Copying an Oracle Software "Gold Image" without Cloning?

I was hoping to pick the brains of those who've had a similar challenge:

I've automated installation of the Oracle Client in my company via scripted cloning (unzip the software gold image, run the clone script in the unzipped home, and finally run root.sh). All the machines needing the client are RHEL 6.x x86-64bit, and a mixture of 11gR1 and 11g2 clients.

This works great for us.

However, our SAs now want to harden the OS build used for App Servers and the like by excluding tools like gcc. I tried our clone script on the hardened build and (as expected) the cloned home was non-functional (errors due to missing libs) and the oracle generated clone actions log reported errors that gcc could not be found.

The view of the SAs is that we ought to be creating an RPM of the Oracle Client that doesn't require the clone.pl script, and thus gcc etc. I accept their point that if all OS build are identical it shouldn't really be necessary to relink the software and so on.

Initially I wondered if the Instant Client was the answer, but based on my reading of the docs, it seems to need all the same RPMs as the client.

Removing the RPMs of concern after the client install may be feasible, but we need to apply PSUs regularly, and perhaps some interims too. I believe opatch needs these RPMs, so re-installing and then uninstalling the RPMs at patching time is far from ideal.

All the examples I can find of copying an ORACLE_HOME use clone.pl, including this blog post which uses a custom RPM: http://martincarstenbach.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/provision-oracle-rdbms-software-via-rpm

Assuming my gold image contains (in addition to the ORACLE_HOME) the inventory directory, oraInst.loc, /usr/local/bin/oraenv etc. AND that the source and target OS build are identical I can see this *should* work.

Is there anyone out there doing it this way? Does Oracle support doing it this way, or is clone.pl the only officially mandated approach?

Thoughts from those with some time to spare would be much appreciated...

Thanks

Austin--
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l Received on Tue Nov 19 2013 - 21:38:58 CET