Patching RAC

Hello all,  

I am the proud mother of a new RAC installation :-)  

My first task with this RAC system was to patch it. I successfully completed a rolling patch on the clusterware, and then patched the asm and db homes separately. I was thinking through how the database patches had to be applied (catpatch.sql) and it makes sense to me that the database should be unavailable throughout the execution of this script, as we are updating the data dictionary within the database
(which there is only one of.)
 

Now I'm testing the April 2008 CPU. The docs say that the database can be up and available while executing catcpu.sql. It also makes no mention of patching the clusterware.  

My questions are:  

1. Has anyone ever had a CPU patch go south because the database was in use?
2. Am I the only one who is nervous running something that is modifying the data dictionary while the database is open for general use?
3. Are there CPU patches for the clusterware? I don't see any.

And as a tidbit, to those of you who may not already know this: When creating a database with dbca, don't use the template databases if you can avoid it (general purpose, data warehouse, transaction processing). These preconfigured databases save time within the database creation process, but they include the java engine within the database. It takes a long time to patch the jvm.  

(May eons ago I had a major patch end up in a recovery because of the
database jvm. What a nightmare that was)    

Lisa Koivu

Oracle Database Administrator

desk: 407-903-4691

cell: 954-683-4459  

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