Fleet Patching and Provisioning (FPP) is the recommended maintenance method to use for Oracle Real Application Clusters and Oracle Database deployed with Oracle Data Guard.

Fleet Patching and Provisioning (FPP) is a full fledged automation engine for patching upgrade and provisioning. The central Oracle FPP Server can serve a fleet of databases and Grid Infrastructure from a single central server, making it easy to patch thousands of databases simultaneously. You can deploy a single Oracle FPP server for a given data center and use it to patch your entire fleet in that data center.

It has the following features

• Performs maintenance patching and software updates to Oracle Databases (Oracle RAC, Oracle RAC One Node, and Single Instance), Oracle Grid Infrastructure, Oracle Restart, and Oracle Exadata Engineered Systems (DBNode, Storage Cells, and Network).
• Performs software upgrades to Oracle Databases and Oracle Grid Infrastructure.
• Is designed with many advanced features to simplify global fleet standardization and management.

Oracle provides quarterly updates in the form of Release Updates (RUs) to release new features, upgrade existing features, enhance security, or fix problems with supported software.

Starting with Oracle Database 23ai, RUs are delivered in two formats:

• As a gold image that you can install out-of-place like a new software release.
• As a binary patch that you can apply in-place using OPatch or OPatchAuto.

You can apply out-of-place Oracle Database patches using the following steps:

1. Download the RU as a gold image.
2. Create a new Oracle home (target) identical to the old Oracle home (source) in the same Oracle base as the source Oracle home, using runInstaller -setupDBHomeAs.
3. Move Oracle Database from the old Oracle home to the new Oracle home.

After you move the database to the new Oracle home, all database services will start from the new home.

For ease of deployment, Oracle recommends that you use Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning to maintain Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) and databases deployed with Oracle Data Guard.

Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning (FPP) has been built from the ground up by the database development organization with Oracle Databases and Oracle Exadata in mind. From day one, FPP has been using a centralized gold image out-of-place maintenance approach offering versatility and flexibility and MAA-compliant patching with support of the latest Oracle Database features.

To perform maintenance, use the Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning (FPP) Server to complete the recommended image-based, out-of-place patching.

1. To prepare for the software update, download the gold image.

   The order of these steps is as follows:

   1. Download the gold image you have built to your system.

   2. As the Grid user, deploy a new target software home using the FPP command "rhpctl deploy home".

      Examples:

      Deploy the Oracle Grid Infrastraucture software home, where dest_path is the destination path, and gold_image is the image name:

      rhpctl deploy home -path dest_path -zip gold_image.zip

      Deploy the Oracle Database home, where where dest_path is the destination path, gold_image is the image name, and source_home is the source Oracle home:

      rhpctl deploy home -path dest_path -zip gold_image.zip -sourcehome source_home

2. Run Precheck for the Apply Software update

   To prevent issues during the patch operation, run a precheck evaluation for moving the database or Oracle Grid Infrastructure to the new software home using the FPP command rhpctl move . . . -eval.

   Oracle Grid Infrastructure example, where gi_home is the source Grid home, and dest_path is the target Grid home:

   rhpctl move gihome -sourcehome gi_home -desthome dest_path -eval

   Oracle RAC database example, where source_home is the source Oracle RAC home, dest_path is the target Oracle RAC home, and orcles is the database name.

   rhpctl move database -sourcehome source_home -desthome dest_path -dbname orcles -eval

   For details about the move . . . -eval command options for database or Oracle Grid Infrastructure, refer to rhpctl move database or rhpctl move gihome in Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning Administrator's Guide.

3. Apply the RU update, moving the database or Oracle Grid Infrastructure to the new home.

   Move the database or Oracle Grid Infrastructure to the new software home using the FPP command rhpctl move.

   Oracle Grid Infrastructure example, where gi_home is the source Grid home, and dest_path is the target Grid home:

   rhpctl move gihome -sourcehome gi_home -desthome dest_path

   Oracle RAC database example, where source_home is the source Oracle RAC home, dest_path is the target Oracle RAC home, and orcles is the database name.

   rhpctl move database -sourcehome source_home -desthome dest_path -dbname orcles

   For details about the move command options for database or Oracle Grid Infrastructure, refer to rhpctl move database or rhpctl move gihome in Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning Administrator's Guide.

Learn about the manual options available to you for performing regular database maintenance using Gold Images.

• Creating a Gold Image for Database Maintenance
  Learn how to obtain a Gold image for database maintenance using either Fleet Patching and Provisioning, or using manual patching.
• Setup Wizard Installation Options for Creating Images
  Gold image-creation options to use with your Oracle Database or Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation setup wizards.

Learn how to obtain a Gold image for database maintenance using either Fleet Patching and Provisioning, or using manual patching.

Gold image-creation options to use with your Oracle Database or Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation setup wizards.

./runInstaller -createGoldImage -destinationLocation /tmp/my_db_images -exclFiles /u01/app/oracle/product/23.0.0/dbhome_1/relnotes

./gridSetup.sh -createGoldImage -destinationLocation /tmp/my_grid_images -exclFiles /u01/app/oracle/product/23.0.0/dbhome_1/relnotes

If you choose not to use Gold Image patch maintenance, then interim patches used in conjunction with other proactive maintenance methods, including custom Gold Images, may cause patch conflicts.

For the quarterly proactive patches (Quarterly Exadata Patch, RU, and MRPs), Oracle proactively produces new interim patches for existing patches that would conflict. The new interim patches are usually released at the same time as the proactive patches.

For information about resolving patch conflicts, see the My Oracle Support notes for patch conflicts.

When you use Oracle GoldenGate with Oracle Database, you must ensure that Oracle GoldenGate processes are shut down before patching the database.

When you patch Oracle Database, and you are using Oracle GoldenGate, you must disable Oracle GoldenGate processes before starting to patch the database. The reason for this is that patches and upgrades can modify the RDBMS internal tables and views, which cause stored procedures that call them to be invalidated. All dependent objects are invalidated as well.

To roll back an RU patch update performed with Fleet Patching and Provisioning, you move the database or infrastructure to the old Oracle home.

rhpctl move gihome -sourcehome dest_path -desthome gi_home

rhpctl move database -sourcehome dest_path -desthome source_home -dbname orcles

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