1. System Overview
  2. What's New in Oracle Exadata Database Machine
  3. New Features for Oracle Exadata System Software Release 21.x
  4. What's New in Oracle Exadata System Software Release 21.2
  5. Faster Upgrades with ILOM Pre-Staging

5.1.9 Faster Upgrades with ILOM Pre-Staging

The upgrade process for Oracle Exadata System Software typically includes a firmware upgrade for Integrated Lights Out Manager (ILOM). Historically, the ILOM firmware upgrade was performed as a serial process, taking approximately 30% of the total software upgrade time on each physical server (database server or storage server).

ILOM version 5 introduces support for pre-staging of new ILOM firmware. With this feature, pre-staging occurs in parallel with other server upgrade activities, and the new ILOM firmware is automatically enabled when the server reboots at the end of the upgrade procedure.

On Exadata X7 and newer systems, this approach approximately halves the ILOM firmware upgrade time on each server, which translates to an improvement of approximately 15% for the total software upgrade time.

Minimum requirements:

  • This feature is automatically used on Exadata X7 and newer systems, except for X8-2L servers, when upgrading Oracle Exadata System Software from at least version 19.3.11 or 20.1.1.

  • For X8-2L servers only, this feature is automatically used when upgrading Oracle Exadata System Software from at least version 19.3.12 or 20.1.2.

Parent topic: What's New in Oracle Exadata System Software Release 21.2