anas-dbcloud: Upgrading Oracle Pluggable Database with OEM Fleet Maintenance Hub

Introduction:

Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) Fleet Maintenance Hub is a centralized, automated framework within OEM Cloud Control designed to manage the lifecycle of Oracle Databases at scale.
It enables DBAs to patch, upgrade, and maintain hundreds of Oracle Database targets in a standardized, repeatable, and efficient way.
OEM Fleet Maintenance Hub interface is available starting OEM 13.5 release update 16 (13.5.0.16).
You can use Fleet Maintenance Hub to create Gold Images starting OEM 13.5 release update 21 (13.5.0.21).
OEM Fleet Maintenance Hub offers

A visual, dashboard-driven interface
Simplified workflows for patching and upgrades
Integration with gold images and compliance baselines
Automation that minimizes manual DBA intervention and downtime

Importance & Benefit:

Operational Efficiency: Automates time-consuming tasks like patching and upgrades across many databases, reducing manual work.
Consistency: Ensures uniform Oracle Home versions and configurations using gold images.
Compliance: Provides visibility into patch levels and configuration drift across the fleet.
Risk Mitigation: Reduces human errors through automation and repeatable processes.
Cost Efficiency: Less manual intervention means lower operational costs and faster turnaround for maintenance windows.

In this blog, I'll demonstrate updating/upgrading a Pluggable database with new gold image for enhanced security.

Prerequisites:

Oracle OEM 13.5.0.21 or higher
Oracle 19.17 multitenant database
Oracle 19.23 multitenant database
Both Oracle 19.17 & 19.23 are discovered by OEM

Task #1: Review Patch Recommendations for Gold Images

In this task, you will review patch recommendations for existing gold images.

1. Once logged in OEM, navigate to Targets > Databases, then Administration > Fleet Maintenance Hub

2. In the top right corner, you see the status of Last Patch Recommendation Update. If a date is shown below it, then the patch recommendation was executed on that date. If it is "Not run", then you can click "Refresh Patch Recommendations" to get the latest patch recommendation updates. This requires OEM to be configured to access MOS.

Note: In this demo, I'll skip refreshing patch recommendations and use existing gold images 19.17 & 19.23

3. Click on middle tile "Patch Recommendations for Images". The chart indicates the health of gold images.

Green indicates, the number of gold images have all the recommended patches, and these images can be used for upgrade or update operations (Image 19.23).

Red indicates, the number of gold images are missing critical recommended patches and must refreshed before using it for upgrade or update operations (Image 19.17).

Note: For this demo, I will use the 19.23 image to perform pluggable database patching/upgrade from 19.17 to 19.23.

We can use Fleet Maintenance Hub to refresh 19.17 image, but this will not be demonstrated in this demo.

Task #2: Secure Pluggable Database by Updating with Gold Image

1. Navigate to Targets > Databases

For this demo, we will upgrade Finance PDB (sales.subnet.vcn.oraclevcn.com CDB) at 19.17 version level to version 19.23. As part of this update, we need to choose a CDB (hr.subnet.vcn.oraclevcn.com, which resides in 19.23 Gold Image shown in task #1) at 19.23 version level. After update is completed, Finance PDB will reside in this new CDB at 19.23 version level.

To patch a database, you must subscribe the target database to a gold image. You can subscribe a database to one image only, but an image can have multiple databases subscribed to it.

2. Subscribe sales CDB to 19.23 gold image. Navigate to Fleet Maintenance Hub, by clicking on Administration >> Fleet Maintenance Hub

Click Subscribe button In the Fleet Maintenance Hub, under the "Target Subscription" tab in Tile 1

3. In "Subscribe Targets to Image" page:

- Select filter 19 under Release.

- From the dropdown, select the gold image 19.23 (19cDB-Linux-x64-APPS).

- From the list of databases, select sales.subnet.vcn.oraclevcn.com.

- Click on Subscribe at the top right corner

4. In the Fleet Maintenance Hub, Navigate to Tile "Target Patch Compliance". You see that the sales CDB is associated with 19.23 gold image (19cDB-Linux-x64-APPS). Under Target Compliance columns, we see that the CDB is drifted and needs to be patched. In this demo, we will perform a PDB (FINANCE) level patching.

Click on the menu under Actions for the sales CDB, and select Update Pluggable Database.

5. In Fleet Maintenance page with pre-selected values for Gold Image (19cDB-Linux-x64-APPS), Target Type (Pluggable Database) and Operation (Update), select FINANCE PDB and click "Next".

6. Select below options:

- Under Maintenance Task, select Attach Existing CDB.

- Under Attach Existing CDB, review the source 19.17 CDB (sales.subnet.vcn.oraclevcn.com).

- Under Destination CDB, select 19.23 CDB (hr.subnet.vcn.oraclevcn.com).

- Under credentials, select values from the drop-down menu.

- Under Work Directory, enter /u01/tmp

- Under Options section, select Yes for Skip Cluster Verification Utility Checks.

7. Click on Validate and then select Quick Validation.

8. Once validation successful, click Close and then hit Submit. A new dialogue box will ask for the name of the deployment procedure. Enter deployment name then hit Submit.

Two deployment procedures will be submitted (Attach Existing CDB & Update PDB).

Click on Monitor Progress, which will open a new window.

9. In the provisioning window, we see that the Deployment procedure with the name "Attach" has completed successfully. Click on the Deployment procedure with the name "Update" and review the steps performed.