Provisioning Oracle Grid Infrastructure Homes

When you create a working copy of a gold image as part of a move or upgrade operation, Fleet Patching and Provisioning configures the operating system groups in the new working copy to match those of the source software home.

Oracle Grid Infrastructure homes are distributed in the form of working copies of gold images. After a working copy has been provisioned, Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning can optionally configure Oracle Grid Infrastructure. This gives Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning the ability to create an Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation on a group of one or more nodes that initially do not have Oracle Grid Infrastructure installed.

Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning also has commands for managing Oracle Grid Infrastructure homes, such as switching to a patched home or upgrading to a new Oracle Grid Infrastructure version. These are both single commands that orchestrate the numerous steps involved. You can also revert to the original home. Also, Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning can add or delete nodes from an Oracle Grid Infrastructure configuration.

About Deploying Oracle Grid Infrastructure Using Oracle FPP

You can use Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning to provision and maintain your Oracle Grid Infrastructure homes.

Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning enables mass deployment and maintenance of standard operating environments for databases, clusters, and user-defined software types.

Oracle FPP enables you to install clusters, and provision, patch, scale, and upgrade Oracle Grid Infrastructure, Oracle Restart, and Oracle AI Database homes. The supported releases are 19c, 21c, and 26ai. You can also provision applications and middleware using Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning.

Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning is a service in Oracle Grid Infrastructure that you can use in either of the following modes:

Central Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning Server
The Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning Server stores and manages standardized images, called gold images. Gold images can be deployed to any number of nodes across the data center. You can create new clusters and databases on the deployed homes and can use them to patch, upgrade, and scale existing installations.

The Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning Server can manage the following types of installations:
- Software homes on the cluster hosting the Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning Server itself.
- Installations running Oracle Grid Infrastructure 19c and later releases.
- Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning Clients running Oracle Grid Infrastructure 19c and later releases.
- Installations running without Oracle Grid Infrastructure.
The Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning Server can provision new installations, and manage existing installations, without requiring any changes to the existing installations. The Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning Server can automatically share gold images among peer servers to support enterprises with geographically distributed data centers.
Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning Client
The Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning Client can be managed from the Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning Server, or directly by running commands on the client itself. The Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning Client is a service built into the Oracle Grid Infrastructure and is available in Oracle Grid Infrastructure 19c and later releases. The Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning Client can retrieve gold images from the Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning Server, upload new images based on the policy, and apply maintenance operations to itself.

Provisioning Oracle Grid Infrastructure Software

Fleet Patching and Provisioning has several methods to provision and, optionally, configure Oracle Grid Infrastructure and Oracle Restart homes.

Fleet Patching and Provisioning can provision and configure Oracle Grid Infrastructure on one or more nodes that do not currently have a Grid home, and then configure Oracle Grid Infrastructure to form a single-node or multi-node Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation.

Use the rhpctl add workingcopy command to install and configure Oracle Grid Infrastructure, and to enable repeatable creation of standardized deployments.

The Fleet Patching and Provisioning Server can also provision an Oracle Grid Infrastructure home to a node or cluster that is currently running Oracle Grid Infrastructure. The currently running Grid home can be a home that Fleet Patching and Provisioning did not provision (an unmanaged home) or a home that Fleet Patching and Provisioning did provision (a managed home).

You can also provision an Oracle Restart to a node in the cluster.

In either case, use the -softwareonly parameter of the rhpctl add workingcopy command. This provisions but does not activate the new Grid home, so that when you are ready to switch to that new home, you can do so with a single command.

To inform Fleet Patching and Provisioning the nodes on which to install Oracle Grid Infrastructure, and to configure Oracle Grid Infrastructure, you provide directions in a response file, as in the following example:
```
$ rhpctl add workingcopy -workingcopy GI_HOME_11204_WCPY -image GI_HOME_11204 -responsefile /u01/app/rhpinfo/GI_11204_install.rsp
  {authentication_option}
```
The preceding command provisions the GI_HOME_11204_WCPY working copy based on the GI_HOME_11204 gold image to a destination server specified in the GI_11204_install.rsp response file. In addition to identifying the destination nodes, the response file specifies information about the Oracle Grid Infrastructure configuration, such as Oracle ASM and GNS parameters.

Note:
The oracle.install.crs.rootconfig.executeRootScript= xxx response file parameter is overridden and always set to false for Fleet Patching and Provisioning, regardless of what you specify in the response file.
To provision an Oracle Grid Infrastructure home to a node or cluster that is currently running Oracle Grid Infrastructure:
```
$ rhpctl add workingcopy -workingcopy GI_HOME_12201_PATCHED_WCPY -image GI_HOME_12201_PSU1 -client CLUST_002 -softwareonly
```
The preceding command provisions a new working copy based on the GI_HOME_12201_PSU1 gold image to the Fleet Patching and Provisioning Client (that is running Oracle Grid Infrastructure 12c release 2 (12.2)) named CLUST_002. When you provision to an rhpclient-less target that is not running Oracle Grid Infrastructure 12c release 2 (12.2) (such as, a node running Oracle Grid Infrastructure 12c release 1 (12.1) or Oracle Grid Infrastructure 11g release 2 (11.2)), use the -targetnode parameter instead of -client.

Specify an rhpclient-less target node on which you want to provision an Oracle Restart, as follows:

$ rhpctl add workingcopy -workingcopy SIHA_GI -image goldimage -targetnode remote_node_name -responsefile Oracle_Restart_response_file {authentication_option}