Software and Hardware Update Types

General Availability Releases

There are two feature/function General Availability releases each calendar year, and each General Availability release is supported for 12 months. Once in production, you will have a certain amount of flexibility to schedule the General Availability release first for testing, then for production. Note that you will always need to take the next General Availability release prior to the end of life of your current production release.

Note: General Availability Releases are mandatory. You cannot skip a General Availability release.

General Availability Releases may include:

New and enhanced features/functions (generally provided as 'opt-in')
New and Updated language packs
Fixes for reported issues with Oracle Utilities Cloud Applications
Fixes and updates of the other bundled services which are part of the cloud subscription, such as the Utilities Testing Accelerator.

Information Category	Details
Mandatory or Optional	Mandatory for Fast Lane Customers Optional for Cutover / Production Lane Customers
Delivery Schedule	General Availability releases are delivered two times per year. Please refer to the Oracle Utilities Release Calendar for details.
Environment Update Plan	During implementation / Customers on fast lane, General Availability releases are scheduled promptly at General Availability, first to non-production environments, then to production. As go-live approaches, you can stay on your current General Availability release to stabilize for final acceptance as long as you are on maintenance pack 3 or higher (see Maintenance Packs for more information about maintenance packs). Once in Production after go-live, we recommend scheduling uptake of the next General Availability release based on the maintenance pack 3 or higher. This will give you time to perform quick regression before uptake to production (see Maintenance Packs for more information about maintenance packs). Non-production early adopters (remaining non-production environments): First Maintenance window (typically first Saturday) of the month. Production environment and late adopters: Second Maintenance window (typically third Saturday) of the month or next maintenance window.
Planned Outage Times	Outage times are according to the Planned Maintenance Times section.
Readiness Material and Documentation	You will receive advance notice of Readiness material, which describe the new features/functions in upcoming releases. This material is published on the Oracle Cloud Readiness site at least 30 days prior to update availability. This Readiness material along with the documentation will help you prepare for the features/functions introduced with each new release.

Note:

When a new General Availability release level is introduced into a test environment, it is not possible to refresh that environment from Production until Production has also been updated. Many customers schedule a refresh of the test environment just prior to taking the next General Availability release.

Maintenance Packs

Maintenance Packs (MP) are released monthly and contain fixes for reported application issues and are provided monthly until the release's end of life (remember that releases are supported for 12 months). For the first two months of the release, maintenance packs contain roll-ups of all available fixes for Fast Lane customers. After that point the next maintenance packs on a release will include only fixes for critical/blocking issues faced by customers either live or soon going live.

Monthly maintenance packs are mandatory while in the Fast Lane (when your cloud service is not yet in live production).

When go-live is approaching, you have the option to choose a monthly maintenance pack level at which to 'freeze' and stabilize for final acceptance. The freeze can last up to two months, then there will be a mandatory 'catch-up' after go-live to the latest monthly pack. The first allowable freeze level is the third maintenance pack for the release, and the last possible is the eighth maintenance pack.

After going live, we require you to move up to the latest maintenance pack for your current release and from that point forward only hot fix updates will be provided to minimize change in the live system, if needed.

The fixes provided in each monthly maintenance pack are documented in My Oracle Support.

Information Category	Details
Mandatory or Optional	Mandatory while in Fast Lane. Optional to temporarily freeze on a maintenance pack for go-live (up to two months), followed by mandatory 'catch up'.
Delivery Schedule	Maintenance Packs are prepared for the first weekend of each calendar month (with rare exceptions for holidays).
Environment Update Plan	Non-production early adopter environments: First Maintenance window (typically first Saturday) of the month or subsequent maintenance windows. Production environment and late adopters: Second maintenance window (typically third Saturday) of the month or subsequent maintenance windows.
Planned Outage Times	Outage times are according to the Planned Maintenance Times section.
Readiness Material and Documentation	Documentation for the included fixes can be found in My Oracle Support. (Doc ID 2616460.1).

Platform Updates

The Oracle Utilities cloud services utilize a Kubernetes-based microservice architecture, and this platform provides services such as networking, monitoring, logging, etc. On a monthly basis we will provide platform updates, which do not in themselves alter the functionality of the service. These platform updates are installed at the same time as the maintenance packs and are also applied in months when no new maintenance pack is provided.

Information Category	Details
Mandatory or Optional	Mandatory
Delivery Schedule	Platform updates are released monthly. Please refer to Environment Update Plan below for details concerning when platform updates are rolled out for different types of environments. Note that platform updates are applied to all environments regardless of whether you are accepting application patches or fixes to your environment.
Environment Update Plan	All Non-production environments: First weekend of the calendar month. Production environments: Third weekend of the calendar month (may adjust in certain months due to holidays).
Planned Outage Times	Outage times are according to the Planned Maintenance Times section.
Readiness Material and Documentation	N/A

Application and Platform Security Updates

The security of Oracle Utilities cloud services is achieved via a shared responsibility model. In that shared responsibility model, you, the Customer, are responsible for knowing what data you are sending to the cloud services (Your Content) and for configuring access control policies that say who may access Your Content. Oracle is responsible for providing the encryption protocols and secure storage for your data, and that the application logic which process Your Content is correctly implemented and secure.

As Oracle has a clear responsibility to ensure that all security updates are applied in a timely manner, any maintenance packs containing security updates are mandatory and will be automatically applied to your environments as per the release schedule and associated update policies.

Security updates are released for both cloud applications and associated platforms and are cumulative. These security updates are considered as critical and mandatory to be deployed in both non-production and the Production environments based on the following categories:

Category	Delivery Schedule	Environment Update Plan
Critical	Zero day	As soon as available
High Priority	Monthly	During Early Adopter week (First Saturday of the month) for all non-staging environments and Late Adopter week (Third Saturday of the month) for Production environments
Less Priority	With each General Availability release	As part of new release updates in Early Adopter environments

Note:

Oracle does not provide documentation for security updates.

Hot Fix Updates

You may need a Hot Fix Update when you encounter an unexpected issue that disables a business-critical process and no workaround exists. You must raise the hot fix request through the Service Request (SR) you opened when you initially reported the problem. We approve hot fix requests on a case-by-case basis.

Several criteria must be met to request and receive a hot fix Update, including:

A resolution is available
No workaround exists, or you believe that a proposed workaround is not acceptable
You submitted an update to the existing SR explaining how the reported problem severely impacts a key business process.
You are on a maintenance pack that is eligible for a hot fix, as described in Maintenance Packs (otherwise the patch will be made available to you as part of a new maintenance pack).

If you're approved to receive a hot fix update, Oracle Support will explain the type of update you will receive and the timing for applying it. Hot fix updates are cumulative in nature, thus may contain multiple fixes available only on the latest Maintenance Pack. Hot fix releases are always applied to a selected non-production environment first for validation, then to production.

Information Category	Details
Mandatory or Optional	Functional fixes are Optional. Exception: Oracle declares a patch is critical and mandatory.
Delivery Schedule	Hot fix updates are delivered after approval, coding and testing.
Environment Update Plan	For all environments, the next available hot fix window after agreed upon with Customer Success Manager (CSM). Note: Hot fixes will always be applied to non-prod environment first and after validation., applied in the Production environment.
Planned Outage Times	Outage times are either as outlined in the Planned Maintenance Times section or as negotiated depending on the criticality.
Readiness Material and Documentation	Documentation for the included fixes can be found in My Oracle Support (Doc ID 2616460.1).

All hot fix updates are rolled up and included in the next monthly maintenance pack.

Infrastructure Patching

Oracle provides hardware, database, network, and operating system updates periodically to keep your environments optimized and secure. Infrastructure quarterly patching does not typically involve any downtime.

Information Category	Details
Mandatory or Optional	Mandatory
Delivery Schedule	Quarterly or as needed. Cloud Operations will communicate the specific dates for each quarter prior to patching.
Planned Outage Times	Downtime is not planned for infrastructure patching.
Readiness Material and Documentation	N/A

Note:

Infrastructure patching can create 'blackout periods' during which some environmental activities such as refresh or new environment provisioning cannot occur. Oracle will advise on dates of these periods.