Rapid Upgrade 11.2.0.4 Standard Edition to 12.2.0.1 Standard Edition

posted on 13 Mar 2017 by in Blog Welcome, Oracle 12c

Prior starting the upgrade process our recommendation is to create RMAN full backup or GRP ( Guaranteed Restore Point )

Keep in mind that GRP is not supported solution in Standard Edition but with some tricks you will be able to use it ( check this post )

Required action:

- Create new Oracle Home with the new version 12.2.0.1

- Install only software of the new version 12.2.0.1 ( you can check how to do this in the related link )

- Install all required patches as per the recommendation from Oracle Metalink for the major version 12.2.0.1 ( you will be able to find in the related posts )

Let start with the upgrade process

Rapid Upgrade 11.2.0.4 Standard Edition to 12.2.0.1 Standard Edition

From the above picture is visible that i have two instances ora11g with version 11.2.0.4 Enterprise Edition and ora11gsd Standard Edition.

I am going to select ora11gsd , adding SYSDBA is not necessary but if you have disabled OS authentication you should add it.

Click next

Checking prerequisites

Checking prerequisites is very important step during the upgrade

i have two warnings and one error

Warning are related to EM Manager repository and second due to OLAP Catalog

- Action - Remove EM repository and OLAP Catalog because this is not required in my case

Error is due to small db_recovery_dest size

- Action - alter system set db_recovery_dest_size = 20G scope=both;

important:

after upgrade process you should collect statistics on Dictionary and Fixed Objects

by simply clicking on check again, you will see that issue have been fixed, now we can click on next

Select Upgrade Options

You need to select following options ( this is default selection )

Enable Parallel Upgrade

- This will allow you to trigger parallel upgrade process which mean that all script for upgrade will be split on separate process and will speed-up the entire process for upgrade.

Recompile Invalid Objects During Post Upgrade

- This is useful to be selected in order to avoid any object with invalid state

Upgrade Time zone data

- Prior selecting this option you have to analyze your database contact and what is the time zone version - if you have question on this second will be good to visit Metalink and check following docs.

Gather Statistics Before Upgrade

-- Keep in mind that in case of huge database size this process can take a lot of time and maybe will be better to collect statistics prior the upgrade or even lock in order to avoid issue with performance due to SQL plan changes.

-- at that point there are a lot of recommendation for upgrade but one of the important step is to keep old parameters like this

optimizer_features_enable to 11.2.0.4 or to your current version, this will help you to analyze Application behaver after software version upgrade.
Also will be good to lock statistics on all schemas related to Applications.
After successful validation with locked statistics and old parameter then you can consider to change parameter optimizer_features_enable from 11.2.0.4 to 12.2.0.1 and Collect Statistics.

Select Recovery Options

What is interesting here, Oracle will private possibility to create GRP ( guaranteed restore point ) but if you try to create new from DBUA it will show you an error - ORA-00439: feature not enabled: Flashback Database

If you try to create from sqlplus, you will be able to create GRP :)

Also if you create GRP prior the start of DBUA, your GRP name will appear as available

Configure Network

If this is single instance you can simply create new listener as our recommendation but if you are upgrading on RAC infrastructure you don’t need to create new because GI infrastructure will manage that.

Configure Management