A Beginners Guide to Exadata Patching for Oracle DBA's

I will be looking to delve deeper into Exadata Patching and explore this subject to demystify the entire dilemma around the Exadata Complete Stack Patching.

Starting with the History of Exadata comprising of the Evolution of Exadata and covering the Journey of Exadata from 2008 till 2018 we will have a quick summary of the  different generations of Exadata and key advancements that have taken place during this Journey.

A good understanding of the Exadata Stack will be given to the audience by discussing the key components like Storage Grid , Database Grid , Infiniband Networks & Other Components like (Ethernet Switches / PDU’s).

Audience will be recommended the Master Notes of Exadata, having some explanation around QFSDP (Quarterly Full Stack Downloadable Patch) and giving them an understanding on Exadata Versions & how the numbers match up.

We shall then delve deeper into Storage Server Patching, commands used, discussing Rolling/Non-Rolling methods. Next would be Compute node patching and what happens behind the scenes, discussion around the powerful utility dbnodeupdate. The Exadata database server patching including GI + DB will be discussed and also the significance of patches like SPU/PSU/BP/DBBP. The Infiniband patching will be discussed to tell the audience how the firmware for the switches are patched.

At the end a case study will be presented to show how the Complete Stack upgrade was done from Exadata 12.1 to Exadata 12.2.1.1.0.