Re: Upgrading a Windows 2000 server box with Oracle 8i to Windows 2003 Server with 9i

"Nick Palmer" <nick_at_kcicorp.com> wrote in message news:<vmcjtc97v17f3c_at_corp.supernews.com>...
> Hi all,
>
> Ok, here is what I've got. I've got a Windows 2000 server box with Oracle
> 8i running on it. I've got 5 instances on this box. I need to upgrade this
> box to Windows 2003 server. My understanding is that 8i doesn't work with
> 2003 server, but that 9.2 does. So my question is how upgrade Oracle 8i.
> I've never done an upgrade of Oracle on a Windows box, or on a box with
> several instances, so I'm not sure whats involved. Is the Upgrade process
> pretty straight forward. It appears that to get to the correct version of
> 9i for Windows 2003 server, I need to install the first version of 9i. Then
> install a patch to the Installer, then install the latest Patched version of
> 9i (9.2.0.3 I believe).
>
> I think I have two ways of doing this. First, I could do complete backups
> of all my instances, then shutdown Oracle on this box and run the Windows
> 2003 server upgrade. After upgrading, I would do the 9i install/patch
> routine until I was at the correct version, then rebuild the instances and
> do imports. The other way I could do this is to apply the Upgrade to 9i and
> its patches to get to the correct version of 9i, and then upgrade to Windows
> 2003 server.
>
> Has anybody out there done any of this ? I'd like to avoid have to go the
> export/rebuild/import route if I have to, but if thats the safest way, thats
> what I can do.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Nick.

1. Hire a consultant, and have him arrange and test your backups prior to performing this OS upgrade / Oracle Server software/database migration. If you do not test the backups with a restore / recovery, how will you know that you can rollback this operation?
2. Perform a test run of this upgrade/migration on a different server ahead of time.
3. In oracle terminology, one backs up databases, not instances. One cannot possibly perform a cold backup operation against an instance, because by definition, there is no instance when the database is closed.
4. As you mentioned above, if the databases are not large, consider using export and import to move the data out of the existing databases into new 9i R2 (9.2.0.4) databases. There are benefits from creating the system tablespace as locally managed from scratch, instead of migrating the existing database from a dictionary managed to locally managed.
5. functionality of application code that depended upon the oracle data dictionary will have changed. you will need to test this ahead of time.
6. Read the upgrade/migration manual that oracle supplies.

I have not yet upgraded any boxes that were installed with W2K Server to W2K3 Server, but the upgrades from WinNT Server 4.0 to W2K Server only had one issue, and that was related to RAID controller drivers.

I have installed Oracle 9i R2 (patched OUI to 2.2.0.18.0 and 9.2.0.4) on W2K3 Server. Basically, W2K3 Server is W2K Server after a team of OpenBSD Developers tore is down and built it backup up.

hth.

Paul Received on Tue Sep 16 2003 - 10:16:01 CDT