Since Oracle Database 10g Release 10.2.0.4 looms, I should think there are a lot of folks thinking about planned upgrades. All told, I should think 10.2.0.4 would be a very desirable upgrade for Oracle Database 9i and earlier 10g deployments. Too bad it takes so long to get applications certified with new releases such as Oracle Database 11g. A jump from 9i to 11g would breath a lot of life into a database, but ignore my opinion in that case since I am not a DBA.
The Maximum Availability Architecture folks have released a new paper. The author is Michael Nowak who I had the pleasure of meeting recently at a Beta event we had for a future Oracle product. Anyway, Michael’s paper can be found here on the MAA site. You might find it to be a useful resource.
Kevin Closson's Blog: Platforms, Databases and Storage 
“Beta event we had for a future Oracle product”.
That’s like people saying, “I know a secret, but I can’t tell you!”
I’ve gone from blissfully ignorant to searching through your bins with one sentence. 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
Too bad it takes so long to get applications certified with new releases such as Oracle Database 11g.
Which is where the problem lies. I think many sad, boring old DBAs would love to work on newer, fully-supported versions but it’s all about dictated by the business these days and if the app vendor says 10.1 (I kid you not) then the app vendor and their business mates get their way 😦
Sorry, it’s not been a good month …
We recently desupported everything besides 10.2 (at least for customers with no special service contracts and new installs). 11g lingers around the corner, but as long as there are only 2 platforms changes are high we would hit lots of ora bugs with those installations. Havent had a customer request for 11.1 anyway.
10.2.0.4 finally coming out.. about time.
Thanks for the link to the new MAA paper. The MAA white papers always have interesitng material especially on the Data Guard front. In quickly looking at the paper, I thought it was interesting to see that the MAA group recommends not using a Cluster file system and recommends using local installs.
That’s ok with a few nodes, and it does depend on a few factors (failover cluster in place, etc.), but managing 20-30 servers with local installs becomes a nightmare from an admin perspective. I also like the reasoning behind the separate ASM home as well.
By the way, can someone at OTN provide easier links to the MAA page or at least put something in the home page when a new MAA paper is released? A lot of DBAs and architects would find it beneficial.
Jeff,
You’re talking to *me* about CFS? 🙂
Any site with that many installs should consider NFS (good, redundant NFS) I think.
for Upgrade to Oracle Database 10g Release 10.2.0.4, do we always need to DROP and RE-CREATE DR database ? Please suggest
You should never have to do that. The release notes will document the upgrade path from various older releases.