RAC

Why is the fix for bug nnn not included in any RU?

Christian asked this question today. Specifically, in his case for Bug 26749785 – PERF_DIAG: NEED TO HAVE MORE CONTROL IN DICTIONARY FOR AUTO_STATS_ADVISOR_TASK. Several of his customers suffer from this issue, and they repeatedly need to ask for backports or merge patches. I have seen this several times as well. Anyway, he is not only one who asked: Why is the fix for bug nnn not included in any RU?

Why is the fix for bug nnn not included in any RU?

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

Inclusion criteria

In order to be able to include a bug fix into an MRP, CSPU or RU, it has to be …

GI 19.31 and 19.32: trace file flooding in mgmtca.trc can happen

Posted on September 4, 2026 by Mike.Dietrich ASM / RAC / GI Flaws and Pitfalls Oracle Database 19c 4

Thanks to Peter Lehmann who always alerts me about findings and encounters he had in his test and production RAC cluster environments. Peter dropped me an email the other day, and I share his suspicion that this may effect many in the coming weeks operating RAC environments. If you don’t have a RAC, you may not see this happening with GI 19.31 and 19.32: trace file flooding in mgmtca.trc can happen.

GI 19.31 and 19.32: trace file flooding in mgmtca.trc can happen

Photo by Giovanna Gomes on Unsplash

What happens?

It took me a bit of searching, and Peter collected a lot of information already.

Two months after patching GI …

Sign up for the next Virtual Classroom Seminar: Patch Smarter, Not Harder

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Mike.Dietrich Workshop 2

Some of you may have realized: We moved the Virtual Classroom Seminar #27 from its original date in February to March 12 this week. Usually we don’t do this – but we ended up with so much content. If you haven’t already, it is time for you to sign up for the next Virtual Classroom Seminar: Patch Smarter, Not Harder.

Photo by Moritz Mentges on Unsplash

What are we going to talk about?

Database Patching – with or without RAC or Data Guard. With demos, as usual.

The idea is that you may learn a lot. And of course, …

The February 2026 release of AutoUpgrade (26.2) is available

Posted on February 11, 2026 by Mike.Dietrich AutoUpgrade 15

This is a ground-breaking new release of AutoUpgrade, and the team worked hard to release it last weekend. This means for you that you should renew your AutoUpgrade tools as The February 2026 release of AutoUpgrade (26.2) is available now for download.

The February 2026 release of AutoUpgrade (26.2) is available

Photo by Anders Jildén on Unsplash

1..2..3..4..5..0 …

In case you wonder about this cryptic headline, no worries. a customer highlighted this well-chosen and easy-to-remember number to me the other day. And I was not aware, but it is true: KB123450 is the MOS note allowing you to download AutoUpgrade from MOS. Awesome … I already programmed this …

Refreshable clone with AutoUpgrade but keep your RAC configuration?

Posted on February 19, 2025 by Mike.Dietrich AutoUpgrade Single-/Multitenant 0

I had to shorten the headline a bit. It got very bulky saying at first: Use a Refreshable Clone with AutoUpgrade from non-CDB to PDB but keep your RAC configuration alive. Well, you see, that’s bulky. But it describes the case I would like to briefly show you. Helmut Pfau, a colleague of mine here in Germany asked this the other day, and it took us a bit to get the correct answer to him – I confess, simply because I didn’t know the right AutoUpgrade parameter.

Refreshable clone with AutoUpgrade but keep your RAC configuration?

Photo by Adrian Infernus on Unsplash

We love Refreshable Clones

You’ve …

Intel uses AutoUpgrade to upgrade from Oracle 11.2.0.4 to 19c

Posted on September 27, 2022 by Mike.Dietrich Customer Success 18

Funny, I was traveling recently with RAC PM Anil Nair – but he forgot to tell me that this cool story has been published just a few days before we took of for YATRA 2022 to India: Intel uses AutoUpgrade to upgrade from Oracle 11.2.0.4 to 19c. I know that Anil is simply so busy – and my surprise was huge.

Intel uses AutoUpgrade to upgrade from Oracle 11.2.0.4 to 19c

Photo by Daniel Pantu on Unsplash

What’s the story?

Gagan Singh, Enterprise Architect at Intel, shared it with me last week. The goal was to upgrade from Oracle 11.2.0.4 to Oracle 19c with the least amount of downtime …

Virtual Classroom Seminar #14: AutoUpgrade 2.0 on May 5, 2022

Posted on May 3, 2022 by Mike.Dietrich Workshop 4

If you finally want to see all the cool new features of AutoUpgrade 2.0 (the 2.0 is just a marker we use to say: We improved it significantly!), the please sign up to Virtual Classroom Seminar #14: AutoUpgrade 2.0 on May 5, 2022.

Virtual Classroom Seminar #14: AutoUpgrade 2.0 on May 5, 2022

Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash

What are we going to talk about?

The development team invested a lot of resources to implement some of the most wanted features in AutoUpgrade. Spoiler: One feature is still missing but will be released very soon. In this Thursday’s Virtual Classroom Seminar we will talk about:

PDB and non-CDB

AutoUpgrade 2.0 has been released – and got reuploaded

Posted on March 25, 2022 by Mike.Dietrich AutoUpgrade 42

Many of you have used AutoUpgrade for your database upgrades already. Just a few days ago I received some almost enthusiastic comments which made me very very happy. And if you thought it can’t get any better, no worries: AutoUpgrade 2.0 has been released – and got reuploaded.

AutoUpgrade 2.0 has been released - and got reuploaded

Photo by Graham Pengelly on Unsplash

Why AutoUpgrade 2.0?

As you know, we don’t do marketing but just talk tech. But you may have also recognized that we slowed down in our agile release cycle for AutoUpgrade. The simple reason for this long period of silence was that we’ve had a …

Oracle Database 12.2.0.1 and GI are certified on OL8 and RHEL8

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Mike.Dietrich Operating System 4

No worries, this isn’t a blog post from the vault. And I haven’t accidentally published something from the past just today. It is real. Oracle Database 12.2.0.1 and GI are certified on OL8 and RHEL8.

Oracle Database 12.2.0.1 and GI are certified on OL8 and RHEL8

Photo by Derek Oyen on Unsplash

What has been certified?

Thanks to my colleagues and a large customer in the UK, I received an email asking whether I have seen this information already on MOS. I haven’t. I knew that there were discussions but I had no actual date for the 12.2.0.1 certification on OL8 on my radar.

So in brief, these Linux 8 releases …

Data Pump Super Patch for Oracle 19.10 and newer

Posted on April 15, 2021 by Mike.Dietrich Data Pump Patch Recommendation 64

Just a few days we released a Data Pump Super Patch for Oracle 19.10 and newer. “Newer” refers to the fact that once 19.11.0 will be available, this merge patch I’m writing about will be available as well right away (sorry, got delayed a bit). And if you work with Data Pump, you may want to consider this performance patch collection.

Photo by paolo candelo on Unsplash

Why do you need this patch?

Many customer will know the issue that adding changes with datapatch may take a long time as soon as dpload.sql is involved. And this …

ORA-29702 – and your instance does not startup in the cluster anymore

Posted on November 13, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich ASM / RAC / GI Flaws and Pitfalls Patch Recommendation 11

This is the right blog post for a Friday 13th. And please forgive me – I wanted to put this on the blog earlier as two of my customers hit this weeks ago already. But it must have fallen through the cracks. Still, now it is hopefully not too late to tell you what you should do if you hit ORA-29702 – and your instance does not startup in the cluster anymore. Especially when you tested a database upgrade – and after a restore, the database doesn’t want to start, no matter what you try.

ORA-29702 - and your instance does not startup in the cluster anymore

Photo by Nadine Shaabana

Collection of EBS upgrade information for Oracle Database 19c and 26ai

Posted on June 30, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich E-Business Suite 4

This was the question I received the most often during the Virtual Classroom web seminars last week: “Can you say something about EBS upgrades with 19c?”. And I promised to publish a blog post about it. But as I’m not an EBS expert, I can only share a Collection of EBS upgrade information for Oracle Database 19c. For all further inquiries, please open an SR or get in touch with your Oracle contact.

Collection of EBS upgrade information for Oracle Database 19c

Photo by Charles Forerunner on Unsplash

Recap – EBS and Oracle 19c

In September 2019, right before Oracle Open World, we announced the certification of EBS …

Of course, Oracle Clusterware is certified on OL8/RHEL8 as well

Posted on May 14, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Operating System 39

To be very honest, when I posted a few days ago, Oracle Database 19c is certified on OL8/RHEL8 I didn’t check for the Oracle Clusterware (OCW) certification. I blindly assumed that this is the case. But from comments and discussions on twitter, I realized it may be necessary to point this out explicitly to avoid confusion. Even though my fellow mate, RAC Product Manager Anil Nair has pointed it out already many times: Of course, Oracle Clusterware is certified on OL8/RHEL8 as well.

Of course, Oracle Clusterware is certified on OL8/RHEL8 as well

Photo by Angela Hobbs on Unsplash

Find it on MOS

Your source for certification information …

AutoUpgrade – New Version with RAC Database Upgrade Support

Posted on April 1, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich ASM / RAC / GI AutoUpgrade 32

Thanks to all our customers who participated in our evaluation test for RAC upgrade support with the AutoUpgrade Tool. And my colleagues worked hard to deliver the new version as quickly as possible. Just to make sure: This is not an April’s fools blog post. Since 2 days, you can download AutoUpgrade – New Version with RAC Database Upgrade Support.

AutoUpgrade - New Version with RAC Database Upgrade Support

Picture by: Jason Yuen on Unsplash

Where to download it?

As usual, you can download the newest version – in this case 19.8 aka 20200327 from MOS Note: 2485457.1:

You simply copy the new version into your 19c (or …

Do we offer patched Gold Images already?

Posted on January 28, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Installation 13

Internally we can use a Gold Image service at Oracle. I can download a zip with 19.6.0 included. But externally for you as customers, the download of 19.6.0 required that you download 19.3.0 at first, then apply 19.6.0 on top of it. But a day ago, a tweet by my Belgium friend Philippe Fierens caught my attention. Do we offer patched Gold Images already?

Do we offer patched Gold Images already?

Photo by Sergey Pesterev on Unsplash

What is a Gold Image?

Since Oracle 18c, the installation routine has changed to the better. You download zip file containing the Gold Image, you create a directory and …

AutoUpgrade and Data Guard, RAC, Restart and non-CDB to PDB

Posted on July 19, 2019 by Mike.Dietrich AutoUpgrade 53

I need to bring this blog post forward about AutoUpgrade and Data Guard, RAC, Restart and non-CDB to PDB. Initially I planned to write this a bit later. But some of you had questions or were wondering why AutoUpgrade hasn’t done certain tasks. Hence, I’d like to clarify what AutoUpgrade can do, what it can’t and what you’ll have to do at the moment.

I refer to the AutoUpgrade tool as of July 2019. In later versions, one or the other restriction may be lifted. I will blog about it then as well.

AutoUpgrade and Data Guard, RAC, Restart and non-CDB to PDB

AutoUpgrade – Step-by-step

The new AutoUpgrade

Where does the database link SYS_HUB come from?

Posted on September 24, 2018 by Mike.Dietrich ASM / RAC / GI Flaws and Pitfalls 6

This blog lives a lot from customer’s feedback and updates. And these days, Nicolas Jardot from dbi-services in Switzerland sent me an email asking: Where does the database link SYS_HUB come from? And if he can delete it or if it has any deeper purpose. Neither Google nor MOS reveal a lot of useful information

Where does the database link SYS_HUB come from?

I took my vanilla 18.3.0 database in our hands-on lab and check:

column owner format a5
column db_link format a12
column username format a12
column host format a12

select con_id, owner, db_link, username, host from cdb_db_links;

    CON_ID

DBCA 12.2 does not update /etc/oratab in GI / RAC

Posted on December 20, 2017 by Mike.Dietrich ASM / RAC / GI Behavior Change 12

Interesting things happen. And I learned (credits to Arun Gupta and others) that there is a change in Oracle Database 12.2 environments I wasn’t aware: The DBCA 12.2 does not update /etc/oratab in GI / RAC environments. Let me give you some extra information and hints on this topic as it may cause some strange situations.

DBCA 12.2 does not update /etc/oratab in GI / RAC

Arun Gupta commented on the blog:

Another case in point. DBCA fails to update the /etc/oratab file in 12.2 when a database is created. There is no documentation of this behavior. So, I opened

Oracle RESTART deprecation announcement got withdrawn

Posted on July 31, 2017 by Mike.Dietrich Restart - SIHA - HAS 4

Very good news for all customers using Oracle RESTART:
The Oracle RESTART deprecation announcement got withdrawn.

I have blogged in the past several times about Oracle RESTART of course either regarding upgrade, downgrade and patching:

And one of the customers I work with for quite a while, Swiss Mobiliar Insurance uses Oracle RESTART for all their Oracle Database environments:

Customer Success: Swiss Mobiliar Insurance

The question all customers I deal with who use Oracle RESTART: How long will Oracle support it? And will there be a successor …

Keep your patch versions between Grid Infrastructure and Databases Homes in synch

Posted on April 26, 2017 by Mike.Dietrich ASM / RAC / GI Patch Recommendation 10

Keep your patch versions between Grid Infrastructure and Databases Homes in synch I’ve had some interesting discussions with Anil Nair, our RAC Product Manager and a customer in the past days. The customer was looking for a definite statement that they can have a higher version of Patch Set Updates (PSUs) or Proactive Bundle Patches (BPs) in the Database homes than in the Grid Infrastructure home managing the resources.

For Oracle Database 18c, 19c and onward, please read instead:

Does your GI RU/RUR patch level has to match your database’s? (June 11, 2020)

Can you have different PSU/BP versions between Database and GI homes?

Yes, you can have a higher version PSU …

DOAG Noon2Noon – Upgrade/Multitenant – 2.-3.2.2017

Posted on January 9, 2017 by Mike.Dietrich Workshop 0

++++++ Sorry – this is a German event only thus I will write in German ++++++

.

DOAG Noon2Noon

Ich bin schon sehr gespannt.

Am 2. Februar 2017 wird im Intercity Hotel in Mainz das DOAG Noon2Noon zum Thema “Upgrade, Migration und Multitenant” stattfinden. Von 12:00h mittags bis 12:00h mittags am Folgetag. Der Praxisbezug steht im Vordergrund. Garniert mit kurzen Vorträgen.

In der praxisorientierten “Noon2Noon”-Veranstaltung wollen wir uns mit den Herausforderungen beim Upgrade nach Oracle 12c bzw. Oracle 12c Release 2 (falls diese zu diesem Zeitpunkt für On Premises Datenbanken freigegeben ist) auseinandersetzen. Das ungewöhnliche Format zielt auf Lösungsorientiertheit. Bei

Upgrade the Operating System in a RAC Environment

Posted on February 23, 2015 by Mike.Dietrich ASM / RAC / GI 29

Last week at the upgrade workshop in Budapest a customer had a interesting and – I believe – not uncommon question.

“How can I upgrade my Linux Operating System in my RAC environment without taking the entire cluster down?”

In this specific case the customer wanted to upgrade from RHEL 5.10 to RHEL6 or RHEL7.

Let’s assume it’s the typical 2-node-RAC where one wants to upgrade in a rolling fashion. And the data is stored within ASM.

Drain Node 1 (i.e. take the workload off) – this will be the node getting upgraded first
Remove Node 1 from the cluster

Grid Infrastructure PSU Jan 2015 – Am I too intolerant?

Posted on February 18, 2015 by Mike.Dietrich ASM / RAC / GI Patch Recommendation 6

Germans are not only known for being precise and timely – but sometimes also for being too direct. Well, Roy could tell you stories … and I always honor his politeness 🙂

Enough about stereotypes. I work with a customer at the moment on their 12c upgrades. And I did recommend the most recent PSU (Patch Set Updates) for their Grid Infrastructure environments running Oracle Restart. Same of course for the database homes but this blog post will just name some findings I’ve had the other night when trying to apply the January 2015 GI PSU to my …

Grid Infrastructure Management Repository (GIMR) database now mandatory in Oracle GI 12.1.0.2

Posted on August 22, 2014 by Mike.Dietrich ASM / RAC / GI Oracle Database 12c 30

During the installation of Oracle Grid Infrastructure 12.1.0.1 you’ve had the an option to choose YES/NO to install the Grid Infrastructure Management Repository (GIMR) database MGMTDB – but as of Oracle 12.1.0.2 Grid Infrastructure Management Repository (GIMR) database now mandatory in Oracle GI 12.1.0.2:

Grid Infrastructure Management Repository (GIMR) database now mandatory in Oracle GI 12.1.0.2

GIMR database now mandatory in Oracle GI 12.1.0.2

With Oracle Grid Infrastructure 12.1.0.2 this choice has become obsolete and the above screen does not appear anymore. The GIMR database has become mandatory.

What do we stored in the GIMR?

You’ll find it in the Oracle 12.1.0.2 documentation via this link.

In addition please see the …

PSU1 and PSU2: Datapatch Issues coverd in MOS Note

Posted on March 5, 2014 by Mike.Dietrich Patch Recommendation 2

You may have read a posting dis-recommending PSU1 and PSU2 for Oracle Multitenant 12.1.0.1 especially in RAC/GI environments earlier this week. Actually following a lot of internal discussions I will post some advice and clarification later this week.

Now I have an useful update:
Datapatch Issues are covered within a separate MOS Note making it easier to keep track and find workarounds for known issues.
Please see MOS Note:1609718.1 Datapatch Known Issues

-Mike…

RAC

Inclusion criteria

What happens?

What are we going to talk about?

1..2..3..4..5..0 …

We love Refreshable Clones

What’s the story?

What are we going to talk about?

Why AutoUpgrade 2.0?

What has been certified?

Why do you need this patch?

Recap – EBS and Oracle 19c

Find it on MOS

Where to download it?

What is a Gold Image?

AutoUpgrade – Step-by-step

Where does the database link SYS_HUB come from?

DBCA 12.2 does not update /etc/oratab in GI / RAC

Can you have different PSU/BP versions between Database and GI homes?

GIMR database now mandatory in Oracle GI 12.1.0.2

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