Oracle recently released version 20.1.1 of the E-Business Suite Cloud Manager – see their blog https://blogs.oracle.com. The main new feature of this release is support for the Oracle Database 19c. This is true both for creating a new instance (be it VISION or an empty one) but also when it comes to Lift&Shift processes or backups and clones within OCI. Here is my first experience with the new release:
Installation
Bringing our existing Cloud Manager environment to the latest version worked smoothly as described in Managing the Oracle E-Business Suite Cloud Manager Virtual Machine (Doc ID 2434008.1). The only issue we faced was caused by a JRE version that we’ve upgraded through yum to a later level than the rpm provided in the 20.1 patch. Just uninstalling this “too new” rpm fixed the selfUpgrade.pl process though.
On the On Premise E-Business Suite production we just had to download and extract the patch 31254259 containing the latest lift&shift module.
First testing experiences
As a first regression test I’ve brought up a 19c 12.2.9 vision environment which worked without issues. Then I’ve restored an existing 12.1.3 backup with a 12.1.0.2 database –this caused any issues either this time ? creating new backups from our instance is working as well – and also those can be restored.
What I'm missing
With 20.1.1 the instances created when restoring a backup / performing a clone are based on a newer operating system image. This allows using the brand new E3.Flex compute shape (see https://docs.cloud.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Compute/References/computeshapes.htm). Unfortunately this is not completely implemented: The shapes cannot be chosen when initially provisioning with the cloud manager. And also changing the shape afterwards did not work for me: “Requested shape: VM.Standard.E3.Flex belongs to a hardware series that is not compatible with the current shape: VM.Standard.E2.2”
We are in contact with Product Management and hope they’ll fix this minor issue soon.
Next steps
Still open for test is a complete new Production-To-Test Clone using the latest 20.1 version of Cloud Manager and the Lift&Shift Backup Utility. I’m positive that this will work without issues this time as well though.
First tests with an instance created as a snapclone of a 12.1.0.2 database and then upgraded to Database 19c caused some trouble in a rather fictive scenario. More on that in a following blog post.