1. Cloud Control Database Lifecycle Management Administrator's Guide
  2. Database Maintenance: Updates (Patching) and Upgrades
  3. Database Updates and Upgrades Using Fleet Maintenance
  4. Get Organized With Standardization Advisor

Get Organized With Standardization Advisor

Discovering Configuration Pollution

Patching is one of the most challenging phases in the product lifecycle. With multiple patch cycles and various database configurations, different sets of patches are required to satisfy the patching needs of the users. This may require administrators to check for patch conflicts for each database and then request merge patch patches for the same. This can be cumbersome and time-consuming process.

In order to simplify this process, administrators must first identify their specific database configuration needs and select the standard configurations that are to be enforced in their environment.

With Enterprise Manager administrators can use the Software Standardization Advisor that scans the database configuration across all targets and generates a report (on-demand) of the existing environment. This enables administrator to identify and reduce the number of configurations they need to manage. This also brings down the need to assess patch conflicts per database and, subsequently, reduce the number of merged patches they need to request from Oracle.

For example, in a Oracle 19c database on a Linux-64 2-node RAC environment, three distinct groups of patches may have been applied. Each of these groups may have multiple Oracle Homes and databases associated with them. To meet this requirement, the administrator can define a standard configuration that can help simplify the environment.

The Software Standardization Advisor also recommends a list of standardized configurations and lists all the Oracle Homes on which the configurations should be applied. Oracle recommends that administrators run this report quarterly to understand the state of their database configurations. This list becomes the basis of fleet maintenance.

Standardize on Supported Images

To use the Software Standardization Advisor, follow these steps:
  1. Login to the Enterprise Manager Console with administrative privileges.
  2. From the Targets menu, select Databases.
  3. From the Administration menu, select Software Standardization Advisor.
  4. Choose the relevant tab, Database or Grid Infrastructure and click run/re-run to run the analysis.
  5. Click Generate Report to generate a report as a spreadsheet.

A sample environment is shown below:
Software Standardization Advisor

The current system configuration is as follows:

Product Release Platform No of Oracle Homes Current Patch Configuration No of Databases Database
Oracle Database 12c 12.1.0.2.0 Linuxx86-64 2 19769480;20299023;20415564. 1 SI:[salesCDB.localdomain]
Oracle Database 12c 12.1.0.2.0 Linuxx86–64 3 19769480;20299023. 2 SI:[fm1.oracle.com;HRdb0000]
Oracle Database 19c 19.0.0.0.1 Linuxx86–64 3 No patches applied 3 SI:[fm2.oracle.com;db01;FINdb000]

The recommended system configuration is as follows:

Product Release Platform No of Oracle Homes Current Patch Configuration No of Databases Database
Oracle Database 19c 19.0.0.0.6 Linuxx86-64 8 19769480;20299023;20415564. 6 SI:[HRdb0000;fm2.oracle.com;salesCDB.localdomain;fm1.oracle.com;FINdb000;db01]