Tales From A Lazy Fat DBA

Hi Mates,

Lets recall the list of per-requisites that we have to perform before doing a database upgrade!
Few of them i quickly recall are – Full RMAN Backup, Creating Guaranteed Restore points etc.

But are these options allows us to resume any failed upgrade activity ? — NO

Let’s go back to time before Oracle 12c (Ex: 10g, 11g etc.)

Resuming of failed upgrade was not possible and you have to recall the catupgrd.sql and open the database in UPGRADE mode but this will only start it from the beginning and won’t resume from the point it got failed last time. So same amount of time we be consumed once again for the upgrade

SQL> startup upgrade
SQL> spool /home/dixit/upgradedir/catupgrdscriptout.log
SQL> @?/rdbms/admin/catupgrd.sql

Now lets discuss about 12c, starting from 12c Release 1 we have the all new parallel upgrade utility (catctl.pl). For this you still have to open your database in UPGRADE mode and will be controlled by this new perl script.
If talk about restarting of failed upgrade, here we’ve got a small relief as you will be able to restart the upgrade from the phase where it was crashed/stopped using -P option.

Example:

Serial Phase #:56 [UPGR] Files:1 Time: 3s
******************* Migration ******************
Restart Phase #:57 Files: 1 Time: 0s
Serial Phase #:58 Files: 1 Time: 102s
Restart Phase #:59 Files: 1 Time: 1s
Serial Phase #:60 Files: 1 Time: 221s
Restart Phase #:61 Files: 1 Time: 0s
Serial Phase #:62 Files: 1 Time: 25s
Restart Phase #:63 Files: 1 Time: 0s
Serial Phase #:64 Files: 1 Time: 2s
Serial Phase #:65 Files: 1 Calling sqlpatch with LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/u01/app/oracle/product/12.1.0/db_1/lib; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH;/u01/app/oracle/product/12.1.0/db_1/perl/bin/perl -I /u01/app/oracle/product/12.1.0/db_1/rdbms/admin -I /u01/app/oracle/product/12.1.0/db_1/rdbms/admin/../../sqlpatch /u01/app/oracle/product/12.1.0/db_1/rdbms/admin/../../sqlpatch/sqlpatch.pl -verbose -upgrade_mode_only > catupgrd_datapatch_upgrade.log 2> catupgrd_datapatch_upgrade.err FAILED

As we see the upgrade failed at phase number 65, so we can restart the upgrade mentioning the phase number (-P) to resume it from that phase and upgrade process won’t repeat steps happened successfully.

$ORACLE_HOME/perl/bin/perl catctl.pl -p 65 -l /home/dixit/upgradedir/catupgrd.sql

******************* Migration ******************
Serial Phase #:65 Files: 1 Time: 28s
Serial Phase #:66 Files: 1 Time: 3921s
Serial Phase #:68 Files: 1 Time: 0s
Serial Phase #:69 Files: 1 Time: 57s
Serial Phase #:70 Files: 1 Time: 1027s
Serial Phase #:71 Files: 1 Time: 3s
Serial Phase #:72 Files: 1 Time: 0s
Serial Phase #:73 Files: 1 Time: 18s
Grand Total Time: 6459s
LOG FILES: (catupgrd*.log)
Upgrade Summary Report Located in:
/u01/app/oracle/product/12.1.0/db_1/cfgtoollogs/JANI/upgrade/upg_summary.log
Grand Total Upgrade Time: [0d:0h:40m:39s]

Now, lets discuss the main objective of writing this new blog entry.
Starting from Oracle 12c Release 2 we have got more control over upgrade activities as with this latest release you will be able to resume the upgrade from where it got stopped last time. Oracle introduced a new flag -R with catctl.pl to achieve this, so don’t worry about the upgrade phases 🙂

$ORACLE_HOME/perl/bin/perl catctl.pl -R -l /home/dixit/upgradedir/catupgrd.sql

Hope It Helps
Prashant Dixit