This document will serve as a guide for the Kernel and OS upgrade activities for
- Single Instance on ASM using raw devices
- RAC with ASM (using ASMlib) and OCFS2
Upgrading the Kernel and OS is easy and will just need some few commands. The critical part is the dependencies once the Kernel gets updated, so if you’re using ASMlib and OCFS2 you’ll notice that after the upgrade they’re not working anymore… you can’t startup the ASM, then if your OCR and Voting Disk are on OCFS2 the CRS stack wont start all because the RPMs of ASMlib and OCFS2 are kernel dependent, also there are similar components/softwares that are kernel dependent so you have to check them out and do a risk analysis before doing the upgrade.
… If that’s the case, why do you upgrade your Kernel or OS? … Normally you don’t do this often on your production environment considering that you have 24/7 operations but if the business permits it’s ideal to make an upgrade policy on your OS/systems. Below are some of the “drivers why you need to upgrade”:
- You need to upgrade the firmware of your SAN environment that requires you to be in a specific OS version
- You need to upgrade the firmware of your HBA that needs a specific kernel version
- You need to upgrade your RAID controller’s firmware that requires you to be in a specific kernel or OS version
- Because the hardware/software vendor’s certification matrix is stating that you need to be in a specific kernel or OS version to be on a certified configuration
- And many more…
So after reading this document, you know what to do/check once your boss/client/vendor tell you to upgrade the kernel or OS with an Oracle Database Single Instance or RAC running.
To view the document, click here
