Patching

Patching refers to the ability to apply security enhancements and functional updates to Private Cloud Appliance independently of regular product releases. Patches are delivered as RPM packages through a series of dedicated channels on the Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN). To gain access to these channels, you need a Customer Support Identifier (CSI) and a ULN subscription.

The appliance is not allowed to connect directly to Oracle's ULN servers. The supported process is to set up a ULN mirror on a system inside the data center. The patch channels are then synchronized on the ULN mirror, where the management nodes can access the RPMs. Compute nodes need access to a subset of the RPMs, which are copied to a designated location on the internal shared storage and kept up-to-date.

Patches are installed using a mechanism similar to upgrade. A key difference is that patching commands include the path to the ULN mirror. The Service CLI provides a separate patch command for each supported component type. In the Service Web UI the administrator applies a patch by creating an upgrade request for a given component type, but selecting the Patch option instead of Upgrade.

ULN patches may be delivered for any of the component types that are part of a traditional product release: operating system updates for management and compute nodes, platform updates, microservices updates, firmware updates, compute image updates, and so on.

For more detailed information and step-by-step instructions, refer to the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Patching Guide