When working with shared Oracle Homes you environment will look like this:

• One ORACLE_HOME in which installed the most recent release of Oracle DB, for instance 11.2.0.2
• Several Database Instances running on the Oracle Software installed

If we want to apply a Patch to an environment like this we need to follow a scenario like this:

1. Download the Patch manually from MOS
2. Study the documentation
3. Check if the proper version of OPatch is available and upgrade if necessary
4. Clone the current ORACLE_HOME (you might be using a Golden Image in the EM Software Library for this)
5. Install the Patch on the cloned ORACLE_HOME
6. Stop database per database and copy necessary files (<oracle_home>/dbs/…)
7. Modify /etc/oratab to modify the path to the cloned ORACLE_HOME
8. Startup the database in the clone ORACLE_HOME
9. Execute necessary sql scripts

10. Check and document

Indeed an intensive and error prone scenario.

EM 10.2.0.5 and 11.1 provided us with a Patching procedure that was unable to cover this scenario.

EM 12c however now provide us with a procedure that takes care of this “Out-of-place” Patching procedure.

Starting with the support of Single Instances and RAC on Exadata, the support for RAC on clustered Servers is soon to follow (obviously as this is a more or less same procedure as the support for Exadata).

By this IT departments are able to perform a robust, complete patching procedure in which databases will be patched one by one with a minimum of down time.

Cheers