Upgrade to Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 3 (12.1.0.3)

Just a quick wrap up on EM12cR3 upgrade. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised that everything went so smooth. I didn’t expected anything else, but with so how many products and components we have there I got few things in mind. The version I got was already upgraded to 12.1.0.2 so it was really easy for me to run the upgrade.

Things to watch out for:

You need to be already running OEM version 12.1.0.2 to be able to upgrade to 12.1.0.3. If not you must apply BP1 to your 12.1.0.1 installation and then patch to 12.1.0.3. Remember to patch the agents as well.
The upgrade to 12.1.0.3 is out-of-place upgrade, so you need to point out to new middleware home and you’ll need additional 15 GB for the installation.
The installation takes between 1-2 hours to complete depending on you machine power.
I didn’t stopped any of the agents during the upgrade.
After the upgrade all OMS components were started automatically.

Here is what I’ve done:

Definitely take backup of the middleware home and database as well. You don’t want to end up removing the agents and reinstalling the OMS. I had 400+ targets and failure wasn’t an option. For the middleware home I used simple tar and RMAN for the repository database.

Stop the OMS and other components:

 cd $ORACLE_HOME/bin/
 cd bin
 ./emctl stop oms -all

It’s required that the EMKey be copied to the repository prior upgrade, if you miss that the installer will kindly remind you. There is also note in the documentation:

 $OMS_HOME/bin/emctl config emkey -copy_to_repos_from_file -repos_host [repository_host] -repos_port [port] -repos_sid [sid] -repos_user [username] -emkey_file $OMS_HOME/sysman/config/emkey.ora

The only command I run during the upgrade was a simple grant, everything else was done by the installer:
```
 SQL> grant execute on dbms_random to dbsnmp;

 Grant succeeded.
```
Once the upgrade is complete:

upgrade all the agents from the console:

Setup -> Manage Cloud Control -> Upgrade agents
as a post upgrade step the old agent homes should be deleted:

Setup -> Manage Cloud Control -> Upgrade agents -> Post Agent Upgrade Tasks

and secure the EMKey:

  emctl config emkey -remove_from_repos

The upgrade guide is very useful, consider it before doing the upgrade.

Also have a look on New Features In Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12.1.0.3 where the most notable thing is support of Oracle Database 12c and its new features, but there are plenty of other new features and improvements as well.