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Upgrading to 12.2.9 Experience

  • 1.  Upgrading to 12.2.9 Experience

    Posted 5 days ago
    We are working on a project to upgrade from 12.1.3/12c to 12.2.9/19c.  We have a handle on what's involved with upgrading the database technology, but in our trial runs upgrading applications to 12.2.9 is taking more than a week of DBA time during normal business hours.  We are newly installing ECC and mobile as part of this project which adds some time.  

    What has been the experience of others upgrading from 12.1.3 to 12.2.9 (or similar versions)?  How long was your upgrade window and how long long did it actually take?  Are there any gotchas to look out for? Any tips?

    We are using one of the larger consulting firms to help us out with this project including a DBA resource.




  • 2.  RE: Upgrading to 12.2.9 Experience

    Oracle Ace
    Posted 5 days ago
    ECC and Mobile patching are really minimal as compared to the upgrade itself. The initial build (preCRP) upgrade to 12.2.9 should take anywhere from 4-6 weeks to document and perfect (creating a runbook to support the effort so the entire effort is repeatable). The CRP1 build should take less time, lets say 2-3 weeks, then end users should be testing and testing to work out defects. The CRP2 build should take even less time, perhaps 1 week, then users test again. The UAT build should be the last testing iteration (and signoff) and be considered a "production dress rehearsal" and if the runbook is being maintained through each CRP build, the UAT build should be easy, and completed over a weekend, perhaps starting at 5PM on Thursday straight through until Monday morning - and when you get ready to do the final production build it should take the same amount of time as UAT, perhaps less. Some organizations are holding on the 19c upgrade as a last step and the 12.2 upgrade is completed - so perhaps that is playing into the week long down time. I would be happy to discuss any of this in more detail if you'd like or have your larger consulting firm speak to me or any of our DBAs. We've been doing EBS upgrades for a very long time and12.2 upgrades since the products release. Happy to help where we can.

    ------------------------------
    Bill Dunham
    Principal
    OATC, Inc.
    Charlotte NC
    (844) 879-6282 x701
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Upgrading to 12.2.9 Experience

    CO19 Speaker
    Posted 5 days ago
    Edited by Kai Glittenberg 5 days ago

    Hi Adam!
    The usual downtime for this should be a weekend.
    For the GoLive you can prepare a lot in advance instead of doing all single steps of the whole upgrade again. I think it is most important to understand what can be done upfront to the downtime window and what are the real downtime actions.
    We've been doing EBS upgrades for years now. And we also have experiences in upgrading to 12.2.9, 12.2.10 and 19c. Feel free to contact us. Happy if we can help here!

    Hint:
    Review the following notes:

    Oracle EBS R12.2 Upgrade - Outstanding Performance Bugs, Issues and Solutions during Upgrade (Doc ID 2357810.1)
    Best Practices for Minimizing Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2.n Upgrade Downtime (Doc ID 1581549.1)

    Thanks
    Kai

    ------------------------------
    Kai Glittenberg
    Solution Architect Cloud Services
    Apps Associates
    Dortmund
    (491) 603-655544
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Upgrading to 12.2.9 Experience

    Posted 5 days ago
    Edited by Peter Quintiliani 5 days ago
    Hi Adam,

    Before any upgrade, we run proprietary tools that flush out the custom objects which helps to confirm the largest 'percentage' of the project, in terms of effort and time.  Knowing what those custom objects are, which need to be remediated, and the importance of those objects, can drastically help to cut down the overall time within the project.  Do you have an option to do this work offshore to not interfere with daily business / end user experience?

    Re: ECC, there's a lot there.  Most customers seem to start with a specific module for ECC, like AP or AR.  they want to get a feel for it before implementing more options that are available. 

    -Pete


    ------------------------------
    Peter Quintiliani
    Apps Associates
    Acton MA
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: Upgrading to 12.2.9 Experience

    OATUG Star Partner
    Posted 4 days ago

    Please take a look at www.configsnapshot.com to help throughout the upgrade process and to 'flush out the custom objects' so saving time, cost($) and reducing risk, aiding a successful upgrade.

     

    Regards

     

    Martin Jenkinson

    Web site: www.configsnapshot.com

     

    Sent from Mail for Windows 10

     




    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: Upgrading to 12.2.9 Experience

    Posted 4 days ago
    Hello all,

    I wanted to thank everyone for their thoughtful responses.  A few things to note:
    • Our vendor ran ConfigSnapshot early on in the project, but perhaps there's a good use case for running it again.  I will check with them. 

    • We're far along in the project and have identified and remediated most of our CEMLIs.  We have also narrowed down what ECC dashboards we're going to start with.

    • Our production environment is relatively simple - one application server, one database server, and no DMZ components.  We virtualize our servers with OVM and are using SSDs in production.  The hardware is about two years old.

    • Having multiple people state that the upgrade from 12.1.3 to 12.2.9 with all patches should be doable in a three-day weekend is very helpful because it shows us that it's a realistic goal versus the experience we've had so far.

    • Gary: I think that your technical hints may be very helpful and will pass them on to the DBAs

    • Beth: we're new to ECC and don't have a driving need for Blitz Report at this time
    A few of you have reached out directly to me and I will be responding soon.  Sorry for the late replies, work has been hectic.

    Thanks again!

    Adam R. Cohen
    Information Technology Manager
    Applications Development & Support
    City of North Las Vegas
    (702) 633-1854
    http://www.cityofnorthlasvegas.com



    Original Message


  • 7.  RE: Upgrading to 12.2.9 Experience

    Posted 4 days ago
    Adam,

    As a consultant, I would say there are a lot of "it depends" in how long it takes or should take. There is a lot happening with restructuring the application tier depending on whether you are running single node or multi-node with shared Appl_tops or non shared, have a DMZ configuration, etc. Re-layering any customizations or extensions or third-party add-ons can also create complexity (and time) for the upgrade. I would offer these suggestions:
    1) looking at how to pre-stage the application tier file system with most of the content in place.
    2) from your test cycles, build migrations of FNDLOAD setup info to minimize manual creation
    3) There is a upgrade timing report that you can use to determine the long running parts of the process. Review it carefully for things like new index creation. We opted to pre-create some of the indexes in our production environment prior to the upgrade time where the columns already existed on the tables. Since we do significant partitioning, we were able to build those with our partition strategy and avoid rebuilding them after the upgrade.
    4) Turn off database archiving during the upgrade as it adds significant overhead and your backup plan for the upgrade should address recovery without archive point-in-time recovery. That said - if it really is going to take several days, be sure to plan backups at key points in the process to ensure you can continue with the upgrade without losing significant time. I usually prefer backup points (snapshots if the storage system supports it) about every 12 hours.

    Regards,

    ------------------------------
    Gary Chancellor
    Vice President
    IngenuitE, Inc.
    Oklahoma City OK
    (405) 636-1802
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 8.  RE: Upgrading to 12.2.9 Experience

    GEO Leader
    Posted 4 days ago
    A quick comment that might be of help. Once you have all of the EBS patching for ECC done, if you are not in a position to move forward with the full ECC implementation project, you can download the free version of Blitz Report online, and run any of the ECC queries through Blitz Report without setting up the ECC server of dashboards.  Sometimes this can help your team get value from ECC data even before the full ECC implementation project is completed.  It really is free, so feel welcome to try it! 

    --

    Beth Skerrett | National Sales Director

    +1.832.285.2694| www.enginatics.com  

    106 Las Brisas | Kemah | Texas 77565




    Original Message