EBS on Exadata -- Installing rpms for Database Nodes -- a missing info in the documentation

Unfortuneatly, there is no specific document for installing EBS on Exadata, at the moment.
This is even true for the new release of EBS, EBS 12.2
That's why, in order to properly install EBS database tier on Exadata, we follow a general EBS installation document, which is available on Oracle Support.

The document in question is "Oracle E-Business Suite Installation and Upgrade Notes Release 12 (12.2) for Linux x86-64 (Doc ID 1330701.1)"

Actually, it makes sense to follow this document for "EBS on Exadata projects", because Exadata compute/database nodes are Linux X86-64.

However, as Exadata is delivered with the latest software versions and as it is an engineered system that is equipped with the optimized OS and OS packages, the rpm installation instructions that are present in the above document, create a question mark in the mind.

According to the Doc 1330701.1, there are OS packages, which must be installed on both application and database tiers.

The document does not care whether the database nodes are Exadata nodes or not.

The document also say, alternatively you can install preinstall rpm if you like :) 

At this point, I want to give some additional and important info to you.

Firstly, preinstall rpm must not be installed to Exadata, because it updates the OS related configuration files such as limit.conf, resolv.conf, sysctl.conf and etc.

Secondly, "according to Oracle" (created couple of SRs for this), the rpms listed in Document 1330701.1, "can" be installed to Exadata nodes. (including the 32 bit ones), but it is not a must to install them when the database hosts are on Exadata. I gathered this info after lots of discussions on Oracle Support and after creating several SRs there.

This also means, you can ignore rpm warnings that will be displayed during the installation of Database Examples into Oracle Home of EBS. (Database examples installation is mandatory, but the rpm warnings can be ignored)

"However, we are still not trusting this information". 

This information is based on the SRs and the comments that are done by SMEs..  

In my opinion, there is no guarantee for this configuration yet.

I mean, the documentation is still saying "you need to install those rpms"

So till this info will become offical, my recommendation is as follows; 

What I recommend at the moment is, to install the rpms to Exadata nodes by skipping the one which has lots of dependencies. 

An example is redhat-lsb.. It is not required at all and it will complain about the dependencies (lots of them).

This is what we are doing in our recent Exadata migration project as well.

3 more things;

-Never downgrade any rpm versions on Exadata. 

-Be careful when you are playing with glibc package.
-Your Exadata compute nodes should be equal in terms of rpm levels. (check this one, before starting the rpm installations, as well)