version numbers, patches, and other configuration information
Review upgrade procedures for your existing installation
Review Oracle Database upgrade documentation before proceeding with installation, to decide how you want to proceed

Caution:

Always create a backup of existing databases before starting any configuration change.

Refer to Oracle Database Upgrade Guide for more information about required software updates, pre-upgrade tasks, post-upgrade tasks, compatibility, and interoperability between different releases.

New Server Operating System Upgrade Option

You can upgrade your operating system by installing a new operating system on a server, and then migrating your database either manually, or by using Export/Import method.

Note:

Confirm that the server operating system is supported, and that kernel and package requirements for the operating system meet or exceed the minimum requirements for the Oracle Database release to which you want to migrate.

Manual, Command-Line Copy for Migrating Data and Upgrading Oracle Database

You can copy files to the new server and upgrade it manually. If you use this procedure, then you cannot use Oracle Database Upgrade Assistant. However, you can revert to your existing database if you encounter upgrade issues.

Copy the database files from the computer running the previous operating system to the one running the new operating system.
Re-create the control files on the computer running the new operating system.
Manually upgrade the database using command-line scripts and utilities.

Export/Import Method for Migrating Data and Upgrading Oracle Database

You can install the operating system on the new server, install the new Oracle Database release on the new server, and then use Oracle Data Pump Export and Import utilities to migrate a copy of data from your current database to a new database in the new release. Data Pump Export and Import are recommended for higher performance and to ensure support for new data types.

Oracle ASM Upgrade Notifications

Understand Oracle ASM upgrade options and restrictions.

You can upgrade Oracle Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM) 11g release 2 (11.2) and later without shutting down an Oracle RAC database by performing a rolling upgrade either of individual nodes, or of a set of nodes in the cluster. However, if you have a standalone database on a cluster that uses Oracle ASM, then you must shut down the standalone database before upgrading.
The location of the Oracle ASM home changed in Oracle Grid Infrastructure 11g release 2 (11.2) so that Oracle ASM is installed with Oracle Clusterware in the Oracle Grid Infrastructure home (Grid home).
Two nodes of different releases cannot run in the cluster. When upgrading from Oracle Grid Infrastructure 11g release 2 (11.2) or Oracle Grid Infrastructure 12c release 1 (12.1) to a later release, if there is an outage during the rolling upgrade, then when you restart the upgrade, ensure that you start the earlier release of Oracle Grid Infrastructure and bring the Oracle ASM cluster back in the rolling migration mode.