Exadata/RDBMS -- Database Release Schedule + Support Dates - 19C + Exadata Image Upgrade (to the latest version // 19.3.1)

In order to get a long-term support, customers started to upgrade their Oracle databases to 19C.

"Oracle Database 19C is the most current long-term support release".

Read -> "Release Schedule of Current Database Releases (Doc ID 742060.1)" for more info about the release schedule and support dates.

Exadata customers are also planning to upgrade, but they have an extra prereq, as their image version should support Oracle Database 19C.

19C database upgrade brings the needs for 19C Grid upgrades and Exadata Image version upgrade actually. So this year, there will be lots of upgrade operations in the red stack :)

11GR2 works perfectly well. 18C is an option, but customers prefer to have a long term support, and to be always up-to-date, so the 19C is the best option to upgrade currently. Especially for the customers who follow the techological improvements in the Oracle database closely and/or who try to catch up, as the new developments in the areas outside the database (their integrations targets, their application stack and so on) are moving too fast.

The premier support for 20C and 21C is seems to be short, like 18C. However; 22C will be the next long term support release after 19C..

Anyways, lets go back to our original topic : Upgrading Exadata X3-2 image version to 19.3.1.

Currently, we don't have an image version that supports Oracle Database 19C in Exadata Cloud at Customer(ECC), but we do have an image version that supports  19C database in Exadata on-prem.
This post is based on an image upgrade work, which was recently done on an Exadata X3 environment..

Anyways, as you may guess, I upgraded an Exadata X3's image version to 19.3.1 (the latest release currently) recently.

My customer needed to have an Exadata environment that supports 19C databases.. Ofcourse 19C Grid as well..

So, before upgrading the Grid and Database version , we needed to upgrade the Exadata image version. The machine was a Gen-3 (X3) and that 's why I had some doubts about this upgrade.. Fortuneatly, it went perfectly well :)

I already documented the operation required for upgrading the image version of Exadata in the following blog posts earlier->

https://ermanarslan.blogspot.com/2018/03/exadata-upgrading-exadata-software.html
https://ermanarslan.blogspot.com/2018/07/exadata-image-grid-122-upgrade.html

So, in this blog post, I will try to give you some additional information about these kinds of operations.

In order to upgrade the image version of an Exadata, we must check the documentation and download the correct patches ;

For 19.3.1 , the documentation is as follows:

Latest Image Support Note : Exadata 19.3.1.0.0 release and patch (30441371) (Doc ID 2592151.1)

Exadata 19.3.1 supports the following Grid and Database version:

Oracle Grid Infrastructure:

19.4.0.0.0.190716 *

18.7.0.0.0.190716 *

12.2.0.1.0.190716 *

12.1.0.2.0.190716 *

Oracle Database:

19.4.0.0.0.190716 *

18.7.0.0.0.190716 *

12.2.0.1.0.181016

12.1.0.2.0.180831

11.2.0.4.0.180717

Well.. In order to upgrade our image versions, we download Cell, Database server and Infiniband network software and image files, as shown in the picture below.

Note that, this is a Bare Metal Exadata and it is a X3, so it doesn't have a RDBMA network switch but it has an infiniband network switch.

We use the patch tool/patchmgr, which comes with the Cell server patch , to patch the cell nodes. However; we download and use a specific patch tool/patchmgr for patching the compute/db nodes.( Patch 21634633 in this case...)

We upgrade the Exadata image version by executing 3 the main processes, given below;

1. Analysis and gathering info about the environment.
2. Pre-check
3. Upgrading the Images 

So, we execute the 3 main phases above and while executing these phases, we actually take the following 7 actions;

1) Gathering info and controlling the current environment :
Image Info, DB Home & GRID Home patch levels opatch lsinventory outputs, SSH equivalency check , ASM diskgroup repair times check, NFS shares, crontab outputs, .bash_profile contents, spfile/pfile backups, controlfile traces

2) Running the Exack:
Downloading the up-to-date exachk and running it with the -a argument.
After running the exachk -> analyzing its output and taking the necessary actions if there are any.

3)Creating the necessary group files for the Patchmgr . (cell_group, dbs_group, ibswitches.lst)

4) Running Patchmgr precheck. After analyzing its output-> taking the necessary actions (if there are any) For ex: if there are 3rd party rpms, we may decide to remove them manually before the upgrade.

"-Note that, this time I had to upgrade the infiniband switch release to an intermediate version.."

"-Also, I had to change the Exadata machine's NTP server :) -- full stack.. "

5) Running Patchmgr and upgrading the images. (we do the upgrade in rolling mode)

Before running the patchmgr, we kill all the ILOM sessions.. (active ILOM session may increase the duration of the upgrade)

6) As the post upgrade actions; reconfiguring NFS & crontabs. Also reinstalling the 3rd party rpms (if removed before the upgrade)

7) Post check: checking the databases, their connectivity and alert log files..
Note that : we also run exachk once again and analyze its output to ensure that everything is fine after the Image upgrade.

After upgrading the Image version to 19.3.1, you will see something like the following when you check the versions;

[root@dbadm01 image_patches]# dcli -g all_group -l root imageinfo| grep -E 'Image version|Active image version'

dbadm01: Image version: 19.3.1.0.0.191018

dbadm02: Image version: 19.3.1.0.0.191018

celadm01: Active image version: 19.3.1.0.0.191018

celadm02: Active image version: 19.3.1.0.0.191018

celadm03: Active image version: 19.3.1.0.0.191018

[root@dbadm01 image_patches]# dcli -g ibswitches.lst -l root version |grep version |grep "SUN DCS"

csw-ibb01: SUN DCS 36p version: 2.2.13-2

csw-iba01: SUN DCS 36p version: 2.2.13-2

Note that, the versioning of  Infiniband Images are different than versioning of Exadata Images.

So 2.2.13-2 is the latest image version for infiniband and it is the one that compatible with 19.3.1 Exadata image version..

Well.. That is it for now :) for Exadata :)

Before coming to the end; one more thing...

After upgrading the Exadata Image version; we may want to upgrade our Grid Infra, as well..

In order to upgrade our Grid Infrastructure after upgrading our Exadata image version; we follow the MOS note below;

"19c Grid Infrastructure and Database Upgrade steps for Exadata Database Machine running on Oracle Linux (Doc ID 2542082.1)"

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That 's it for today :) I hope this has been useful to you:)

See you in my next blog post (which will be about 19C Database upgrades.. -- probably :)