Database direct upgrade from 11g to 12c to Exadata X6-2 from X5-2 - RMAN DUPLICATE DATABSAE WITH NOOPEN

At one of the customers recently, a few production databases migration from X5-2 to X6-2 with Oracle 11g upgrade to Oracle 12cR1 was successfully delivered.

As we all knew, there are handful of methods available to migrate and upgrade an Oracle databases. Our objective was simple. Migrate Oracle 11g (11.2.0.4) database from X5-2 to Oracle 12c (12.1.0.2) on X6-2.

Since the OS on source and target remains the same, no conversion is required.
There was no issue of downtime, so, doesn't required to be worried of various options.

Considering the above, we have decided to go for a direct RMAN (duplicate command) with NOOPEN option to upgrade the database. You can also use same procedure with RMAN restore/recovery method. But, the RMAN duplicate database with NOOPEN simplified the procedure.

Below is he high level procedure to upgrade an Oracle 11g database to 12cR1 using RMAN DUPLICATE command{

• Copy preupgrd.sql & utluppkg.sql scripts from Oracle 12c ?/rdbms/admin home to 11g to /tmp or any other location;
• Run preupgrd.sql script on the source database (which is Oracle 11gR2 in our case);
• Review preupgrade.log and apply any recommendations; You can also execute preupgrade_fixups script to fix the issues raised in the preupgrade.log;
• Execute RMAN backup (database and archivelog) on source database;
• scp the backup sets to remote host
• Create a simple init file on the target with just db_name parameter;
• Create a password file on the target;
• Startup nomount the database on the target;
• Create TNS entries for auxiliary (target) and primary database (source) on the target host;
• Run the DUPLICATE DATABASE with NOOPEN , with all adjusted / required parameters;
• After the restore and recovery, open the database with resetlogs upgrade option;
• Exit from the SQL prompt and run the catupgrade (12c new command) with parallel option;

on target host:

nohup $ORACLE_HOME/perl/bin/perl catctl.pl -n 8 catupgrd.sql &

After completing the catupgrade, get the postupgrade_fixup script from resource and execute on the target database;
Perform the timezone upgrade;

Gather dictionary, fixed_objects, database and system stats accordingly;
Run ultrp.sql to ensure all invalid objects are compiled;
Review the dba_registry t ensure no INVALID components remain;

Above are the high level steps. If you are looking for a step-by-step procedure, review the below url from oraclepublihser.blogspot.com. We must appreciate for the work done at the blogspot for a very comprehensive procedure and demonstration.


References:

http://oraclepublisher.blogspot.com/2014/06/upgrade-database-to-12c-using-rman.html