How to upgrade Oracle Database in High Availability Environment

TAMPA, Fla. - Feb. 1, 2017 - PRLog -- Oracle upgrade is very tough and time consuming task. When you are working high availability environment and database running 24*7 then upgrade becomes complicated.

As a rule of thumb for any OLTP or high availability database environment, I do not recommend upgrading prior to at least six months after the release date. Of course, patches database and OS may be required on a more urgent basis. Normally, patches do not call for migration nevertheless, some downtime may be required, during which the standby database, if present, may be used;. In other words, I always try to migrate to the newer version of Oracle at least after six months after the date of release of a major version. Generally, at least six months are required for Oracle to iron out the bugs and kinks encountered in the initial production releases. At the same time, do not delay excessively in upgrading.

Ensure that the upgrades are done reasonable time- at least within a year of release if no show-stopping problems have been encountered in the newer release during testing. This is because with every new release, Oracle introduces powerful and useful new features, which enhance availability and performance. These new features may entail increased licensing costs. Accordingly, it may be worthwhile to take a small hit, this hit would be caused by the downtime endured during the upgrade; and if a standby database on a less powerful machine is used, there would also be performance degradation.

Speed is very much of the essence during a migration. And this statement applies more to environments where there is not a standby database or the standby database is running on a slow machine. Speed determines the duration of downtime during the upgrade window. It is prudent to schedule the downtime well in advance, migrate, and make the system available again as quickly as possible. Advance planning is very important to ensure that the entire operation goes smoothly without unanticipated events occurring and to keep the disruption caused by the upgrade to the minimum. Major migrations can take hours to complete.

It is highly recommended in such scenarios to maintain a standby database; switch over to the standby database to prevent major service disruptions and ensure compliance with uptime requirements outlines in the SLA. Also, having a standby database substantially relieves the administrative personnel who are performing the migration, and it reduces chances of manual errors during the intense task of migrating. Conversely, not having a standby database increases the pressure on the personnel, since the production database is being migrated and is unavailable from application end users, who have to work within a very finite deadline, leaving little margin for errors of unanticipated events.

Not that a regular standby database may not be useful during all migration situations, such as when upgrading from an earlier release to a newer release, since the redo-log formats are different and cannot be directly applied. However, you could design and implement a custom standby database to provide the desired availability even during upgrade. This is the best approach to take decision of upgrade or migrate of any of high availability database server. Therefore, we can say that migration or upgrade process requires huge consideration of all kind of valid requirements.

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