Hi all,

when we are applying patches (simple, mini or maintenance packs), do we need to stop the services like apache, forms, concurrent manager etc…

Thanx in advance..
Manjunath

It depends on the pacth.  Some patches can be “hotpatched” (no services need to be stopped), while others require the application and web tier services stopped in order to apply them.  You can also place the system in maintenance mode which allows you to keep some services running, but prevents users from logging in.  As a general rule, I only hotpatch simple one off patches that address a specific applications bug.  I always recommend shutting down middle tier services when applying family or maintenance packs.  Some operating systems (such as Windows) may not allow a file to be overwritten if it is in use, so you might run into issues if you don’t stop your services.  Of course if you are applying patches to the technology stack, you need to stop the services associated with the components you are patching.

HTH,
Michael Siebert

Hi Michael,

Thanx for the reply.  I think maintenance mode is available only in 11.5.10 and above.  In the production instance, if we need to patch, then there is always a downtime....Is there any way by which i can take ZERO downtime…

Regards,
Manjunath

Not that I’m aware of - at least not ways that are supported by Oracle.  Even for 11.5.10, there will be times when the system is down (I consider maintenance mode down as it means the users can’t access the system).  The newer releases provide ways to reduce the down time, such as creating staging areas of the middle tiers that can be pre-patched and then cloned over.  Even still, there are always dependencies between the file system objects and the database objects, so you will have downtime when applying major patches to the database.  Of course, this is just for applications patches.  Technology stack patchs (database upgrades, apache, iAs, etc.) will require downtime as well.

We sometimes merge patches to reduce the down time when applying several patches to an environment at the same time.

I always recommend going through a few interations of major patch(es) in a full clone of your production environment before moving into production.  This allows you to identify any issues and correct them, and well as providing you with an estimate of the outage required when migrating to production.

Regards,
Michael