RE: Any-one know how to eliminate PLANNED downtime with Oracle RAC?

I think you can observe from the many responses you've already received that this is remotely possible with a hurculean (read: expensive) effort, and possibly only then by coordinating different products and architectures to assure availability. Before even answering the question, I would ask:  

1 - What is the business purpose for this requirement? Doing so will be quite costly!

2 - If the requirement is only for Oracle, would it be OK to do Oracle patch/upgrade/maintenance during some other outage period? Even if unplanned?

3 - Oracle is only as reliable as it's supporting infrastructure. If the hardware/network/software is not as reliable as your RDBMS infrastructure, it will hardly make a difference.  

Please keep in mind that the largest enterprises in the free world regularly have planned outages for maintenance. If you don't believe me, try any banking or airlines reservation site in the wee hours some weekend morning.

It's only wise to have some kind of window to perform necessary maintenance on a planned basis It's the best way to avoid the unplanned outages that are truly business disasters!    

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Fahrenfort, Keith (HP Shared Solutions Architect for Oracle) Sent: Monday, November 24, 2008 10:26 AM To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: Any-one know how to eliminate PLANNED downtime with Oracle RAC?  

Hi, I'm working with a customer running a critical web site on a 10gR2 RAC backend DB - they support hundreds of thousands of simultaneous connections at the "quietest" time.  

They have expressed a desire for NO downtime during ANY changes to Oracle, particularly the application of Oracle patches and Oracle upgrades (both minor and major), etc.  

Any thoughts? Who's "been there done that"?  

Thanks! Regards!

Please let me know if you prefer to not receive email from me.  

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Keith Fahrenfort

Solutions Architect - Hewlett Packard

Solution Design Services for Oracle

Shared Solutions Architecture

HP Americas Solution Architecture

Call 1.800.424.0993 option2 or email pss_at_hp.com to reach the Solution Design Team

keith.fahrenfort_at_hp.com

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