Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Upgrade

 

There are a number of factors to consider if your organization wants to upgrade to the latest version of Oracle Enterprise Manager, now re-branded, in full, as Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c. In general, you have three upgrade paths to choose from: 1-System, 2-System and 1-System on a different host. As the name implies, 1-System will upgrade Grid Control to Cloud Control on the same host. While Oracle's documentation does make mention of the baggage and overhead associated with upgrading Grid control to Cloud control, it is somewhat buried in the voluminous documentation.

 

Firstly, your storage requirements will be increased because the 12c Agents are not really upgraded so much as installed fresh into a new 12c Agent home directory, effectively doubling your agent space. The same is also true for Oracle Management Service (OMS) as it is also installed into a fresh 12c OMS home directory. Also consider that you will also carry forward all the code baggage from the earlier version of Grid Control, whether its 10g or 11g. For these and other preupgrade details please refer to the Oracle Documentation.

 

The 2-System upgrade path is probably the most versatile upgrade solution and offers almost zero downtime for Oracle Enterprise Manager from start to finish. It is also the most complicated upgrade path with a number of manual steps in between. On the other hand, if you want to upgrade hardware from old x86 to modern x64 architecture then the 2-System upgrade path offers you that opportunity. Somewhere in the middle between the 1-System and 2-System upgrade is the 1-System on a different host. 

 

This is probably the cleanest upgrade path in that, because you will upgrade to a new host, the code baggage from the previous EM installation is eliminated. While this option does require additional hardware, you take the opportunity to make the switch from an x86 to x64 architecture, or vice-versa, as the case may be. But there is downtime associated with this upgrade path while the database and repository are copied to the new host, as well as the actual upgrade itself.

 

Now that you know some of the conditions and hurdles surrounding the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c upgrade, you make be asking whether or not its all worth it. Some schools of thought say that its better to discard all the baggage from the older release and start fresh – new hardware (virtual or physical) , new database, new Oracle software. Others may not be able to live without the years of collected target's data. Ultimately this is the decision you will have to make.

 

Before taking the plunge, it is advised to setup a test environment and play around with the various options to gauge the difficulty of each upgrade path and see what's right for your organization. You could also take a look at Oracle's all-in-one Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control 11g Oracle VM template and give that a spin to explore the “1-System” upgrade approach and to quickly see Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c in action. But if you do want to try an upgrade, the first step is to install the Preupgrade console.

 

Throughout this section it would be helpful to have our environment setup properly. Use the following two /home/oracle/.bash_profile examples as a reference point for your 11g and 12c environment.

 

Note: The following .bash_profile file can be used “as is” with Oracle's all-in-one Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control 11g Oracle VM template. For a fresh all-in-one Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c installation, do “not” set the Oracle environment until “after” the installation.

 

# 11g User specific environment and startup programs 

 

# Oracle Settings 

TMP=/tmp; export TMP 

TMPDIR=$TMP; export TMPDIR 

ORACLE_BASE=/u01/OracleHomes; export ORACLE_BASE 

#ORACLE_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE/db11g; export ORACLE_HOME 

ORACLE_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE/Middleware/oms11g; export ORACLE_HOME 

AGENT_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE/Middleware/agent11g; export AGENT_HOME 

OMS_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE/Middleware/oms11g; export OMS_HOME 

ORACLE_INSTANCE=/u01/OracleHomes/gc_inst/WebTierIH1; export ORACLE_INSTANCE 

ORACLE_SID=emrep; export ORACLE_SID 

ORACLE_TERM=xterm; export ORACLE_TERM 

PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH:$HOME/bin:/u01/OracleHomes/Middleware/oms11g/OPatch:$ORACLE_HOME/bin; export PATH 

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib:/lib:/usr/lib; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH 

CLASSPATH=$ORACLE_HOME/JRE:$ORACLE_HOME/jlib:$ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/jlib; export CLASSPATH 

 

if [ $USER = "oracle" ]; then 

  if [ $SHELL = "/bin/ksh" ]; then 

    ulimit -p 16384 

    ulimit -n 65536 

  else 

    ulimit -u 16384 -n 65536 

  fi 

fi

 

# Post upgrade 12c User specific environment and startup programs

 

# Oracle Settings
TMP=/tmp; export TMP
TMPDIR=$TMP; export TMPDIR
ORACLE_BASE=/u01/OracleHomes; export ORACLE_BASE
ORACLE_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE/db11g; export ORACLE_HOME
AGENT_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE/Middleware/agent12g/core/12.1.0.1.0/; export AGENT_HOME
OMS_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE/Middleware12c/oms; export OMS_HOME
ORACLE_INSTANCE=/u01/OracleHomes/Middleware12c/gc_inst/WebTierIH1; export ORACLE_INSTANCE
ORACLE_SID=emrep; export ORACLE_SID
ORACLE_TERM=xterm; export ORACLE_TERM
PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH; export PATH
PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin:$PATH; export PATH
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib:/lib:/usr/lib; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
CLASSPATH=$ORACLE_HOME/JRE:$ORACLE_HOME/jlib:$ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/jlib; export CLASSPATH

if [ $USER = "oracle" ]; then
  if [ $SHELL = "/bin/ksh" ]; then
    ulimit -p 16384
    ulimit -n 65536
  else
    ulimit -u 16384 -n 65536
  fi
fi

 

The first thing to do is to gather all the resources we will need to perform the upgrade. This includes the Agent Core files and Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c installer, both x86 and x64 versions as needed, and the prerequisite patches. For the sake of this walkthrough, we assume that you are upgrading Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control 11g and that your staging directory is writable by user oracle.

 

The Agent Core and Enterprise Manager 12c files can be  downloaded from  http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/oem/grid-control/downloads/index.html. The Agent Core files can be downloaded by following the Oracle Enterprise Manager Agent Downloads link and scrolling to the bottom of the page to the Oracle Enterprise Manager Agent 12.1 files for Self Update Feature section. Here you will find both x86 and x64 versions of the Agent upgrade.

 

First, download these files and then unzip them to your staging directory. It is recommended to find the AgentCore zips and put them together in the same directory. Later, when you have successfully installed the preupgrade console and want to manage/validate your software, the console will be looking for two files: 12.1.0.1.0_AgentCore_226.zip for the x64 agent upgrade or 12.1.0.1.0_AgentCore_46.zip for the x86 upgrade agent.

 

At the top of the grid-control downloads site is a section entitled Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c. Here you will find links to both the x86 and x64 versions of the Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Installer. The installer is divided into two disks. The first disk is the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c upgrader. The second disk contains the plugins for the Agent upgrade, so in fact disk 2 goes hand in hand with the AgentCore zips. Download disk 1 as appropriate for your environment.

 

For our example, Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control 11g is running on x86 in an all-in-one configuration, so we need disks 1 and 2 from the Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c x86 upgrader. We have Agent running on a x64 target so we need to download only disk 2 of the Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c x64 upgrader. Further more, we have combined disks 1 and 2 into one directory called em12_linux_x86. From disk 2 we grabbed only the files located in the plugins directory and placed them in another directory called em12_linux64.

 

The next example shows the stage directory with the files from above.

 

$ cd /u01/stage

$ ls -lh

total 468M 

drwxrwxr-x  4 oracle oinstall 4.0K Oct 14 09:11 10044087 

drwxr-xr-x  5 oracle oinstall 4.0K Oct 13 15:55 10065631 

-rw-r--r--  1 oracle oinstall 221M Sep 23 02:53 12.1.0.1.0_AgentCore_226.zip 

-rw-r--r--  1 oracle oinstall 214M Oct 13 13:41 12.1.0.1.0_AgentCore_46.zip 

drwxr-xr-x  3 oracle oinstall 4.0K Oct 14 15:22 em12_linux64 

drwxr-xr-x 10 oracle oinstall 4.0K Oct 13 15:06 em12_linux_x86 

-rw-r--r--  1 oracle oinstall 3.6M Oct 13 14:49 p10044087_111010_Generic.zip 

-rw-r--r--  1 oracle oinstall 598K Oct 13 14:49 p10065631_111010_Generic.zip 

-rw-r--r--  1 oracle oinstall  29M Oct 13 14:51 p6880880_111000_LINUX.zip 

$ ls -lh em12_linux_x86 

total 1.6G 

drwxr-xr-x 7 oracle oinstall 4.0K Oct 13 14:34 install 

drwxr-xr-x 4 oracle oinstall 4.0K Oct 13 14:34 jdk 

drwxr-xr-x 4 oracle oinstall 4.0K Oct 13 14:40 oms 

drwxr-xr-x 3 oracle oinstall 4.0K Oct 14 09:36 plugins 

drwxr-xr-x 2 oracle oinstall 4.0K Oct 13 14:40 Preupgrade_Console_Patch 

-rw-r--r-- 1 oracle oinstall  99K Oct 10 17:50 Release_Notes.pdf 

drwxr-xr-x 2 oracle oinstall 4.0K Oct 13 14:40 response 

-rwxr-xr-x 1 oracle oinstall 5.9K Oct 10 17:50 runInstaller 

drwxr-xr-x 9 oracle oinstall 4.0K Oct 13 14:41 stage 

drwxr-xr-x 2 oracle oinstall 4.0K Oct 13 14:44 wls 

-rw-r--r-- 1 oracle oinstall 1.6G Oct 10 18:01 WT.zip 

$ ls -lh em12_linux64 

total 1.2G 

-rw-r--r--  1 oracle oinstall 567K Sep 23 04:26 12.1.0.1.0_oracle.em.sidb_2000_0.opar 

-rw-r--r--  1 oracle oinstall 3.8M Sep 23 04:26 12.1.0.1.0_oracle.em.soee_2000_0.opar 

-rw-r--r--  1 oracle oinstall 594K Sep 23 04:26 12.1.0.1.0_oracle.em.ssad_2000_0.opar 

-rw-r--r--  1 oracle oinstall 102M Sep 23 04:25 12.1.0.1.0_oracle.sysman.beacon_2000_0.opar 

-rw-r--r--  1 oracle oinstall 489K Sep 23 04:25 12.1.0.1.0_oracle.sysman.csa_2000_0.opar 

-rw-r--r--  1 oracle oinstall 593M Sep 23 04:25 12.1.0.1.0_oracle.sysman.db_2000_0.opar 

-rw-r--r--  1 oracle oinstall 420M Sep 23 04:25 12.1.0.1.0_oracle.sysman.emas_2000_0.opar 

-rw-r--r--  1 oracle oinstall 2.7M Sep 23 04:26 12.1.0.1.0_oracle.sysman.emct_2000_0.opar 

-rw-r--r--  1 oracle oinstall  27M Sep 23 04:26 12.1.0.1.0_oracle.sysman.emfa_2000_0.opar 

-rw-r--r--  1 oracle oinstall 6.3M Sep 23 04:26 12.1.0.1.0_oracle.sysman.empa_2000_0.opar 

-rw-r--r--  1 oracle oinstall 291K Sep 23 04:25 12.1.0.1.0_oracle.sysman.emrep_2000_0.opar 

-rw-r--r--  1 oracle oinstall 8.6M Sep 23 04:26 12.1.0.1.0_oracle.sysman.mos_2000_0.opar 

-rw-r--r--  1 oracle oinstall 484K Sep 23 04:25 12.1.0.1.0_oracle.sysman.oh_2000_0.opar 

-rw-r--r--  1 oracle oinstall 2.2M Sep 23 04:26 12.1.0.1.0_oracle.sysman.ssa_2000_0.opar 

-rw-r--r--  1 oracle oinstall 8.4M Sep 23 04:26 12.1.0.1.0_oracle.sysman.vt_2000_0.opar 

-rw-r--r--  1 oracle oinstall 3.4M Sep 23 04:26 12.1.0.1.0_oracle.sysman.xa_2000_0.opar

 

Next, we need to take care of some prerequisites before we can continue on with the installation of the Preupgrade Console.  First take care that you are running the latest version of opatch. Login to http://support.oracle.com/ and go to patches and downloads. There search for 6880880. Download the patch associated with your level of Oracle Enterprise Manager and unzip that patch to /u01/OracleHomes/Middleware/oms11g to overwrite the older opatch.

 

Note: Ensure that you use the correct path to your opatch directory.

 

We will then download two patches. Search for and download 10044087 and 10065631. Unzip these patches into our stage directory. Now we are ready to do the final steps for installing the Preupgrade Console.

 

$ cd /u01/stage

$ opatch lsinventory 

$ opatch prereq CheckConflictAgainstOHWithDetail -phBaseDir ./10065631 

$ emctl stop oms 

$ cd 10065631/ 

$ opatch apply 

$ cd ../10044087 

$ opatch apply 

 

After this we need to run rcuJDBCEngine which should be in your PATH. Make substitutions for <PASSWORD> and <IP ADDRESS> as needed. In this example, sysman is the OEM administrative user. <IP ADDRESS> will be OEM's IP address. 1521 is the port on which the database listens and emrep is the SID.

 

rcuJDBCEngine sysman/<PASSWORD>@<IP ADDRESS>:1521:emrep JDBC_SCRIPT $ORACLE_HOME/sysman/preupgc/puc_dblink_pkgdef.sql

 

rcuJDBCEngine sysman/<PASSWORD>@<IP ADDRESS>:1521:emrep JDBC_SCRIPT $ORACLE_HOME/sysman/preupgc/puc_dblink_pkgbody.sql

 

rcuJDBCEngine sysman/<PASSWORD>@<IP ADDRESS>:1521:emrep JDBC_SCRIPT $ORACLE_HOME/sysman/preupgc/pre_upg_console.sql

If you are able to run rcuJDBCEngine successfully all three times then you can now restart OMS.

 

$ emctl start oms

 

You can now log into Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g, click on the Deployments tab and look for Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Upgrade Console under the Upgrade section. 

 

Figure 1

 

Looking at the Upgrade Console, you will see that it has been divided into sections starting at the top with the Agent Upgrade Status and Other Links. As the name implies, this section gives a high level view of where we are in the Agent upgrade process. The Preupgrade console has been designed to allow the systems administrator to perform the upgrade in a flow, starting at the top and working their way down, step by step, but if any problems crop up you can always refer to this top section to track things down or just get a quick status report of your progress.

 

Figure 2

 

Choose 1-System under the Select Upgrade Type as we will be performing a simple same system upgrade of Grid Control, which Oracle now calls Cloud Control. 

 

Figure 3

 

It is advised that you click on the Overview link in the Preupgrade Steps section to better understand the general steps we will be following while doing this 1-System upgrade. Afterwards, click on the Manage Software link.

 

Figure 4

 

What we want to do now is start adding and then validating the PATH to our previously staged AgentCore zips, 12c Installer and Agent plugins directories. Oracle's documentation says that you should stage all the files together in the same directory but you can just add and validate files and directories successively.

 

Figure 5

 

Figure 6

 

Figure 7

 

Once we have validated all of our software, we are ready to proceed to the next section. Click on the  Deploy and Configure Agents tab in the Upgrade Agents Steps section.

 

Figure 8

 

Here, its just a matter of filling the blanks and adding a  few details so that we can begin the Agent deployment and configuration. Starting at the top, you can leave the Operational Name with the default setting. If you run the deploy and config multiple times it will update the Operational Name to something unique. Note: if you have successive failures during this phase of the operation, keep in mind that this can fill up your /tmp directory. If you see that you are starting to run out of space after running this operation too many times, simply go into your /tmp directory and clear out some space.

 

In the Select Operation Type section we want to leave the defaults, ie both Deploy and Configure should be selected. In the next section, Search Agents, simply click Search and all your available agents should show up.

 

Figure 9

 

In the Agent Credentials section it should be OK to leave it with the default Use Oracle Home Preferred Credentials because a good systems administrator has taken the time to set up their environment properly, but if you're in a hurry and just want to do this down and dirty then you can click on the Override Oracle Home Preferred Credentials tab and the fill in the username and password applicable to your environment.

 

Figure 10

 

Click Next to go to the next page. Here you should fill in the blanks as appropriate. You will need to enter your root user details in order to run the root.sh script, which runs during the deploy and config phase.

 

Figure 11

 

At this point you will see a Confirmation at the top of the page and a Job #. Simply click on the job link and hit <F5> on your keyboard occasionally to refresh the browser so you can follow the progress of the Agent Deployment and Configuration.

 

Figure 12