5 Upgrading Components Individually

Upgrades were made granular by design. All components have their own upgrade procedure that is independent of other components. In a full rack upgrade, these component procedures are consolidated into one large workflow, directed by the upgrade plan. This is convenient, and eliminates issues resulting from poorly timed commands or operations performed in the wrong order.

The normal and recommended way to upgrade the appliance software is to perform a full rack upgrade. However, deviations from the full rack upgrade workflow might be needed to work around an unforeseen orchestration problem, or to meet a particular component requirement. If this is the case, Oracle will provide guidance on how to upgrade components individually.

Before starting any procedure in this chapter, ensure that all preparation steps for system upgrade have been completed. For instructions, see Prepare for Appliance Upgrade.

Individual component upgrades must also comply with the prescribed order of operations. A component can only be upgraded on condition that the preceding components in the list are already at the required version. For more information, see Check Upgrade Plan Status and Progress.

In general, firmware may be upgraded whenever new versions are made available for the system. Firmware upgrades can be applied in no particular order and independently of other components.

Components are skipped if they are already at the required version, but a same-version upgrade can be forced using the Service Web UI or Service CLI command option, if necessary.