Upgrade DB using exisiting Oracle Home in 11.2 and later – “In-Place Upgrade”

From 11gR2, Oracle introduced “Out-of-Place” upgrade, where during the upgrade we install the patch set into a new, separate Oracle home, and its best practices recommendation, as minimizes the downtime.Once, the patch set installation is complete in the new Oracle Home location, we can perform the upgrade using DBUA or manual method.

So, can’t we use the previous method of upgrading the database using the existing Oracle Home?  This is the question asked by many. The answer to this is, YES we can use the In-Place Upgrade method using the same existing home, but its not recommended by Oracle.

Using the In-Place Upgrade method , increases the downtime, as we need to keep the db down even for the period of installing the patch set.This method is provided only if for some reason you have no alternative but to use the existing Oracle Home, one of which could be space crunch.

Below, is the print screen attached when you try install patch set to the same existing home –

I am testing this 11.2.0.2 to 11.2.0.3 db upgrade on my windows test box. To use the same exisitng location do the below –

1. Backup the below folders

ORACLE_HOME/database/dbs(in unix) , ORACLE_HOME/network/admin, ORACLE_HOME/hostname_dbname,ORACLE_HOME/oc4j/j2ee/OC4J_DBConsole_hostname_dbname

2. Backup the current ORACLE HOME installation.

After above is done, “detach” the exisitng ORACLE HOME. Before detaching the Home, inventory.xml shows –

  {?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes" ?}
- {!--  Copyright (c) 1999, 2010, Oracle. All rights reserved.
  --}
- {!--  Do not modify the contents of this file by hand.
  --}
- {INVENTORY}
- {VERSION_INFO}
  {SAVED_WITH}11.2.0.2.0{/SAVED_WITH}
  {MINIMUM_VER}2.1.0.6.0{/MINIMUM_VER}
  {/VERSION_INFO}
- {HOME_LIST}
  {HOME NAME="OraClient10g_home2" LOC="C:\apps\db\oracle102" TYPE="O" IDX="1" /}
  {HOME NAME="OraDb11g_home1" LOC="D:\oracle\product\11.2.0.2\dbhome_1" TYPE="O" IDX="2" /}
  {/HOME_LIST}
  {/INVENTORY}

To detach the ORACLE HOME

On windows –

%ORACLE_HOME%\oui\bin\setup.exe -detachHome ORACLE_HOME=D:\oracle\product\11.2.0.2\dbhome_1

On Linux

$ORACLE_HOME/oui/bin/runInstaller -detachHome ORACLE_HOME=11.2_ORACLE_HOME_LOCATION

After detach inventory.xml showed no entry for “HOME NAME=”OraDb11g_home1″ LOC=”D:\oracle\product\11.2.0.2\dbhome_1″ TYPE=”O” IDX=”2″

Once, the detach is complete rename or move this current ORACLE HOME software directory to a temporary name and start the OUI.When prompted for Software Location, provide the same location as previous one.

Now when you click on next, no error :). After the installation completes, restore the backedup folders and run DBUA from the new ORACLE HOME

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