Configure Oracle-Managed Infrastructure Maintenance

Oracle performs the updates to all of the Oracle-managed infrastructure components on Exadata Cloud@Customer.

You may manage contacts who are notified regarding infrastructure maintenance, set a maintenance window to determine the time your quarterly infrastructure maintenance will begin, and also view scheduled maintenance runs and the maintenance history of your Exadata Cloud@Customer in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Console. For details regarding the infrastructure maintenance process and configuring the maintenance controls refer to the following:

About Oracle Managed Exadata Cloud@Customer Infrastructure Maintenance Updates

Oracle performs patches and updates to all of the Oracle-managed system components on Exadata Cloud@Customer.

Oracle patches and updates include the physical database server hosts, Exadata Storage Servers, Network Fabric Switches, management switch, power distribution units (PDUs), integrated lights-out management (ILOM) interfaces, and Control Plane Servers. This is referred to as Exadata Cloud@Customer infrastructure maintenance.

In all but rare exceptional circumstances, you receive advance communication about these updates to help you plan for them. If there are corresponding recommended updates for your VM cluster virtual machines (VMs), then Oracle provides notifications about them.

Wherever possible, scheduled updates are performed in a manner that preserves service availability throughout the update process. However, there can be some noticeable impact on performance and throughput while individual system components are unavailable during the update process.

For example, database server patching typically requires a reboot. In such cases, wherever possible, the database servers are restarted in a rolling manner, one at a time, to ensure that the service remains available throughout the process. However, each database server is unavailable for a short time while it restarts, and the overall service capacity diminishes accordingly. If your applications cannot tolerate the restarts, then take mitigating action as needed. For example, shut down an application while database server patching occurs.

Overview of the Quarterly Infrastructure Maintenance Process

By default, infrastructure maintenance updates the Exadata database server hosts in a rolling fashion, followed by updating the storage servers.

You can also choose non-rolling maintenance to update database and storage servers. The non-rolling maintenance method first updates your storage servers at the same time, then your database servers at the same time. Although non-rolling maintenance minimizes maintenance time, it incurs full system downtime while the storage servers and database servers are being updated.

Rolling infrastructure maintenance begins with the Exadata database server hosts. For the rolling maintenance method, database servers are updated one at a time. Each of the database server host's VMs is shut down, the host is updated, restarted, and then the VMs are started, while other database servers remain operational. This rolling maintenance impact older applications not written to handle a rolling instance outage. This process continues until all servers are updated.

After database server maintenance is complete, storage server maintenance begins. For the rolling maintenance method, storage servers are updated one at a time and do not impact VM cluster VM's availability. However, the rolling storage server maintenance can result in reduced IO performance as storage servers are taken offline (reducing available IO capacity) and resynced when brought back online (small overhead on database servers). Properly sizing the database and storage infrastructure to accommodate increased work distributed to database and storage servers not under maintenance will minimize (or eliminate) any performance impact.

Note that while databases are expected to be available during the rolling maintenance process, the automated maintenance verifies Oracle Clusterware is running but does not verify that all database services and pluggable databases (PDBs) are available after a server is brought back online. The availability of database services and PDBs after maintenance can depend on the application service definition. For example, a database service, configured with certain preferred and available nodes, may be relocated during the maintenance and wouldn't automatically be relocated back to its original node after the maintenance completes. Oracle recommends reviewing the documentation on Achieving Continuous Availability for Your Applications on Exadata Cloud Systems to reduce the potential for impact to your applications. By following the documentation's guidelines, the impact of infrastructure maintenance will be only minor service degradation as database servers are sequentially updated.

Oracle recommends that you follow the Maximum Availability Architecture (MAA) best practices and use Data Guard to ensure the highest availability for your critical applications. For databases with Data Guard enabled, Oracle recommends that you separate the maintenance windows for the infrastructure instances running the primary and standby databases. You may also perform a switchover prior to the maintenance operations for the infrastructure instance hosting the primary database. This allows you to avoid any impact on your primary database during infrastructure maintenance.

Prechecks are performed on the Exadata Cloud@Customer infrastructure components prior to the start of the maintenance window. The goal of the prechecks is to identify issues that may prevent the infrastructure maintenance from succeeding. The Exadata infrastructure and all components remain online during the prechecks. An initial precheck is run approximately 10 days prior to the maintenance start and another precheck is run approximately 24 hours prior to maintenance start. If the prechecks identify an issue that requires rescheduling the maintenance notification is sent to the maintenance contacts.

The time taken to update infrastructure components varies depending on the number of database servers and storage servers in the Exadata infrastructure, the maintenance method, and whether custom action has been enabled. The approximate times provided are estimates. Time for custom action, if configured, is not included in the estimates below. Database server maintenance time may vary depending on the time required to shutdown each VM before the update and then start each VM and associated resources after the update of each node before proceeding to the next node. The storage server maintenance time will vary depending on the time required for the ASM rebalance, which is not included in the estimates below. If issues are encountered during maintenance this may also delay completion beyond the approximate time listed. In such a situation, if Oracle cloud operations determine resolution would extend beyond the expected window, they will send a notification and may reschedule the maintenance.

Note

The timeframes mentioned below can change if Oracle cloud operations determine that additional maintenance work is needed. If additional time is necessary, Oracle will send a customer notification in advance to inform customers that additional time will be required for the next quarterly maintenance window.
  • Rolling:
    • Each database server takes 90 minutes on average.
    • Each storage server takes 60 minutes on average.
    • Each InfiniBand or RoCE fabric switch takes 30 minutes on average.
    • The approximate total time for infrastructure maintenance is as follows:

      • Base and Quarter Rack (2 Database Servers/3 Storage Servers): Approximately 7 hours

        2 Database Servers X 90 = 180 minutes

        3 Storage Servers X 60 = 180 minutes

        2 InfiniBand or RoCE Fabric Switch X 30 = 60 minutes

      • Half Rack (4 Database Servers/6 Storage Servers): Approximately 13 hours

        4 Database Servers X 90 = 360 minutes

        6 Storage Servers X 60 = 360 minutes

        2 InfiniBand or RoCE Fabric Switch X 30 = 60 minutes

      • Full Rack (8 Database Servers/12 Storage Servers): Approximately 26 hours

        8 Database Servers X 90 = 720 minutes

        12 Storage Servers X 60 = 720 minutes

        2 InfiniBand or RoCE Fabric Switch X 30 = 60 minutes

  • Non-Rolling:
    • All database servers take 180 minutes on average.
    • All storage servers take 60 minutes on average.
    • Storage Servers and Database servers are brought back online prior to starting fabric switch maintenance.
    • Network fabric switches are still updated in a rolling method and take 30 minutes each on average.
    • The approximate total time for infrastructure maintenance is 5 hours regardless of shape:
      • All Database Servers = 180 minutes
      • All Storage Servers = 60 minutes
      • 2 InfiniBand or RoCE Fabric Switch = 60 minutes

Overview of Monthly Security Maintenance

Security maintenance, performed alongside the quarterly maintenance, is executed in months when important security updates are needed and includes fixes for vulnerabilities with CVSS scores greater than or equal to 7.

Note

For more information about the CVE release matrix, see Exadata Database Machine and Exadata Storage Server Supported Versions (Doc ID 888828.1).

To view the CVE release matrix specific to an Exadata Infrastructure version, click the Exadata version, for example, Exadata 23. Version-specific CVE release matrices are listed in the Notes column of the table.

Security maintenance, when needed, is scheduled to be applied during a 21-day window that begins after the 15th of each month. Customers will receive notification of the proposed schedule at least 7 days before the start of the monthly maintenance window and can reschedule monthly maintenance to another date in the window if desired. The monthly security maintenance process updates database servers to fix critical security vulnerabilities and critical product issues. Monthly maintenance also updates storage servers to an Exadata Storage Software image that resolves known security vulnerabilities and product issues.

Updates to database servers are applied online via Ksplice technology, and have no impact to workloads running on the compute (database) servers, as database server security updates are applied online to the host server while your VM and all processes within the VM, including databases, remain up and running. Servers and VMs are not restarted. Updates to storage servers are applied in a rolling fashion. As with quarterly maintenance, the impact of rebooting storage servers should be minimal to applications.

While updating your services infrastructure, some operations including memory, and storage scaling, operating system and Grid Infrastructure patching (including prechecks), and elastic expansion of compute and storage servers may be blocked.
Note

CPU scaling and VM startup/shutdown are the only operations supported during monthly infrastructure maintenance.
Please plan to defer these operations until after the updates are complete. Application of security updates takes about 15 minutes per DB server host, plus 60 minutes per storage server depending on the I/O activity. If you attempt an affected operation, the console will notify you of the ongoing security updates. No software is updated in the guest VMs.

Understanding Monthly and Quarterly Maintenance in the Same Month

Special considerations are made when both quarterly and monthly security maintenance are scheduled to run in the same month. Quarterly maintenance will reapply any security fixes already applied by security maintenance, and neither quarterly nor monthly maintenance will apply a storage server update if the existing storage server version is the same or newer than the version contained in the update.

  • The contents of the updates applied during quarterly maintenance are determined at the start of the maintenance quarter and use the latest Exadata release from the month prior to the start of the maintenance quarter. If any additional security fixes are available at that time, those updates are included in the quarterly maintenance. That image is then used throughout the quarter. For example, the January release is used for quarterly maintenance in Feb, March, and April.
  • When quarterly maintenance is applied it is possible there are security updates previously installed on the database servers are not included in the quarterly maintenance release to be applied. In that case, the automation will apply the same security fixes to new release installed by the quarterly maintenance so there will not be any regression in security fixes. If the current image on the storage server is the same or newer than that to be applied by the quarterly or monthly security maintenance, that maintenance will be skipped for the storage servers.

If quarterly maintenance is scheduled within 24 hours of the time the monthly is scheduled, the scheduled monthly maintenance will be skipped, and the monthly update will instead be applied immediately following the quarterly maintenance.

  • When scheduled at the same time, the monthly update is executed immediately following the completion of the quarterly maintenance.
  • If monthly maintenance is scheduled to begin 0-24 hours ahead of the quarterly maintenance, then the monthly maintenance will not execute as scheduled, but instead, wait and be executed immediately following the quarterly maintenance. If the quarterly maintenance is subsequently rescheduled, then the monthly security maintenance will begin immediately. Oracle, therefore, recommends scheduling quarterly and monthly maintenance at the same time. As a result, if you reschedule the quarterly at the last moment, the monthly maintenance will run at the scheduled time instead of immediately upon editing the schedule. You can also reschedule the monthly security maintenance when rescheduling the quarterly maintenance as long as you keep the monthly within the current maintenance window. Monthly maintenance can be rescheduled to another time in the maintenance window, but cannot be skipped.

Monthly Security Maintenance before Quarterly Maintenance

  • To apply security maintenance before quarterly maintenance, reschedule the monthly security maintenance to occur more than 24 hours prior to the quarterly maintenance. The security maintenance will online apply security patches to the database servers with no impact to applications, and apply an update to the storage servers with minimal to no impact (may be slight performance degradation) on applications. The quarterly maintenance will follow as scheduled, and will perform rolling maintenance on the database servers, which will impact applications not written to handle a rolling reboot. As part of the quarterly maintenance, it will apply the same security updates to the database server that are already installed on the system (no security regression).
  • If you are concerned about getting the latest security updates applied, schedule the monthly security maintenance to run after the new monthly maintenance window opens (usually on the 21st of the month).
  • The impact of the monthly security maintenance rebooting the storage servers should be minimal, so impact to the applications during this month will only be due to the restart of the database servers during the quarterly maintenance. However, if you must coordinate a maintenance window with your end users for the security maintenance, this will require two maintenance windows.

Quarterly Maintenance before Monthly Security Maintenance

  • To run the quarterly maintenance before the monthly security maintenance, reschedule the security maintenance to run no earlier than 24 hours before the quarterly maintenance is scheduled to start. The security maintenance will be deferred until the quarterly maintenance is completed. The quarterly maintenance will perform rolling maintenance on the database servers, which will impact applications not written to handle a rolling reboot. The quarterly maintenance may or may not skip the storage server patching. That depends on if it is newer or older than the release currently installed. In most cases, the version installed should be newer than the version associated with the quarterly maintenance. Exceptions to this rule may occur if it is the first month of a maintenance quarter, or you skipped the security maintenance in one or more prior months. The security maintenance will run either immediately after the quarterly maintenance is completed, or when scheduled, whichever is later. It will apply online updates to the database servers (no application impact) and will likely update the storage servers in a rolling manner. In some corner cases. the quarterly maintenance may contain the same storage server release as the security maintenance and the security maintenance storage server updates will be skipped.
  • The impact to end users of running the quarterly maintenance before the security maintenance should be roughly the same as running the security maintenance first. The quarterly maintenance will be a disruptive event, but the security maintenance rebooting the storage servers should cause minimal disruption, and the security maintenance is applied to the database servers online. However, if you must coordinate a maintenance window with your end users for the security maintenance, this will require two maintenance windows. You can schedule those two maintenance windows to run back-to-back, to appear as single maintenance window to end users. To do this, reschedule the security maintenance to start at the same time (or up to 24 hours prior) as the quarterly maintenance. The security maintenance will be deferred until the quarterly maintenance is completed. Assuming you have been regularly applying monthly security maintenance, the storage servers will be skipped by the quarterly maintenance and will be updated by the security maintenance immediately upon the completion of the quarterly maintenance.

Minimizing Maintenance Windows

  • To minimize the number of maintenance windows (you have to negotiate those with end users), schedule the quarterly maintenance and monthly maintenance at the same time. The security maintenance will be blocked. The quarterly maintenance will update the database servers in a rolling manner and will most likely skip the storage server. The security maintenance will follow up immediately and update the database servers online and the storage servers in a rolling manner. The result is a single database and storage server restart in a single maintenance window.
  • There are two exceptions to this. 1. If the quarterly and monthly maintenance contain the same storage server release, the quarterly maintenance will apply the storage server update, and the security maintenance will be skipped. From your perspective, this is still a single rolling reboot in a single maintenance window. 2. The currently installed release on the storage servers is older than that contained in the quarterly maintenance, which in turn is older than that in the security maintenance. That would cause the quarterly maintenance to update the storage, and then the security maintenance to do it as well. This can only happen if you skipped a prior month's security maintenance, because it requires the current image to be at least 2 months out of date. In such a scenario, you may want to schedule the security maintenance first and then the quarterly maintenance. This would result in one storage server reboot, but two distinct maintenance windows — the first for the security maintenance, and then later the quarterly maintenance.
  • To minimize the impact to your end users, always apply the monthly security updates, and in months where both are scheduled, schedule them at the same time.
Note

  • If the Exadata Infrastructure is provisioned before Oracle schedules the security maintenance, then it will be eligible for security maintenance.
  • Any time before the scheduled monthly Exadata Infrastructure maintenance, you can reschedule it.

Infrastructure Maintenance Contacts

Maintenance contacts are required for service request based communications for hardware replacement and other maintenance events.

Add a primary maintenance contact and optionally add a maximum of nine secondary contacts. Both the primary and secondary contacts receive all notifications about hardware replacement, network issues, and software maintenance runs.

You can promote any secondary contacts as the primary anytime you want. When you promote a secondary contact to primary, the current primary contact will be demoted automatically to secondary.

For more information, see: Using the Console to Create Infrastructure and Managing Infrastructure Maintenance Contacts.

Using the Console to Configure Oracle-Managed Infrastructure Updates

Full Exadata infrastructure software updates are scheduled on a quarterly basis. In addition, important security updates are scheduled monthly. While you cannot opt-out of these infrastructure updates, Oracle alerts you in advance through the Cloud Notification Portal and allows scheduling flexibility to help you plan for them.

For quarterly infrastructure maintenance, you can set a maintenance window to determine when the maintenance will begin. You can also edit the maintenance method, enable custom action, and view the scheduled maintenance runs and the maintenance history of your Exadata Cloud@Customer in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Console. For security maintenance, you may edit the scheduled start time within the 21-day window.

For more information, see the following:
  • View or Edit Quarterly Infrastructure Maintenance Preferences for Exadata Cloud@Customer Infrastructure
  • View or Edit a Scheduled Quarterly Maintenance for Exadata Cloud@Customer Infrastructure
  • View or Edit a Scheduled Security Maintenance for Exadata Cloud@Customer Infrastructure
  • View the Maintenance History of Exadata Cloud@Customer Infrastructure
  • View and Edit Quarterly Maintenance While Maintenance is In Progress or Waiting for Custom Action
  • View or Edit a Scheduled Security Maintenance for Exadata Cloud@Customer Infrastructure

View or Edit Quarterly Infrastructure Maintenance Preferences for Exadata Cloud@Customer Infrastructure

To edit your Oracle Exadata Database Service on Cloud@Customer infrastructure quarterly maintenance preferences, be prepared to provide values for the infrastructure configuration. The changes you make will only apply to future maintenance runs, not those already scheduled.

  1. Open the navigation menu. Under Oracle Database, click Exadata Database Service on Cloud@Customer.
  2. Select Region and Compartment, and provide the region and the compartment where the Oracle Exadata infrastructure you want to edit is located.
  3. Click Exadata Infrastructure.
  4. Click the name of the Exadata infrastructure that you want to edit.

    The Infrastructure Details page displays information about the selected Oracle Exadata infrastructure.

  5. Click Edit Maintenance Preferences.

    Edit Maintenance Preferences page is displayed.

    Note

    Changes made to maintenance preferences apply only to future maintenance, not the maintenance that has already been scheduled. To modify scheduled maintenance, see View or Edit a Scheduled Maintenance for Exadata Cloud@Customer Infrastructure.

  6. On the Edit Maintenance Preferences page, configure the following:
    • Choose a maintenance method:
      • Rolling: By default, Exadata Infrastructure is updated in a rolling fashion, one server at a time with no downtime.
      • Non-rolling: Update database and storage servers at the same time. The non-rolling maintenance method minimizes maintenance time but incurs full system downtime.
    • Enable custom action before performing maintenance on DB servers: Enable custom action only if you want to perform additional actions outside of Oracle’s purview. For maintenance configured with a rolling software update, enabling this option will force the maintenance run to wait for a custom action with a configured timeout before starting maintenance on each DB server. For maintenance configured with non-rolling software updates, the maintenance run will wait for a custom action with a configured timeout before starting maintenance across all DB servers. The maintenance run, while waiting for the custom action, may also be resumed prior to the timeout.
      • Custom action timeout (in minutes): Timeout available to perform custom action before starting maintenance on the DB Servers.

        Default: 30 minutes

        Maximum: 120 minutes

    • Maintenance schedule:
      • No preference: The system assigns a date and start time for infrastructure maintenance.
      • Specify a schedule: Choose your preferred month, week, weekday, start time, and lead time for infrastructure maintenance.
        • Under Maintenance months, specify at least one month for each quarter during which Exadata infrastructure maintenance will take place. You can select more than one month per quarter. If you specify a long lead time for advanced notification (for example, 4 weeks), you may wish to specify 2 or 3 months per quarter during which maintenance runs can occur. This will ensure that your maintenance updates are applied in a timely manner after accounting for your required lead time. Lead time is discussed in the following steps.
        • Optional. Under Week of the month, specify which week of the month, maintenance will take place. Weeks start on the 1st, 8th, 15th, and 22nd days of the month, and have a duration of 7 days. Weeks start and end based on calendar dates, not days of the week. Maintenance cannot be scheduled for the fifth week of months that contain more than 28 days. If you do not specify a week of the month, Oracle will run the maintenance update in a week to minimize disruption.
        • Optional. Under Day of the week, specify the day of the week on which the maintenance will occur. If you do not specify a day of the week, Oracle will run the maintenance update on a weekend day to minimize disruption.
        • Optional. Under Start hour, specify the hour during which the maintenance run will begin. If you do not specify a start hour, Oracle will pick the least disruptive time to run the maintenance update.
        • Under Lead Time, specify the minimum number of weeks ahead of the maintenance event you would like to receive a notification message. Your lead time ensures that a newly released maintenance update is scheduled to account for your required minimum period of advanced notification.
  7. Click Save Changes.

    If you switch from rolling to non-rolling maintenance method, then Confirm Non-rolling Maintenance Method dialog is displayed.

    1. Enter the name of the infrastructure in the field provided to confirm the changes.
    2. Click Save Changes.

View or Edit a Scheduled Quarterly Maintenance for Exadata Cloud@Customer Infrastructure

Learn how to view and edit the time of the next scheduled maintenance.

  1. Open the navigation menu. Under Oracle Database, click Exadata Database Service on Cloud@Customer.
  2. Choose your Compartment.
  3. Click Exadata Infrastructure.
  4. In the list of Exadata Infrastructures, find the infrastructure you want to set the next scheduled maintenance window for and click its highlighted name.

    The Infrastructure Details page displays information about the selected Oracle Exadata infrastructure.

    Note

    An information block is displayed 6 hours before the start of a maintenance run, regardless of whether you've chosen rolling or non-rolling maintenance method. When the maintenance begins, it is automatically removed.

  5. On the Infrastructure Details page, under Maintenance, click the view link in the Next Quarterly Maintenance field.

    The Exadata Infrastructure Maintenance page is displayed.

  6. On the Exadata Infrastructure Maintenance page, scheduled maintenance details are listed.

    Target DB Server Version and Target Storage Server Version: These fields display the Exadata software version to be applied by the scheduled maintenance. The version applied will be the most recent certified update for Exadata infrastructures in the cloud. If the next quarterly update is not yet certified when the maintenance is scheduled, then the versions may show "LATEST" until the new quarterly update becomes available. Once the update becomes available the new version will be displayed.

    To find information on the Database Server Exadata software version or the Storage Server Exadata software version, see My Oracle Support note Exadata Database Machine and Exadata Storage Server Supported Versions (Doc ID 888828.1).

  7. To change the next scheduled maintenance settings, click Edit Maintenance Run.
    On the Edit Maintenance page, do the following:
    • Select a maintenance method, Rolling or Non-rolling.
      Note

      If you select the Non-rolling option, an information block appears stating that components will be updated simultaneously, resulting in full system downtime.

    • Enable custom action before performing maintenance on DB servers: Enable custom action only if you want to perform additional actions outside of Oracle’s purview. For maintenance configured with a rolling software update, enabling this option will force the maintenance run to wait for a custom action with a configured timeout before starting maintenance on each DB server. For maintenance configured with non-rolling software updates, the maintenance run will wait for a custom action with a configured timeout before starting maintenance across all DB servers. The maintenance run, while waiting for the custom action, may also be resumed prior to the timeout.
      • Custom action timeout (in minutes): Maximum timeout available to perform custom action before starting maintenance on the DB Servers.

        Default: 30 minutes

        Maximum: 120 minutes

    • To reschedule the next quarterly maintenance run, enter a date and time in the Scheduled Start time field.
      The following restrictions apply:
      • Oracle expects to be able to perform infrastructure maintenance at least once per quarter. You should not defer maintenance beyond the end of a maintenance quarter unless unexpected issues prevent your accommodating it before the next maintenance quarter.
      • In the event unexpected issues prevent your accommodating the scheduled infrastructure maintenance run, you can reschedule the infrastructure maintenance to another date no more than 180 days from the prior infrastructure maintenance. Since normal maintenance should be performed quarterly, this provides approximately 90 additional days for you to reschedule the infrastructure maintenance. Oracle strongly recommends you not schedule maintenance at or close to the 180 day limit, as you will have no flexibility to reschedule further if additional unexpected issues arise.
      • If a new maintenance release is announced prior to your rescheduled maintenance run, the newer release will be applied on your specified date.
      • You can reschedule your maintenance to take place earlier than it is currently scheduled. You cannot reschedule the maintenance if the current time is within 2 hours of the scheduled maintenance start time.
      • Oracle reserves certain dates each quarter for internal maintenance operations, and you cannot schedule your maintenance on these dates.
    • Click Save Changes.
  8. To view estimated maintenance time details for various components, click the View link is displayed in the Total Estimated Maintenance Time field.

    The View link is displayed in the Total Estimated Maintenance Time field only if the Maintenance Method is Rolling.

    The Estimated Maintenance Time Details page is displayed with details that include:
    • Total Estimated Maintenance Time
    • Database Servers Estimated Maintenance Time
    • Storage Servers Estimated Maintenance Time
    • Network Switches Estimated Maintenance Time
    • Order in which components are updated. In rolling maintenance, components are updated in the sequence displayed
    1. To view the number of VMs that will be restarted as part of Database Server maintenance, click the Show details link.

      The VM Location dialog is displayed.

    2. In the VM Cluster Name field, you can find out what VM cluster a particular VM belongs to.
    3. Click Close.
  9. Click Close to close the Estimated Maintenance Time Details page.

View or Edit a Scheduled Security Maintenance for Exadata Cloud@Customer Infrastructure

Learn how to view and edit the next scheduled security maintenance.

  1. Open the navigation menu. Under Oracle Database, click Exadata Database Service on Cloud@Customer.
  2. Select Region and Compartment, and provide the region and the compartment where the Oracle Exadata infrastructure you want to edit is located.
  3. Choose your Compartment.
  4. Click the name of the Exadata infrastructure that you want to view maintenance details.

    The Infrastructure Details page displays information about the selected Oracle Exadata infrastructure.

    Quarterly and monthly maintenance details are displayed under the Maintenance section. Monthly security maintenance is labeled as Next Security Maintenance.

  5. On the Infrastructure Details page, under Maintenance, click the view link in the Next Security Maintenance field.

    The Exadata Infrastructure Maintenance page is displayed. The Exadata Infrastructure Maintenance page includes details such as Type: Monthly Security Maintenance, Scheduled Start Time, and so on.

  6. To reschedule monthly security maintenance, click the Edit link in the Scheduled Start Time field and pick a new date within the 21-day cycle.
    Note

    Certain black-out dates are not available for security maintenance and are grayed out in the rescheduling calendar.

    Edit Maintenance Start Time dialog is displayed.

  7. Select a date and then click Save Changes.
  8. To view the maintenance history, click Maintenance History.

    The Maintenance History page displays details including the type of maintenance, Monthly or Quarterly.

    When a monthly security maintenance is in progress, the Infrastructure resource state will be Available.

View the Maintenance History of Exadata Cloud@Customer Infrastructure

Learn how to view the maintenance history for an Exadata Cloud@Customer Infrastructure.

  1. Open the navigation menu. Under Oracle Database, click Exadata Database Service on Cloud@Customer.
  2. Choose your Compartment.
  3. Click Exadata Infrastructure.
  4. In the list of Exadata Infrastructures, find the infrastructure you want to view the maintenance history and click its highlighted name.

    The Infrastructure Details page displays information about the selected Oracle Exadata infrastructure.

  5. On the Infrastructure Details page, under Maintenance, click the view link in the Next Quarterly Maintenance field.

    The Exadata Infrastructure Maintenance page is displayed.

  6. On the Exadata Infrastructure Maintenance page, click Maintenance History to see a list of past maintenance events including details on their completion state and the target database and storage server versions.

    To find information on the Database Server Exadata software version or the Storage Server Exadata software version, see My Oracle Support note Exadata Database Machine and Exadata Storage Server Supported Versions (Doc ID 888828.1).

View and Edit Quarterly Maintenance While Maintenance is In Progress or Waiting for Custom Action

While maintenance is in progress, you can enable or disable custom action and change the custom action timeout. While maintenance is waiting for a custom action, you can resume the maintenance prior to the timeout or extend the timeout.

  1. Open the navigation menu. Under Oracle Database, click Exadata Database Service on Cloud@Customer.
  2. Select Region and Compartment, and provide the region and the compartment where the Oracle Exadata infrastructure you want to edit is located.
  3. Click Exadata Infrastructure.
  4. Click the name of the Exadata infrastructure that you want to edit.

    The Infrastructure Details page displays information about the selected Oracle Exadata infrastructure.

    Note

    Maintenance In Progress status is displayed in the Next Quarterly Maintenance field.

View and Edit Maintenance While Maintenance is In Progress
  1. Click the View link in the Next Quarterly Maintenance field.

    The Exadata Infrastructure Maintenance page is displayed.

  2. Click Edit Maintenance Run.

    Edit Maintenance page is displayed.

    Note

    You can only make edits to the custom action configuration, not the maintenance method or scheduled start time. Enabling or disabling the custom action or modifying the custom action timeout while maintenance is in progress will apply to all database servers that have yet to be updated.

  3. On the Edit Maintenance page, do the following:
    • Enable custom action before performing maintenance on DB servers: Enable custom action only if you want to perform additional actions outside of Oracle’s purview. For maintenance configured with a rolling software update, enabling this option will force the maintenance run to wait for a custom action with a configured timeout before starting maintenance on each DB server. For maintenance configured with non-rolling software updates, the maintenance run will wait for a custom action with a configured timeout before starting maintenance across all DB servers. The maintenance run, while waiting for the custom action, may also be resumed prior to the timeout.
      • Custom action timeout (in minutes): Timeout available to perform custom action before starting maintenance on the DB Servers.

        Default: 30 minutes

        Maximum: 120 minutes

  4. Click Save Changes.

    If you have configured the rolling maintenance method, then the View link is displayed in the Total Estimated Maintenance Time field.

    1. Click View.
      Estimated Maintenance Time Details page is displayed with details that include:
      • Total Estimated Maintenance Time
      • Database Servers Estimated Maintenance Time
      • Storage Servers Estimated Maintenance Time
      • Network Switches Estimated Maintenance Time
      • Order in which components are updated. In rolling maintenance, components are updated in the sequence displayed.
    2. Click Close.
View and Edit Maintenance While Maintenance is Waiting for Custom Action
  1. Click the View link in the Next Quarterly Maintenance field.

    Exadata Infrastructure Maintenance page is displayed.

    Note

    • Editing a maintenance run is not available while waiting for custom action.
    • While maintenance is waiting for custom action, an information block is displayed. The information block is removed after the maintenance resumes.
  2. On the information block, do the following:
    1. Click Resume Maintenance Now to resume the maintenance, proceeding to the next database server.

      Resume Maintenance dialog is displayed. Click Resume Maintenance Now.

    2. Click Extend Custom Action Timeout.

      You can extend timeout multiple times within the maximum allowable time of 2 hours. If you try extending beyond the maximum limit, then the system displays the Cannot Extend Custom Action Timeout dialog indicating that the custom action timeout has already been extended to the maximum allowable 2 hours and you cannot extend it further.

Monitor Infrastructure Maintenance Using Lifecycle State Information

The lifecycle state of your Exadata Infrastructure resource enables you to monitor when the maintenance of your infrastructure resource begins and ends.

In the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Console, you can see lifecycle state details messages on the Exadata Infrastructure Details page when a tooltip is displayed beside the Status field. You can also access these messages using the ListExadataInfrastructures API, and using tools based on the API, including SDKs and the OCI CLI.

During infrastructure maintenance operations, you can expect the following:
  • If you specify a maintenance window, then patching begins at your specified start time. The infrastructure resource's lifecycle state changes from Available to Maintenance in Progress.
    Note

    The prechecks are now done prior to the start of the maintenance.
  • When Exadata database server maintenance starts, the infrastructure resource's lifecycle state is Maintenance in Progress, and the associated lifecycle state message is, The underlying infrastructure of this system (dbnodes) is being updated.
  • When storage server maintenance starts, the infrastructure resource's lifecycle state is Maintenance in Progress, and the associated lifecycle state message is, The underlying infrastructure of this system (cell storage) is being updated and this will not impact Database availability.
  • After storage server maintenance is complete, the networking switches are updated one at a time, in a rolling fashion.
  • When maintenance is complete, the infrastructure resource's lifecycle state is Available, and the Console and API-based tools do not provide a lifecycle state message.

Receive Notifications about Your Infrastructure Maintenance Updates

There are two ways to receive notifications. One is through email to infrastructure maintenance contacts and the other one is to subscribe to the maintenance events and get notified.

Oracle schedules maintenance run of your infrastructure based on your scheduling preferences and sends email notifications to all your infrastructure maintenance contacts. You can login to the console and view details of the schedule maintenance run. Appropriate maintenance related events will be generated as Oracle prepares for your scheduled maintenance run, for example, precheck, patching started, patching end, and so on. For more information about all maintenance related events, see Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer Events. In case, if there are any failures, then Oracle reschedules your maintenance run, generates related notification, and notifies your infrastructure maintenance contacts.

For more information about Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Events, see Overview of Events. To receive additional notifications other than the ones sent to infrastructure maintenance contacts, you can subscribe to infrastructure maintenance events and get notified using the Oracle Notification service, see Notifications Overview.

Using the API to Manage Exadata Cloud@Customer Infrastructure Maintenance Controls

Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer uses the same API as Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to manage infrastructure maintenance controls.

For information about using the API and signing requests, see REST APIs and Security Credentials. For information about SDKs, see Software Development Kits and Command Line Interface.

Use these API operations to manage infrastructure maintenance controls: