ZERO DOWNTIME UPGRADE & MIGRATION
FINANCE & BANKING
Use Case: Online Database Upgrade
This is my subject matter expertise!
Zero Downtime Upgrade & Migration is a complex project and can be costly. The team members within the project are: project lead, Database Administrator, System Administrator, Storage Administrator, GoldenGate Administrator and applications owners.
What is the objective of Zero Downtime?
We need the system to continue operating while the upgrade and migration is in progress. The duration of the migration must be considering carefully as the more duration the more storage it will require and with legacy system storage can be limited and unwise to acquire. For systems running online financial application, stocks exchange system the upgrade and migration MUST be performed online. As minutes of downtime causes loss not only revenue but also impact customers satisfaction.
What are the phases?
From a high level, the phases for upgrade/migration an Oracle Database involves the following:
- Deploy Oracle GoldenGate
- Online clone the production database
- Migrate to Automatic Storage Management
- Upgrade to Oracle Database 12c
- Application Regression Testing
- Synchronize the target database
- Data verification
Download Chapter 7 of my book, it explains and implements the process in depth.
A very important aspect when upgrading a database to new version, DO NOT apply new features immediately. First upgrade performs workload and functional testing, once all is running as expected, consider applying new features gradually.
