Fusion Applications bare metal provisioning series Part VII: Provisioning Applications

It was a long road we made to come to this point. It is true that Fusion Applications bare metal provisioning takes some time and even if you don’t face any issues in the meanwhile it is around a week time that is required to get everything up and running. An installation of Oracle Fusion Applications is logically broken up into groups of features known as product offerings, which represent the highest-level collection of functionality that you can license and implement. A provisioning configuration is a collection of one or more product offerings. Oracle Fusion Applications Provisioning is a full-featured process that provides all the tools you need to set up a repository of installers and installation-related processes, present product configurations that you can install in your environment, provide a means to collect configuration details about those offerings, and run the installation phases necessary to perform configuration and deployment tasks.

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Fusion Applications bare metal provisioning series Part VI: Response file creation

In the previous post we have installed Transactional database for Fusion Applications. Now when we have everything ready for Fusion Applications provisioning the last remaining bit is to create a response file (in previous FA versions it was called as Provisioning plan) that would contain all the required configuration along with Identity and Access Management information which needs to be passed to the installation wizard itself.

Fusion Applications bare metal provisioning series Part V: Installing a Transaction Database

An Oracle Fusion Applications environment requires a transaction database. You can install a single-instance Oracle Database Enterprise Edition by using the Provisioning Wizard, or you can install Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) by using the standard installation instructions. The database templates shipped with Oracle Fusion Applications describe the structure and features of the database, but do not contain any data. You can place the Transaction database either on IdM database server host or Fusion Applications node, however, it is strongly recommended to separate it from other components. We will install the database using Provisioning Wizard since it also automatically applies all the required patches.

Fusion Applications bare metal provisioning series Part IV: Performing IdM Post-Provisioning Configuration

There are couple of manual steps required after IdM provisioning is complete in order to get your IdM fully and correctly configured. These are mostly related to some things which could not fit into automatic provisioning process as well as various bugs that exist in the 11.1.7 version.

Fusion Applications bare metal provisioning series Part III: Provisioning Identity and Access Management

This is my favourite part of the process, because from hardest one it has now became the easiest. While it was a huge struggle and the most important stage of Fusion Applications provisioning in earlier versions, with release of 11.1.7 Oracle developers did a great job to automate the whole burden of Identity and Access management components manual setup. Frankly speaking it was very easy to misinterpret some parts of documentation when doing it all manually and therefore make a mistake in crucial setup parts which then lead to unexpected errors during Fusion Apps provisioning. Now it all gone! As a result you get a fully working and integrated Identity and Access Management environment which is ready for Fusion Applications.

Fusion Applications bare metal provisioning series Part II: Preparing servers and databases for Identity Management

As it was mentioned in my previous post, Identity and Access Management is the main prerequisite of Fusion Applications provisioning – therefore it is the first thing to start with in overall process. Prepare at least two servers, one for Identity and Access Management and second for Fusion Applications as currently it is not supported to have both products sharing the same machine. However, my recommendation is to split components between four servers in order to gain more performance and manageability. The easiest way of course is to leverage virtualisation for that purpose, but please be ready for large amounts of RAM and disk space. Here is what official documentation states for typical HW requirements (or minimum, meant not for a production case):

Fusion Applications bare metal provisioning series Part I: Obtaining the right software and documentation

I’ve decided to release a series of blog posts related to Fusion Applications bare metal provisioning. Get ready! The provisioning process (the replacement for “installation” term in Fusion Apps) is not so fast and straight forward as you would see it in Oracle Applications (e-Business Suite), for example. So expect to see a lot of blog posts broken in multiple parts with several sections. I will try to document the deployment as clear and detailed as I can to help others with the same.

Beware of the bug 16299065 when doing RMAN duplicate – you might end up with restoring on SOURCE database

This issue has happened on one of our customers environments where RMAN duplicate is a common practice for cloning databases. Later on I have successfully reproduced the same scenario on my virtual machine.

Background

A delivery had been applied to database, including some structural changes like creation of new tablespace with multiple datafiles. During testing someone had put one of the new datafiles offline. After some time customer did a request of additional database with the same release applied and RMAN duplicate from backup approach was used for that purpose.

Database version: 11.2.0.3 with 11.2.0.3.6 PSU applied on top

I am Oracle Database 11g Administrator Certified Master

It has been quiet on my blog lately, because for the last four months or so I was preparing for Oracle 11g OCM exam. I have received the good news yesterday (much more quicker than I expected this to happen) that I have passed the practicum successfully. I am very happy with such result as it was the most challenging goal I’ve set to myself during this year.

There are couple of good blogs from experienced OCM DBA’s with advices on how to prepare for the exam, like, for example, the latest one from Kamran Agayev. I decided to shortly come up with three things or suggestions which helped me most (but not necessarily you will consider them as best for you). 

Oracle E-Business Suite Pre-install Patches Report – Obtaining patches easy way!

This post should be useful for Apps DBAs who are planning to upgrade their customer’s E-Business Suite environments from 11i to R12. As we all know, a long time passed since such projects have started and since then, the Upgrade exercise has improved a lot, mostly because of new patches and tools that Oracle has provided to avoid certain errors and bugs during the Upgrade driver. One of such tools is a Pre-install patches report for R12.1 upgrade which contains a list of essential patches that you must apply in pre-install mode before upgrading. If you haven’t met this report before, do visit a following MoS note – Oracle E-Business Suite Pre-install Patches Report [Video] [ID 1448102.1] and watch the video as well. It is worth to mention that the report is being constantly updated  (approximately once a month) based on Oracle and the customers experience and new patches are being added (if any). As it is stated in the topic – I am going to cover the easy way of downloading the patches listed in the report (please let me know if you have a better way of doing the same).