Upgrade of 8.1.7.4 on Solaris 5.8 to Oracle 10g

Question

Hi Gurus-
We are planning to upgrade some of the legacy databases to 10g.
They are all 8.1.7.4 instances on Solaris 5.8 with Standby configuration.
1)Is it possible to upgrade the instances on the same OS version(5.8) to 10g?
2)Where can I find the related documents which detail the supported OS versions pertaining to 10g?
3)Since the environment consists of Standby how can we minimise the downtime of upgrade? Any best practices and proven methods please.
Need to convert the existing DMTs to LMTs as well.
Appreciate your valuable inputs
Thanks,
newDBA

Answer 1

Hi newDBA,
to answer your questions:
1) Yes, according to Metalink ==> Certify ... Solaris 5.8 is certified to run an Oracle 10gR2 installation:
Operating System: Solaris Operating System (SPARC) Version 8
Oracle Database - Enterprise Edition Version 10gR2 64-bit
N/A Version N/A
Status: Certified
Product Version Note:
None available for this product.
Certification Note:
Existing Patch Sets:
10.2.0.2 Requires patch 5117016
10.2.0.3
10.2.0.4
2) See first of all the CERTIFY button on Metalink and make sure also to check the release notes and the installation guide for Oracle on Solaris:
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/relnotes.102/b15689/toc.htm
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/install.102/b15690/toc.htm
3a) Minimize the downtime with a standby
Your standby will be upgraded implicitly - this means you upgrade the production database and you restart your standby in MOUNT mode in the new environment you've installed on the standby machine as well. Once you switch your standby to ALTER DATABASE RECOVER MANAGED STANDBY DATABASE DISCONNECT; then it'll start synchronizing with your already upgraded production system.
During the regular upgrade either with DBUA or CATUPGRD.SQL there's not much possibility to shrink your downtime. You should create dictionary stats right before the upgrade but mainly the time it'll take is dependent on the number of options/components you've installed in your current database.
Recompilation by the way will be done automatically in parallel - so CPU power will save you some time here.
But always the question will be:
Can you accept approx 1-4 hours of downtime or not?
3b) Dictionary Managed Tablespaces to Locally Managed Tablespaces
As long as you don't touch the system tablespace this can be done online with no additional downtime. But as soon as you convert also the SYSTEM tablespace you have to startup your database at this point in RESTRICT EXCLUSIVE mode - which in fact means downtime.
Hope this helps - kind regards
Mike