I am spending quite some time patching Exadata database machine as well as databases on these platforms. From time to time it – like now when upgrading the platform to 12.2 it may be necessary to do some testing to make sure no unexpected problems come up when patching real life production systems.
To actually have a chance to test issues when patching from Image version 12.1.2.3.3 (Oct 2016) to 12.2 I built a test setup on a small workstation where I setup 1/8 Exadata with 3 storage cells and 2 compute nodes.
Having no Infiniband network I had to do something different. First step was to try rds over tcp (rds-tcp) but I never managed to stabilised that setup. rds-ping always stopped working between some of the nodes in the setup for no apparent reason.
So what then? Having searched the net, cellist.ora files as well as cell trace files, I found that UDP is an alternative to RDS and UDP actually seems to run much more stabil. Using the UDP protocol requires GI_HOME and any database home to be relinked with ipc_g and rac_on options.
So, moving on to the details, I’ll share with you how I built an Exadata test setup. I will publish a set of blog posts explaining the entire process.
- Prepare hardware
- Setup virtual machines (Storage cells)
- Setup virtual machines (Compute nodes)
- Kickstart Storage cells
- Configure Storage cells
- Kickstart Compute nodes
- Configure Compute nodes
- Verify Storage/li>
- Create Compute nodes
- Install Grid Infrastructure
- Install Database software
- Create your first database
- Patch GI_HOME to 12.1.0.2.161018
- Patch DB_HOME to 12.1.0.2.161018
- Upgrade GI_HOME to 12.2.0.1
- Patch GI_HOME to 12.2.0.1.170516