Oracle Fleet Patching & Provisioning (FPP) is Oracle’s software lifecycle management method for provisioning, patching, and upgrading Oracle Grid Infrastructure (GI) and Oracle Database, including Real Application Clusters (RAC) across your database fleet.
FPP facilitates lifecycle operations, including installation, upgrade, and patching of Grid Infrastructure (GI) and Oracle Database fleets (single-instance and RAC). Formerly known as Rapid Home Provisioning (RHP), Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning has been enhanced and is now the recommended solution for automating these tasks.
Database availability, performance, and security are critical to all organizations. When you have a handful of databases, keeping them up and running and performing well can be straightforward. But as an organization grows to 10s, 100s, or more databases, ensuring everything operates well becomes very challenging. FPP is very useful in these scenarios, making it very easy to provision, patch, and upgrade databases by automating the whole process.
FPP is configured on an Oracle GI cluster node (NOT on the Oracle Restart Server) and uses Grid Infrastructure (GI) components such as the Grid Infrastructure Management Repository (GIMR) and Automatic Storage Management (ASM).
You can configure FPP on an existing GI installation or during a fresh GI installation.
To configure FPP, perform the following steps:
Create a disk group using the ASMCA utility and provide a mount point to store gold images.
Configure Grid Infrastructure Repository (GIMR)
$ $GRID_HOME/bin/mgmtca createGIMRContainer -storageDiskLocation DATA
Add Grid Naming Service (GNS) Virtual IP (VIP) address without zone delegation.
# $GRID_HOME/bin/srvctl add gns -vip fpp-gnsvip
# $GRID_HOME/bin/srvctl start gns -vip
Remove the local RHPServer installed during GI install.
# $GRID_HOME/bin/srvctl stop rhpserver
# $GRID_HOME/bin/srvctl remove rhpserver
Create Fleet Patching & Provisioning Server (rhpserver) resource.
# $GRID_HOME/bin/srvctl add rhpserver -storage -diskgroup DATA
# su – oracle
$ $GRID_HOME/bin/srvctl start rhpserver
FPP performs out-of-place patching and upgrades to minimize downtime for Database and Grid Infrastructure (GI) homes. It also supports zero-downtime GI patching and zero-downtime database upgrades using GoldenGate or Data Guard.
To better understand the process, let’s review how FPP patches single instances and RAC databases. As you read the documentation, you will come across terms such as “gold image” and “working copy” in FPP operations. “Gold image” refers to a specific database/GI software version, e.g., 19.13.
“Working copy” refers to the Oracle home on the system, i.e.,/u01/app/product/19.0/dbhome_1.
For single-instance database patching, FPP installs a new working copy from the latest gold image you created. FPP then moves some or all of the databases from the old Oracle home to the new working copy.
For a RAC database, FPP creates a new working copy on one node at a time, moves the services to another node, moves the instance from the old working copy to the new working copy, and then moves the services back from the other node. Following the first node, FPP performs similar operations on all other nodes and executes a datapatch at the end. FPP operations are transparent to session draining and to application continuity when in use.
The FPP server communicates with FPP client systems over SSH for the initial deployment, then via JMX port 8896 (default) afterward. If you are using a non-default SSH port in your environment, then you need to apply a one-off patch 33869288. You may need to contact Oracle support and create a service request to get a patch, depending on the Oracle software version you are running.
FPP is licensed as a part of Real Application Clusters (RAC) or the Database Lifecycle Management Pack. Please reach out to Mythics sales team for more details.
FPP is integrated with Fleet maintenance from Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) 13.5 Release Update 14 (13.5.0.14). Many environments running Oracle Databases already use OEM, which gives customers the option to use a GUI console to use FPP.
Integrating OEM with advanced features like Fleet Patching and Provisioning can be challenging for many customers, but it offers significant benefits and time savings. Mythics has implemented these features for customers, and we provide services for this and many other Oracle components.
With a large team of experienced consultants, we can help you with these challenges and improve the overall running of your Oracle operations. For more information or to see a demonstration of these features, please reach out to our team.
