Click the Deployments tab.

The Deployments page in the Enterprise Manager Grid Control simplifies monitoring and management of your host configurations, database configurations, and client configurations. It serves as a starting point from which you can access many of Enterprise Manager's configuration features. You can use the Deployment page to:

View information about critical patch advisories

Display summary views of your enterprise configuration

Access other host configuration, database configuration, and client configuration features

Access patching features

Access cloning features

To apply a patch to the Finance database, perform the following steps. Scroll down to the Patching section. Click the Patch Oracle Software link to open the patching wizard.

In the Patch Number field, enter the patch number that you want to search. You can also specify the platform and the language. Click the Search button.

Select the patch from the search results.

Note: You can click the View ReadMe button to know more about the patch.

Click the Next button.

On this page, you select the destination Oracle homes where you want to stage the patch or patchset. The patching wizard maps some patch types to the appropriate targets types where the patch can be staged and applied. For example, if the patching wizard maps the selected patch to be of a database target patch type, the Destination Type box displays this target type.

Under Available Targets, you can see a list of all the targets by default. It also shows you whether the target is patched or not. You can choose to repatch the target in case a new patch has been released and the old one has been negated. Select the Finance database.

Click Move.

The Selected Targets list shows the Finance database. Click Next to continue.

On this page, you can choose to use the Oracle home preferred credentials or override the preferred credentials and specify alternatives. If you want to override the preferred credentials, you can further choose to specify a different set of credentials for each home. To do this, select "Each Home," in the Specify Credentials For drop-down list.
To save the credentials that you have specified, select the corresponding Save Oracle Home Credentials check box.

Click Next.

On the Stage or Apply page, you can choose whether to stage or apply the selected patch or patchset. You can also customize the patching operation by specifying any prepatching or postpatching scripts that you may want to execute. You can use this screen to shut down or start up the Listener, DB Control. Optionally, you can also apply SQL if the patch requires it.

Click Next.

On the Schedule page, you can start an Enterprise Manager job to stage or stage and apply the selected patch on the hosts for the specified targets.

Specify a name for the job in the Name field.

You can use the Date and Time fields to schedule the patch job. The default date and time that is displayed in these fields is the current date and time, which means that the Enterprise Manager job system will run the patch job immediately after the job submission.

Click Next.

Click Finish to submit the patch job.

With Enterprise Manager, you can clone an Oracle home to one or more destination hosts. After you have an Oracle home in a known state (for example, you have chosen particular installation options for it, applied required patches to it, and tested the products in it), you may want to clone that Oracle home to one or more hosts. The Clone Oracle Home application can clone any Oracle home that Enterprise Manager recognizes as a clonable home.

Click Clone Oracle Home.

Use the Source Home page to select the Oracle home you want to clone. This page, by default, lists all the existing clonable Oracle homes for all products. On this page, you can select the required Source Type. You can either search for installed Oracle homes or the Oracle homes that have been packaged into the Software Library.

A Software Library is an infrastructure entity for storing and retrieving files and packages. In Enterprise Manager Grid Control version 10.2, the Software Library is intended to provide a common repository for software binaries, scripts, and other files that can be used by Cloning, Provisioning, and other applications.

Select the required installation instance product that you want to clone.

Click Next to go to the Source Settings page.

You can use the Source Settings page to specify the required source setting parameters for the Oracle home cloning operation.

Under the Cluster Details section, you can specify whether the source instance that you want to clone must be treated as a cluster or not. This section will be displayed only when you are performing a RAC (version 10.1 or 10.2) or an Oracle Clusterware (10.2) cloning operation. If the source database instance is part of a cluster, by default, Enterprise Manager displays all the existing nodes of that source cluster.

Select the Source Home is clustered check-box to use the source instance as a cluster.

Scroll down the Source Settings page. Under Working Directory, enter a working directory location on the source host. This location is required to stage the files for cloning. Ensure that you specify an existing directory location.

Use the Files to Exclude section to specify the files to be excluded from the clone operation. If there are files in the Oracle home that you do not want to archive, you can provide a list of these file names or file extensions. You can also use wild cards. Use commas to separate items in the list. By default, files with the .log and .dbf extensions are excluded from a database clone operation.

In the Host Credentials section, specify the host (operating system) credentials of a user with read/write permissions at the source Oracle home. Click Next.

On this page, you can configure the product settings for the new database cluster clone. You must have selected Source is Clustered Home in the Source Settings page to get here. The Product Settings page displays the database that you have selected to clone, the source host name, and the source Oracle home location.

Note: This page is displayed only if the selected source is a RAC (version 10.1 or 10.2) or Oracle Clusterware (version 10.2) Oracle home.

The Cluster Cloning Modes section of this page provides you with the option of either cloning the source home as a new clustered home or treats it as an extension of the source cluster.

Clone to a New Cluster: If you want to clone the source Oracle home as a new cluster, select this option. In the New Oracle Home Location field, you need to specify the complete path to the new Oracle home location. In the New Oracle Home Name field, you enter the new Oracle home name.

Extend the Source Cluster: If you want to extend the source cluster by joining the new Oracle home clone to it, select this option, and specify the Existing Member Nodes of the source cluster. Use commas (,) to separate the node entries. By default, all the existing member nodes are displayed. If some of the member node entries are missing, you must specify such node entries in the Existing Member Nodes field.

Select the Extend the source cluster option to specify that you want to clone the clustered home to extend the cluster, and not create a new cluster.

Scroll down to the Destination Node Specification section. Specify the destination host name and the appropriate Public node name. Alternatively, you can click the flashlight icon to view the list of hosts in the window that is displayed, and select the required host.

Note: The application will show a warning if no Oracle Clusterware is found on the host.

Click Next.

You need to specify the destination host and Oracle home for the new clone on this page.
On the Destinations page, specify:

The destination host or hosts to which you want to clone the selected Oracle home

The destination Oracle home directory location

The destination Oracle home name

The host (operating system) credentials. This user must have privileges to read and write files on the destination host.
Note: If you are cloning an Oracle Clusterware home, ensure that the username is identical in each host.

A working directory on each destination host to use for temporary files that are staged as part of the cloning operation. This working directory is required at both source and destination to help you perform a space estimate.

Click Next.

The Pre/Post Scripts page can be used to specify the location of the scripts that you may want to execute either before or after Oracle home cloning.

For executing precloning or postcloning scripts, specify the location of the precloning and postcloning scripts in the respective fields, and select Execute. The preinstallation scripts will be run on the target hosts and not on the source hosts. Depending on the type of Oracle home that you are cloning, you may be required to run certain postinstallation scripts.

While installing, some actions that need to be performed as root are recorded in a shell script called root.sh. Specify the root.sh script location on the destination host. This script will be executed on each destination host at the end of the cloning operation. If you are cloning to multiple Oracle homes, you can use the "%oracle_home%/root.sh" placeholder instead of entering multiple home locations. You can use the Use Sudo option to run this script.

Note: The Use Sudo option is specific to the UNIX environment.

If you want to execute the root.sh script on the destination hosts, ensure that the user credentials that you have provided for these hosts (on the Destinations page) have "sudo" privileges.

This page is primarily used to customize your cloning operation, and thus is not mandatory. If you do not want to customize the cloning operation, you can leave this page blank, and proceed.

Click Next.

You can use the Schedule page to start an Enterprise Manager job to clone the selected source Oracle home to the destination hosts. A job is a schedulable unit of work that you define to automate commonly run tasks.

If you do not want the job to start immediately, click Later and use the Date, Time, and Time Zone fields to schedule the clone job.

Click Next.

You can use the Review page to review the summary of all the selections that you have made for the new Oracle home clone operation.

Click Finish.

The Clone Oracle Home job has been submitted successfully.

Click the Deployments tab.

Click the Provisioning subtab.

Click the Images subtab.

You can view a list of existing images based on different versions of the images such as Latest Version, Latest Active Version, Latest Mature Version, All Inactive Versions, and All Mature Versions.

To create an image, click the Create Image button.

The Create Image Wizard takes you through a step-by-step process. Use the Describe page to specify a name for the image in the Name field. Specify a brief description about this image.

Click Next to continue with the wizard.

This page is used to configure the new Red Hat Linux operating system component that you are creating.

In the Reference Installation field, enter the name of a host that is running the same version of the Linux operating system that you are creating in the library. Alternatively, you can select the appropriate host name from the window that is displayed. To select a target, click Select Target.

The Search and Select: Targets window is displayed. From the Target Type drop-down list, select Host.

Select the host for which you want to create an image.

Click Select.

On the Configure page, in RPM Repository, select the appropriate RPM repository that identifies the network accessible directory that is hosting all the RPMs from the Linux distribution and all updated RPMs from the vendor.

Select the appropriate time zone from the drop-down list.

Enter the Root Password.

Click Next.

Use the Customize page to customize the image instance that you are creating. Typically, the image that you can create through the Provisioning application will contain certain predefined properties that will be bundled into the image. You can use the Customize option in this application to further customize an image instance by adding the required properties. Click Next to continue.

You can use the Directives page to select directives that will stage and install the software components for that image. Directives are instructions or a set of commands that perform specific tasks. Click Choose Directives.

Select a directive and click OK.

Click Next.

Click Finish to create the image.