Re: RAC or Large SMP...?

From: DA Morgan <damorgan_at_psoug.org>
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2008 22:41:29 -0700
Message-ID: <1223876485.336360@bubbleator.drizzle.com>


mccmx_at_hotmail.com wrote:

>> And one argument I didn't make but you reminded me of ... try to
>> perform a rolling upgrade on an SMP box.
>>
>> It may not be perfect with RAC but I can guarantee you it is
>> impossible with a single server.

>
> However my understaning is that the rolling upgrade capabilities with
> RAC are very limited.
>
> For example could you do a rolling upgrade of a major patch (e.g.
> upgrade from 10.2.0.2 to 10.2.0.3)..?
>
> Could you do a rolling upgrade of a cumulative security patch
> (CPU)...?
>
> You are right that it is impossible to do a rolling upgrade on an SMP
> box which means that you will have downtime, but that downtime will be
> much shorter than the equivalent RAC downtime simply because there are
> more homes to patch. Especially when you consider that you may also
> have to patch the CRS home, the ASM home and the multiple database
> homes.

Oracle, with every major release, is getting closer and closer to the holy grail of rolling upgrades. I can't speak specifically, without researching it, which patches can be done on a rolling basis and which can not but for every one that can ... that is one outage you would have with SMP.

-- 
Daniel A. Morgan
Oracle Ace Director & Instructor
University of Washington
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu (replace x with u to respond)
Puget Sound Oracle Users Group
www.psoug.org
Received on Mon Oct 13 2008 - 00:41:29 CDT

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