Plugin

Oracle AutoUpgrade between two servers – and Plugin?

In my previous blog post I demonstrated how you can upgrade with AutoUpgrade between two servers. This a very typical scenario where you get new server, often also with a newer operating system version installed. But I was wondering if you can use Oracle AutoUpgrade between two servers – and Plugin?

AutoUpgrade between two servers

Please see my previous blog post about all the details:

Upgrade and Plugin?

At the end of it, I was curious if I couldn’t just plugin afterwards. But I …

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AutoUpgrade and Plug In to a CDB – with a single command (and video)

I have to confess, this feature is out and available for quite a while. But only unofficially. AutoUpgrade can upgrade and plug in a non-CDB into a CDB. But it lacked flexibility. And we didn’t test it a lot. Hence, you could find it documented in our Hands-On Lab instructions. And we did this exercise with you already in our sold-out labs at OOW 2019 as well. But since a week and a bit, it is officially supported: AutoUpgrade and Plug In to a CDB – with a single command (and video).

AutoUpgrade and Plug In to a CDB - with a single command (and video)

Photo by William Daigneault on Unsplash

Create

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Save Patching Downtime with Oracle Multitenant?

At OOW 2019 we announced that you can have up to 3 user-created pluggable databases (PDBs) per container database (CDB) without having a Multitenant license. And in this blog post I’d like to demonstrate how you can save patching downtime with Oracle Multitenant.

The Concept

The idea this entire process settles on is very simple. When you create a fresh container database in the target (already patched!) environment, you don’t have to patch this one. You only have to relocate the PDB from the source into the target CDB. In addition, only datapatch needs to be executed. As the …

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Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB – The Minimal Downtime Challenge

There are several pitfalls when you plugin a non-CDB into a CDB environment. I’d like to highlight some of them – and show you potential workarounds as well. This is part of a series of blog posts to make your migration from non-CDB to PDB a bit smoother.

Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB – The Minimal Downtime Challenge

Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB – The Minimal Downtime Challenge

When we start to look at a migration from non-CDB to PDB for an important system, regardless of migrating on-prem or to the cloud, reducing the downtime is very important. In this blog post I’d like to highlight the different aspects …

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Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB – The Fallback Challenge

There are several pitfalls when you plugin a non-CDB into a CDB environment. I’d like to highlight some of them – and show you potential workarounds as well. This is part of a series of blog posts to make your migration from non-CDB to PDB a bit smoother.

Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB - The Fallback Challenge

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Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB – The Fallback Challenge

As I work with customers on upgrades and migrations for a very long time, I know how important a proper fallback is.

When you attempt a migration from a non-CDB to PDB, you need to plan …

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Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB – Various Pitfalls

There are several pitfalls when you plugin a non-CDB into a CDB environment. I’d like to highlight some of them – and show you potential workarounds as well. This is part of a series of blog posts to make your migration from non-CDB to PDB a bit smoother.

Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB - Various Pitfalls

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Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB – Various Pitfalls

In all the previous blog posts of this series I tried to explain specific pitfalls, and how you can workaround them. This article is meant to collect the “leftovers”, the minor issues and pitfalls which you may not …

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Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB – The Patch Level Pitfall

There are several pitfalls when you plugin a non-CDB into a CDB environment. I’d like to highlight some of them – and show you potential workarounds as well. This is part of a series of blog posts to make your migration from non-CDB to PDB a bit smoother.

Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB - The Patch Level Pitfall

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Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB – The Patch Level Pitfall

When you consolidate on a larger scale, it is very likely that you have different patch levels in your database environments. But when you attempt to plugin a non-CDB into a CDB, you may see …

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Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB – The Component Pitfall

There are several pitfalls when you plugin a non-CDB into a CDB environment. I’d like to highlight some of them – and show you potential workarounds as well. This is part of a series of blog posts to make your migration from non-CDB to PDB a bit smoother.

Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB - The Component Pitfall

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The Component Pitfall

With component we mean the database component which you can find in DBA_REGISTRY – or CDB_REGISTRY. When Multitenant became available over 5 years ago, a decision had been made to make all options/components mandatory in a container database. This decision had to …

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Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB – The Time Zone Pitfall

There are several pitfalls when you plugin a non-CDB into a CDB environment. I’d like to highlight some of them – and show you potential workarounds as well. This is part of a series of blog posts to make your migration from non-CDB to PDB a bit smoother.

Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB - The Time Zone Pitfall

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Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB – The Time Zone Pitfall

Interestingly, there is no issue with different time zone settings within a single CDB. Your CDB$ROOT can be on DST V.32 whereas a PDB you plugin can be already on DST V.33. But only

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Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB – The COMPATIBLE pitfall

There are several pitfalls when you plugin a non-CDB into a CDB environment. I’d like to highlight some of them – and show you potential workarounds as well. This is part of a series of blog posts to make your migration from non-CDB to PDB a bit smoother.

Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB - The COMPATIBLE pitfall

Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB – The COMPATIBLE pitfall

When you migrate your non-CDB to PDB, in most cases the COMPATIBLE setting of the non-CDB will be lower than the setting of the receiving CDB. But still in this case you may see warnings. I will explain how to deal with …

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Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB – Typical Plugin Issues and Workarounds

In the previous blog posts I showed different approaches on how to migrate your database on a same Endianness platform into Multitenant. Whether you prefer to upgrade first or plugin first is up to you. I recommend upgrading first as this allows you a seamless fallback. But regardless of which approach you prefer, you may take care on potential pitfalls. Hence, this blog post is about Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB – Typical Plugin Issues and Workarounds. It may not be complete when I publish it and I may extend it later on. Let me know if you have …

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Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB – Clone via NON$CDB, upgrade, convert

The third option for plugging in a non-CDB is called Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB – Clone via NON$CDB, upgrade, convert. As I showed already in this blog post a while ago, your source must be at least an Oracle 12.1 database. And this technique can be used also only for same-Endianness migrations but does not apply if you’d like to migrate from Big to Little Endian. If your source database matches already the receiving CDB, no upgrade is necessary.

Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB – Clone via NON$CDB, upgrade, convert

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High Level Overview

Endianness change possible:
No
Source database versions: Oracle 12.1.0.2
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Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB – Plug in, upgrade, convert

This is my next blog post about Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB – Plug in, upgrade, convert. But what is different from the previous one? And why is it necessary? Since Oracle Database 12.2.0.1 you can plugin a non-CDB at first, the upgrade and convert it. And I’ll show you this technique here.

Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB – Plug in, upgrade, convert

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High Level Overview

Endianness change possible: No
Source database versions: Oracle 12.2.0.1 or newer (or 12.1.0.2 when CDB has shared UNDO or with a patch adding the UNDO commands to DBMS_PDB.DESCRIBE in 12.1.0.2)
Characteristic: Plugin into CDB first
Upgrade
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Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB – Upgrade, plug in, convert

As first blog post of this series about Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB – Upgrade, plug in, convert I will explain the most straight forward approach of going to Single- or Multitenant. But you have other options as well. which I’ll showcase in the other blog posts. I demonstrated this technique on the blog already a while ago. But since Oracle 12.2.0.1, there are a few other options available.

Database Migration from non-CDB to PDB - Upgrade, plug in, convert

High Level Overview

Endianness change possible: No
Source database versions: Oracle 11.2.0.4 or newer
Characteristic: Upgrade non-CDB first
Upgrade necessary: Yes, before plugin
Downtime:
Upgrade, plugin, copy (optional) and
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Different block sizes when you plugin?

Interesting case Roy came across a week ago with a customer in the US. The customer received a plugin violation because of different DB_BLOCK_SIZE between the source and the destination database. This happened regardless of unplug/plug or plugging in a non-CDB into a CDB. Hence the question came up: Can you have different block sizes when you plugin?

It should be possible – but you may need a tiny little workaround to make it happen.

The documentation as far as I can see was not helpful. MOS Note: 1935365.1 (Multitenant Unplug/Plug Best Practices) wasn’t very helpful either.

Different block sizes

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Unplug a 12.2.0.1 PDB and plugin into 18c in the Cloud

Unplug a 12.2.0.1 PDB and plugin into 18c in the CloudThere’s been silence for a while – but today I’d like to show you how to unplug a 12.2.0.1 PDB and plugin into 18c in the Cloud. I’m doing this exercise because I’ve seen questions already. And I was curious if it works as I’d expect it.

Unplug a 12.2.0.1 PDB and plugin into 18c in the Cloud

As usual I will use our hands-on lab environment – and a freshly deployed 18c OCI-Classic instance (formerly known as DBCS formerly known as DBaaS).

Unplug a 12.2.0.1 PDB and plugin into 18c inthe Cloud

It is a Single Tenant environment with one PDB. If you need for information about how to …

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noncdb_to_pdb.sql – why does it take so long?

What is noncdb_to_pdb.sql?

noncdb_to_pdb.sql - Why does it take so long?The script noncdb_to_pdb.sql gets run only once in the life span of your database. It gets executed when a regular Oracle database (non-CDB) gets move to become part of a Single-/Multitenant deployment as a pluggable database (PDB). But why does it take so long?

You will never run this script again for this database. The script is a sanity script to clean up and change things in a non-CDB, and unite it finally and irreversible with the CDB.

How long does it take to complete?

Runtime varies a lot. It depends mainly on the number of objects …

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Upgrade to Oracle Database 12.2 and Converting it into an 12.2 PDB (plugin)

2 customers requested a bit more explanation on how to:
Convert and Plugin an Oracle 12.1 non-CDB database into an Oracle 12.2 container database

Cool, I like that 🙂 I will do this right away and use the approach to Upgrade first, then Plugin afterwards.

Upgrading an Oracle 12.1.0.2 database to Oracle 12.2.0.1

First the preupgrade.jar must be executed – please download always the most recent version from MOS Note:884522.1 as the version we publish is usually newer including important improvements (and fixes) than the version you’ll get with the release drop. We are working on including always the …

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Upgrade to 12c and Plugin – one fast way to move into the world of Oracle Multitenant

What is the best way to move into Oracle Multitenant (which includes Single Tenant with just one PDB) as well?

This question came up on the blog, it’s part of the Multitenant chapter in our big slide deck but let me elaborate this a bit more in detail. Of course there are several ways to move a database into a Single/Multitenant environment such as Data Pump but one fact is for sure: You can’t convert a stand-alone database to become a container database (CDB$ROOT). A container database has to be built up from scratch as first step. Please …

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