Managing Environment Families

Environment families associate deployments of your Fusion Applications to facilitate consistent maintenance and management across your environments.

This topic describes how to perform administration tasks for environment families.

Before You Create an Environment Family

Before you create an environment family ensure the following:

You have the correct permissions to manage environments. See Managing Oracle Cloud Users with Specific Job Functions.
You are familiar with the information in Planning an Environment Family.

Adding New Subscriptions

Add new subscriptions to an existing environment family as described in To add new application subscriptions.

Automated Subscription Updates

If you order changes to existing Fusion Applications subscriptions for an environment family, Oracle automatically applies these changes for you. You don't have to manually update the environment family's subscriptions.

What to Expect After You Change a Subscription

After Oracle receives the order for a subscription update, the order is processed for the environment family and pod. A banner message is displayed at the top of the environment family details page to let you know that the order update is being applied. You don't need to take any action during the update. Note the following:

The environment family remains available during the processing of subscription changes (no system downtime).
When the order is being applied to the environment family, the life cycle state of the environment family changes to Updating.
Subscription updates take about 30 minutes to complete.
After the update is complete, the lifecycle state is Active.
If environments aren't in the Active state when the order is processed, because of maintenance or other lifecycle operations, the subscription update is automatically applied after environments return to the Active state.

You can review the subscriptions available in the environment family at any time. See To view subscription details for instructions.

Environment Family Management Tasks

To create an environment family

Tip: Before you begin, switch to the region where you want to create this environment family.

On the Applications Home of the Console, under Subscriptions, select Go to service on the Fusion Applications tile.
On the Fusion Applications Overview page, select Environment families.
On the Environment families page, select the Compartment where you want to create the environment family.
Select Create environment family.
Enter a friendly name for the environment family that will make it easy to identify. Avoid entering any confidential information in this field.
Depending on your organization's Fusion Applications purchase, you will see one of the following:
- Fusion subscriptions: If your organization subscribes to Oracle Fusion suite, the Console displays the Fusion subscriptions section:
  
  Confirm that the displayed subscription is the subscription you want to use for the environment family, then go to the next step.
  
  Note
  
  If you also need to provision Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), see Configuring EPM Cloud Environments in the EPM documentation.
- Select subscriptions: If your organization subscribes to individual applications, the page displays the Select subscriptions section. The subscription options displayed are Customer Experience (CX), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and Human Capital Management (HCM).
  
  Review the products and subscriptions you're using for the environment family. Ensure that the checkbox is selected for all products that you're using in the environment family, and that the subscription showing in the drop-down selector are correct. For more information, see Selecting Applications to Include in an Environment Family. After the environment family is created, you can add applications subscriptions, but you can't remove them from the environment family.
Under Select region, confirm or change the assigned region.
The region is where the environments will be geographically located. The region can't be changed after you create the environment family. All environments that you create will be in the region you assign to the family. For more information, see Choosing a Region for an Environment Family.
Select Show advanced options to:
- Select a different compartment (this can be changed later).
- Customize the maintenance schedule (the quarterly schedule selection can't be changed later).
- Apply tags (these can be added later).
If you don't want to configure these options now, select Create Environment Family. To configure these options now, continue with the optional steps.
(Optional) Confirm the compartment or select the compartment where you want to create this environment family. For more information about compartments, see Choosing a Compartment.
(Optional) Select the Maintenance tab to customize the maintenance schedule. The maintenance schedule you set up for the environment family is the default for all the environments in the family. You can't change the quarterly update schedule after you create the environment family. For environments that you create in this family, you can customize the monthly patching. For more information about these options, see Understanding Environment Maintenance.
- Quarterly schedule – select the checkbox and then choose the maintenance month group that you want to use for the environments in the family. You can't update this choice later. If the environment family includes Oracle Payroll, the schedule is set as Feb/May/August/November, and can't be updated.
- Monthly patching – enable the switch to activate monthly patching for the environments in this family. Monthly patching delivers bug fixes every month so you don't have to wait until the quarterly update for these fixes. Features and other updates are still delivered on the quarterly schedule, and aren't included in monthly patching.
To specify a maintenance start time, select I want to choose maintenance start time. Then specify the Maintenance start time. Maintenance start time options are organized by geographic area (Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Middle East) and are based on a timezone within that geographic area. Note that the number of slot options in a geographic area depends on the area selected and on availability within that area. Some areas have a single start time option available. Note that maintenance start time can't be set at the environment level using the OCI Console.
(Optional) Select the Tags tab to add tags to the environment family. If you have permissions to create a resource, then you also have permissions to apply free-form tags to that resource. To apply a defined tag, you must have permissions to use the tag namespace. For more information about tagging, see Resource Tags. If you're not sure whether to apply tags, skip this option or ask an administrator. You can apply tags later.
Select Create environment family.
You'll be asked to confirm the region where the environment family is to be created. Select Confirm.

To view subscription details

Navigate to the environment family: On the Applications home page, under Subscriptions, on the Fusion Applications tile, select Go to service. On the overview page, in the upper left, select Environment families. On the Environment families list page, select the environment family you want to work with. If you don't see the items you are expecting on the list page, ensure that you have selected the correct compartment and region.
On the environment family details page, under Resources, select Subscriptions to see the list of subscriptions included in the environment family.
Open the expander next to the listing to see the product and quantity included in each subscription.

To add new application subscriptions

After you order new subscriptions for an environment family, add the new subscription in the OCI Console using the directions in this topic. Note that for changes to existing subscriptions (such as contract extensions), Oracle applies the updates automatically, as described in Automated Subscription Updates.

Navigate to the environment family: On the Applications Home of the Console, under Subscriptions, select Go to service on the Fusion Applications tile.
On the Overview page, select Environment families. On the environment families page, select the name of the environment family.
On the environment family details page, under Resources, select Subscriptions.
Select Edit subscription.
On the Edit subscription page under Edit applications, information is displayed about subscription updates available to apply to the applications in this environment family.
Select Save changes to apply the subscription updates.

To edit the maintenance schedule of an environment family

You can select the maintenance start time and enable or disable monthly patching for an environment family in the OCI Console. The maintenance schedule you set up for the environment family is the default for all the environments in the family. The changes you make here will apply to all environments in the family that don't have a custom schedule set up.

Note that you can't edit the months that quarterly maintenance is scheduled for. To change your quarterly maintenance months, contact Oracle Support. See Open a Support Request for instructions.

See Understanding Environment Maintenance for more information.

On the environment family details page, under Resources, select Maintenance.
Select Edit schedule. You can edit the following:
- Monthly patching – enable or disable the switch to activate or deactivate monthly patching for the environments in this family. Monthly patching delivers bug fixes every month so you don't have to wait until the quarterly update.
- Maintenance start time – Maintenance start time options are organized by geographic area (Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Middle East). Note that the number of slot options depends on the area and on availability. Only slots with availability are displayed in the Console at the time of selection. Some areas have a single option available.
Select Save Changes.

To move an environment family to a different compartment

You can move an environment family from one compartment to another. After you move an environment family to a new compartment, the policies for the destination compartment apply immediately and affect access to the environment family. Moving an environment family doesn't move the environments in the family.

On the environment family details page, select Move.
Choose the destination compartment from the list.
Select Move resource.