Patching Oracle Grid Infrastructure

Fleet Patching and Provisioning provides two methods to patch Oracle Grid Infrastructure software homes: rolling (in batches) and non-rolling.

Patching Oracle Grid Infrastructure software involves moving the Grid home to a patched version of the current Grid home. When the patching operation is initiated by a Fleet Patching and Provisioning Server or Client, the patched version must be a working copy of a gold image. The working copy to which you are moving the Grid home can be at a lower patch level than the current home. This facilitates rollback if any problems occur after moving to the higher-level patched home.

When Oracle FPP performs out-of-place patching, it evaluates the list of non-rolling patches on the source and the destination homes. Oracle FPP compares the two lists, and if the target home has additional non-rolling patches that are not in the source home, the Oracle FPP reports that the patching cannot be performed in a rolling mode. You can then take one of the following actions:

1. Re-provision the target home so that it does not include those additional non-rolling patches and proceed with patching in rolling mode.
2. Continue with the rolling patching operation with the currently provisioned home using the -forcerolling option.

You can also patch Oracle Grid Infrastructure using Fleet Patching and Provisioning Lite. In this case, the source and destination homes are not working copies of gold images, but are two installed homes that you deployed with some method other than using Fleet Patching and Provisioning.

For information about patching using batches, refer to Patching Oracle Grid Infrastructure and Oracle Database Using Batches.

• Patching Oracle Grid Infrastructure Using the Rolling Method
  The rolling method for patching Oracle Grid Infrastructure is the default method.
• Patching Oracle Grid Infrastructure Using the Non-Rolling Method
  You can use the -nonrolling parameter with the rhpctl move gihome command, which restarts the Oracle Grid Infrastructure stack on all nodes in parallel.
• Combined Oracle Grid Infrastructure and Oracle Database Patching
  When you patch an Oracle Grid Infrastructure deployment, Oracle FPP enables you to simultaneously patch the Oracle Database homes on the cluster, so you can patch both types of software homes in a single maintenance operation.
• Zero-Downtime Oracle Grid Infrastructure Patching
  Use Fleet Patching and Provisioning to patch Oracle Grid Infrastructure without bringing down Oracle RAC database instances.