- Overview:

Oracle is responsible to perform patches and updates to EXACC infrastructure every quarter (there is no patch in Dec). That includes:

Physical compute nodes (Dom0).
Network switches.
Power distribution units (PDUs).
Integrated lights-out management (ILOM).
Exadata storage servers.

The customer is responsible for patching Oracle GI Clusterware.
Patching Oracle GI will be applied in the rolling manner to preserve database availability throughout the patching process.
Patching prerequisites

/u01 on the database host file system has at least 15 GB of free space.
The Oracle Clusterware is up and running on both VM cluster’s nodes.
The VM cluster’s nodes are up and running.

Patching tools

Oracle OCI console.
DBAASCLI command line utility from one of VM cluster nodes.

In this blog, I'll demonstrate the steps to patch Grid Infrastructure on ExaCC VM cluster to the latest available release update (19.21 Oct/2023 at the time of writing this blog) using OCI console.

To apply a patch to Oracle Grid Infrastructure using DBAASCLI command line utility from one of VM cluster nodes. A high level steps:

1. Connect to VM as opc user.

2. Download GI patch from OCI control Plane server.

sudo dbaascli cswlib download --product GRID --version 19.21.0.0.0

sudo dbaascli cswlib showImages --product grid

3. Run Precheck.

sudo dbaascli grid patch --targetVersion 19.21.0.0.0 --executePrereqs

4. Apply patch.

sudo dbaascli grid patch --targetVersion 19.21.0.0.0

Steps to Patch Grid Infrastructure on VM Cluster

1. Sign in to your OCI tenancy where your Exadata Database Service on Cloud @ Customer system is deployed.

2. Navigate to "Oracle Database" > "Oracle Exadata Database Service on Cloud@Customer" > "Exadata VM Clusters".

3. Click on your VM cluster name.

4. On VM cluster details home page, next to "Updates Available" click "View updates" link.

5. Run patching Precheck.

If the precheck is not successful, then the patch is not applied, and the system displays a message that the patch cannot be applied because the precheck failed.

- On Patches releases page, you will a list of available release update patches for "Virtual Machine OS Update" and "Grid Infrastructure Release Update".

- Review the list of available GI updates. Click the Actions icon (three dots) at the end of the row listing the patch you are interested in, and then click "Precheck" action, then run "Run Precheck" button in confirm precheck screen.

Note: once Precheck finishes, update state will be "Available". On "Update History" page, update state will be "Precheck Passed".

6. Apply GI Update.

Note: Patching of GI on cluster nodes will be executed in the rolling mode to preserve database availability throughout the update process.

Click the Actions icon (three dots) at the end of the row listing the patch that passed Precheck, and then click "Apply Grid Infrastructure Patch" action, then run "Apply Patch" button in confirm screen.