Overview of Patching in Rolling and Parallel Mode

While patching Oracle Real Application Cluster (Oracle RAC) targets, Oracle Grid Infrastructure targets (whether or not they are part of Oracle Exadata), Oracle Data Guard targets, Oracle Fusion Application targets, or Oracle SOA Infrastructure targets you can choose to patch the instances of the cluster either in rolling or parallel mode.

Rolling Mode

Is a patching methodology where the nodes of the cluster are patched individually, one by one. For example, if you are patching a clusterware target that has five nodes, the first node is shut down, patched, and restarted. Then the process is rolled over to the next node until all the nodes are patched successfully.

Note:

The ReadMe of the patch clearly states whether or not you can use Rolling Mode to apply your patches. Use this mode after ensuring that all patches in the gold image support rolling mode.

The following image illustrates how a two-node Oracle RAC target gets patched when rolling mode is used.

Figure 14-4 Rolling Mode of Patching

Parallel Mode

Is a patching methodology where all the nodes are patched at a time, collectively. In this methodology, all the nodes are shut down and the patch is applied on all of them at the same time.

The following image illustrates how a two-node Oracle RAC target gets patched when parallel mode is used.

Figure 14-5 Parallel Mode of Patching