Preparing to Upgrade an Existing Oracle Clusterware Installation

If you have an existing Oracle Clusterware installation, then you upgrade your existing cluster by performing an out-of-place upgrade. You cannot perform an in-place upgrade.

The following topics list the steps you can perform before you upgrade Oracle Grid Infrastructure:If the cluster uses or will use FIPS 140.3, review Patching, Upgrading, and Downgrading Oracle Grid Infrastructure with FIPS 140.3 before upgrading. The required fixes must be present on every node before FIPS is enabled. See Enabling FIPS 140.3 for Oracle Grid Infrastructure for the rolling enablement procedure.

Upgrade Checklist for Oracle Grid Infrastructure

Review this checklist before upgrading an existing Oracle Grid Infrastructure. A cluster is being upgraded until all cluster member nodes are running the new installations, and the new clusterware becomes the active version.

Table: Upgrade Checklist for Oracle Grid Infrastructure Installation

Check	Task
Review Upgrade Guide for deprecation and desupport information that may affect upgrade planning.	Oracle AI Database Upgrade Guide
Patch set (recommended)	Install the latest patch set release for your existing installation. Review My Oracle Support note 2180188.1 for the list of latest patches before upgrading Oracle Grid Infrastructure.
Install user account	Confirm that the installation owner you plan to use is the same as the installation owner that owns the installation you want to upgrade.
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.
Migrate from Oracle ASMFD to ASMLib	Oracle ASM Filter Driver (ASMFD) is desupported beginning with Oracle AI Database 26ai. Migrate from Oracle ASMFD to Oracle ASMLib, if Oracle ASMFD was configured in the earlier release. Refer to Migrating from Oracle ASM Filter Driver to Oracle ASMLib for steps to migrate from Oracle ASMFD to Oracle ASMLib.
Remove the GIMR	If the Grid Infrastructure Management Repository (GIMR) was configured in the earlier release, then remove GIMR from the existing Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation. Run the `$Grid_home/crs/install/reposScript.sh -mode="Delete"` script from the new Oracle Grid Infrastructure home. If Oracle FPP Server was configured in the earlier release, then export the metadata using the `$Grid_home/crs/install/reposScript.sh -mode="Export"` script.
Operating System	Confirm that you are using a supported operating system, kernel release, and all required operating system packages for the new Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation.
OCR on raw or block devices	Migrate OCR files from RAW or Block devices to Oracle ASM or a supported file system. Direct use of RAW and Block devices is not supported. Run the `ocrcheck` command to confirm Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR) file integrity. If this check fails, then repair the OCR before proceeding.
Oracle ASM password file	Move the Oracle ASM password file from file system to Oracle ASM, before proceeding with the upgrade using the following ASMCMD command: `ASMCMD [+] > pwcopy --asm current_location_of_ASM_password_file_in_OS_directory +target_disk_group_name/orapwASM` Note: Set `compatible.asm` to at least 19.0.0.0, before moving the password file.
CVU Upgrade Validation	Use Configuration Verification Utility (CVU) to assist you with system checks in preparation for starting an upgrade.
Shut Down Single-instance Database	If you have a single-instance database on a cluster that uses Oracle ASM, then you must shut down the single-instance database before upgrading.
Unset Environment variables	As the user performing the upgrade, unset the environment variables $ORACLE_HOME and $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. Refer to the Checks to Complete Before Upgrading Oracle Grid Infrastructure for a complete list of environment variables to unset.
Check system upgrade readiness with dry-run upgrade	Run Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation wizard, `gridSetup.sh` , in dry-run upgrade mode to perform system readiness checks for Oracle Grid Infrastructure upgrades.
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.
HugePages memory allocation	Allocate memory to HugePages large enough for the System Global Areas (SGA) of all databases planned to run on the cluster.

Related Topics

Oracle Clusterware Storage Space Requirements

Checks to Complete Before Upgrading Oracle Grid Infrastructure

Complete the following tasks before upgrading Oracle Grid Infrastructure.

For each node, use Configuration Verification Utility to ensure that you have completed preinstallation steps. It can generate Fixup scripts to help you to prepare servers. In addition, the installer helps you to ensure all required prerequisites are met.

Ensure that you have the information you need during installation, including the following:
- An Oracle base location for Oracle Clusterware.
- An Oracle Grid Infrastructure home location that is different from your existing Oracle Clusterware location.
- SCAN name and addresses, and other network addresses.
- Privileged user operating system groups.
- root user access, to run scripts as root during installation.
For the installation owner running the installation, if you have environment variables set for the existing installation, then unset the environment variables $ORACLE_HOME and $ORACLE_SID, as these environment variables are used during upgrade. For example, as the grid user, run the following commands on the local node:

For bash shell:
```
$ unset ORACLE_BASE
$ unset ORACLE_HOME
$ unset ORACLE_SID
```
For C shell:
```
$ unsetenv ORACLE_BASE
$ unsetenv ORACLE_HOME
$ unsetenv ORACLE_SID
```
If you have set ORA_CRS_HOME as an environment variable, following instructions from Oracle Support, then unset it before starting an installation or upgrade. You should never use ORA_CRS_HOME as an environment variable except under explicit direction from Oracle Support.
Ensure that the user profile for the installation user, for example, .profile or .cshrc, does not set any of these environment variables.
If you have an existing installation on your system, and you are using the same user account to install this installation, then unset the following environment variables: ORA_CRS_HOME, ORACLE_HOME, ORA_NLS10, TNS_ADMIN and any other environment variable set for the Oracle installation user who is connected with Oracle software homes.
Ensure that the $ORACLE_HOME/bin path is removed from your PATH environment variable.

Related Topics

Removing Grid Infrastructure Management Repository

GIMR is desupported in Oracle AI Database 26ai. If GIMR is configured in your existing Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation, then remove the GIMR.

Confirm if Grid Infrastructure Management Repository (GIMR) is configured in the current release.
```
srvctl config mgmtdb
```
Note:
If GIMR is not configured, then do not follow this procedure.
Confirm if Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning (Oracle FPP) is configured in central server mode in the current release.
```
srvctl config rhpserver
```
Note:
If Oracle FPP is configured on your cluster, then you are recommended to use the Oracle FPP Self-Upgrade feature for smooth migration of the metadata from GIMR to the new metadata repository. Refer to Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning Self Upgrade for more information about how to use the Oracle FPP Self-Upgrade feature.
As the grid user, log in to any cluster node and create a new directory owned by grid to store the GIMR deletion script.
```
mkdir -p $ORACLE_HOME/gimrdel
chown grid:oinstall $ORACLE_HOME/gimrdel
```
Download scriptgimr.zip from the My Oracle Support Note 2972418.1 to the $ORACLE_HOME/gimrdel directory.
Extract the reposScript.sh script from the scriptgimr.zip and ensure that the grid user has read and execute permissions on the reposScript.sh script.
```
unzip -q $ORACLE_HOME/gimrdel/scriptgimr.zip
```

Optional: Query and export the CHA user models.

Grid_home/bin/chactl query model
Grid_home/bin/chactl export model -name model_name -file model_name.svm

If Oracle FPP was configured in central mode, then export the Oracle FPP Metadata to re-configure Oracle FPP after upgrading to Oracle Grid Infrastructure 26ai.
```
Grid_home/crs/install/reposScript.sh -export_dir=dir_to_export_Oracle_FPP_metadata
```
Run the reposScript.sh script, in delete mode, from the /gimrdel directory.
```
$ORACLE_HOME/gimrdel/reposScript.sh -mode="Delete"
```
Note:
Oracle FPP stops working if you delete the GIMR, but do not upgrade to Oracle Grid Infrastructure 26ai and re-configure Oracle FPP.

Related Topics

My Oracle Support Note 2972418.1

Moving Oracle Clusterware Files from NFS to Oracle ASM

You can move Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR) and voting files from Network File System (NFS) to Oracle Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM) disk groups.

As the grid user, create the Oracle ASM disk group using ASMCA.
```
$ ./asmca
```
Follow the steps in the ASMCA wizard to create the Oracle ASM disk group, for example, DATA.

Move the voting files to the Oracle ASM disk group you created:

$ crsctl replace votedisk +DATA

The output of this command is as follows:

CRS-4256: Updating the profile
Successful addition of voting disk 24c6d682874a4f1ebf54f5ab0098b9e4.
Successful deletion of voting disk 1b5044fa39684f86bfbe681f388e55fb.
Successfully replaced voting disk group with +DATA_DG_OCR_VDSK.
CRS-4256: Updating the profile
CRS-4266: Voting file(s) successfully replaced

Check the status of Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR):

$ ./ocrcheck

The output of the command is as follows:

Status of Oracle Cluster Registry is as follows :
         Version                  :          4
         Total space (kbytes)     :     409568
         Used space (kbytes)      :       1380
         Available space (kbytes) :     408188
         ID                       :  288871063
         Device/File Name         : /oradbocfs/storage/12101/ocr
         Device/File integrity check succeeded
         Cluster registry integrity check succeeded

As the root user, move the OCR files to the Oracle ASM disk group you created:
```
# ./ocrconfig -add +DATA
```
Delete the Oracle Clusterware files from the NFS location:
```
# ./ocrconfig -delete ocr_file_ path_previously_on_nfs
```

Running the Oracle ORAchk Upgrade Readiness Assessment

Download and run the Oracle ORAchk Upgrade Readiness Assessment before upgrading Oracle Grid Infrastructure.

Oracle ORAchk is an Oracle RAC configuration audit tool. Oracle ORAchk Upgrade Readiness Assessment can be used to obtain an automated upgrade-specific health check for upgrades to Oracle Grid Infrastructure 19c, 21c, and 26ai. You can run the Oracle ORAchk Upgrade Readiness Assessment tool and automate many of the manual pre-upgrade and post-upgrade checks.

Oracle recommends that you download and run the latest version of Oracle ORAchk from My Oracle Support. For information about downloading, configuring, and running Oracle ORAchk, refer to My Oracle Support note 1457357.1.

Related Topics