It’s so funny – for years I discuss with customers minimal downtime upgrade strategies back and forth, up and down. I saw DBAs really hunting to save a few seconds potential downtime – and I always take this serious as there is usually a real reason behind that. Just to learn a few days later by repeating experience that my work Windows7 laptop goes down to apply upgrades … and this takes looooooooong …. sometimes it takes a lengthy +30 minutes of quiet time. Whereas my OL6 VBox image applies upgrades in the background and needs a simple restart to be back in less than a minute or so.
Different strategies of course.
For those who think I’m writing nonsense about the upgrade of my Win7 on my Lenovo x230 with 16GB of RAM, an i5-320M cpu and a 5400rpm WD spinning disk here’s a screenshot taken from one of those upgrades where I sat already 15 minutes waiting … waiting … waiting …
As Win7 had to configure the upgrades afterwards, once it was done with restarting I had to wait another 10 minutes for completion. And no, my laptop is not broken (not that I know) – it’s 3 years old and heavily used of course. But all running fine usually … 🙂
Anyhow …
Of course I discussed with a ton of people why you should upgrade now to Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 now! – and stay away from that “we go live on the 2nd release only” thinking as there’s no such thing as THE 2nd release anymore.
But whatever my position on upgrades is, I can ensure that we don’t discuss methods like this internally to force you to upgrade …
… not yet *haha* !!!
–Mike
PS: The picture is not a fake – you can watch the 41 seconds youtube video here 🙂
hi mike, what are the advantages in Oracle Database 12c from the previous version?
Great question – you know that I have 5.5 years of presales experience 😉
But honestly it has a bunch of great features over 11.2.0.x. It really depends what are you doing with the database. I can start from RMAN to great ASM enhancements, tell you that some security features are free in 12.1 now, we have the option for Multitenant and of course In-Memory – and not to forget: you will be under Premier (bug fixing) Support until end of June 2018 whereas 11.2 is already out of Premier Support and the Waived Extended Support applies only to 11.2.0.4 and will end next year in May 2017.
Cheers
Mike
Check your laptop 😉
I’ve never had a Windows update take that long unless it was a full service pack. And with Win10, I think service packs are no longer with us. For the past year or so, every update took up to 1 minute. Make that a few minutes if you’re on a HDD. But 30 minutes? No way.
Alex,
my laptop is my company laptop, a Lenovo x230 with a 500GB WD disk in it (5400rpm), a Intel i5-320M CPU and 16GB of RAM.
And when I say 30 minutes I mean 30 minutes. And I don’t speak about SPs – I speak about those cases when 27 patches get rolled in – the screen says "Please don’t power off or unplug your machine. Installing Update 22 of 27."
And after a wonderful restart it has to configure the updates which takes another lengthy whatever minutes …
I don’t write nonsense. And my machine is average. Yes, 3 years old. But during our many hands-on-workshops in the past 3 years I have seen many customers coming in with laptops with way less power than mine.
But thanks 😉
Cheers
Mike
Is 12.1.0.2 SE (or SE2) approved to run on Win Server 2012 R2? I’m dying on 2008 R2 waiting for Oracle to boost Standard to a newer o/s.
Ok, a 5400rpm HDD and company issued batches of updates can easily do what you describe. Still, it’s your company’s fault, not Windows’. It’s sad we’re still forced to use these "wonderful" products when a decent 500GB SSD can be had for ~$200 🙁
Also, I hope you meant i5-3320M, cause otherwise we’re talking something seriously ancient here.
Regarding cert on Win:
Please check the certification matrix on MOS.
And if you don’t find any indication then please log an SR as Support can find out the status of the certifications.
Cheers
Mike
Alex,
it’s actually am i5-3320M at 2.6 GHz. And please understand that I can’t comment further 😉
Cheers
Mike
Mike,
Why do you say:
"there’s no such thing as THE 2nd release anymore."
Thanks,
Arun
@Arun:
Because every release has a ton of new features, bug fixes, changes, additions etc. There is no difference anymore since 11.1 vs 11.2 vs 12.1 vs 12.2. You will find a ton of changes from 11.2.0.3 to 11.2.0.4 including functionality which got ported down from 12.1 (for instance DBMS_REDACT or optimizer_dynamic_sampling=11).
As every release is a full release it should be treated as a full release – and there’s no difference in changes between 12.1 or 12.2. The "first" and "second" release thinking dates back from 9i and 10g but is not true anymore.
Look also at the stretched release cycles. That emphasizes the fact that every release is a full release.
Cheers
Mike