Note:

Plan Your Quarterly Infrastructure Maintenance using the Maintenance Scheduling Policy for Oracle Exadata Database Service on Cloud@Customer

Introduction

We are pleased to announce the general availability (GA) of infrastructure maintenance scheduling enhancements. With this release you can apply quarterly software updates to your Exadata infrastructure components (DB Servers, Storage Servers, Network Switches) across multiple maintenance windows. This capability is available for Exadata Cloud@Customer infrastructures. With this enhancement, you will have the flexibility to perform infrastructure maintenance to fit smaller time windows. Based on customer-preferred timeslots best suited to your business needs, Oracle automation will perform maintenance on specific infrastructure components across these maintenance windows to ensure all components have software updates applied to meet compliance guidelines.

Note: The Maintenance Scheduling Policy aims to standardize scheduling across the fleet, ensuring consistency and efficiency. By defining the policy once and applying it to multiple resources, it streamlines the scheduling process. The policy aligns with business best practices, scheduling maintenance activities in accordance with these standards. It also serves as a central repository for documenting and coordinating maintenance commitments with various stakeholders, enhancing compliance and efficiency. The centralized management of resources subscribing to the policy ensures adherence to compliance requirements, and any changes can be efficiently coordinated from a single location. Additionally, the policy improves communication about planned maintenance across different environments in the fleet, facilitating better coordination and awareness.

Objectives

Task 1: Update your Quarterly Infrastructure Maintenance Preferences using the Maintenance Scheduling Policy

  1. Log in to the OCI Console, click Oracle Database and Exadata Database Service on Cloud@Customer.

    Image showing OCI Console Navigation

  2. Select the Region and Compartment, where the Oracle Exadata infrastructure you want to edit is located.

  3. Click Exadata Infrastructure and the name of the Exadata infrastructure that you want to edit.

    Image showing selecting exadata infrastructure

  4. Click Edit Maintenance Preferences.

    Image showing edit maintenance preference

  5. In the Configure Maintenance page, enter the following information and click Select policy.

    • Maintenance scheduling preference: Select Customer managed schedule.
    • Customer managed schedule: Select Use maintenance window preferences from a scheduling policy.

    Image showing configure maintenance preference

  6. Select compartment, policy and click Save Changes.

    Image showing to select a maintenance scheduling policy

    Image showing to save changes

  7. Review the Maintenance scheduling plan and click Save changes.

    Image showing to save changes

Task 2: View the Maintenance Scheduling Policy

  1. In the Exadata Infrastructure Details page, under Maintenance section, click Quarterly Maintenance Schedule policy.

    Image showing quarterly maintenance schedule policy

    View the details of the policy.

    Image showing to view maintenance schedule policy

Task 3: View the Maintenance Scheduling Plan

  1. In the Exadata Infrastructure Details page, under Resources, click Maintenance scheduling plan.

    Image showing to view maintenance schedule plan

    The Maintenance scheduling Plan section displays the maintenance scheduling plan associated with the infrastructure. The details include maintenance windows associated with the plan, lifecycle state, duration in hours, scheduled actions, and the estimated time.

Acknowledgments

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