Use the Clone Oracle Home application to clone:
An Oracle home on a source host to the same or different destination hosts.
An Oracle Database instance to an existing Oracle home.
After you have identified an Oracle home in a known state (for example, you have chosen particular install options for it, applied the required patches, and tested it), you may want to clone that Oracle home to one or more hosts.
Note: You must run the root.sh script on the destination host after the clone job is completed. This is required only on non-Windows platforms.
For information about provisioning Real Application Clusters and Application Servers using cloning, see the Cloning Best Practices white paper on OTN.
Ensure the following prerequisites are met, before proceeding with the cloning operation:
You have setup Grid Control properly to manage the source and target destinations.
You have a valid source Oracle home with read/write privileges.
If the cloned instance is required to connect to a cluster, ensure that such a cluster already exists in the farm in which the cloned instance is expected to join.
| Oracle Product | Version | Minimum Agent Version Required for Cloning |
|---|---|---|
| Database | 9.2.0.x and higher | 10.1 (provided its unzip version is higher than 5.41) |
| Database | 10.1.x | 10.1 |
| Database | 10.2.x | 10.1 |
| RAC Database | 10.2.x | 10.2 |
| Oracle Clusterware | 10.2.x | 10.2 |
| Application Server (J2EE only) | 9.0.4.x and higher | 10.1 |
| Application Server (all Install types) | 10.1.2.x | 10.2 |
| Application Server (all Install types) | 10.1.3 | 10.2 |
See Oracle Enterprise Manager Concepts for more information on Cloning.
The benefits of cloning an Oracle home include:
When cloning a source Oracle home, using the Clone Oracle Home tool, all source home patches and settings are seamlessly cloned to the new home. This cloning operation is generally faster and more error free than manually creating a new home, and applying all source home patches and settings in the new home.
Clone Oracle Home uses the Enterprise Manager job system, which allows you to clone a source home to multiple hosts and homes in a single cloning job. This is faster than connecting to each host, and then running Oracle Universal Installer to install the homes.
For more information about using the Clone Oracle Home application, see Cloning an Oracle Home.
This section contains information that will help you understand how Enterprise Manger prepares and clones an Oracle home.
Note: This method of Oracle home cloning holds good for most Oracle products.
To prepare the source Oracle home to be cloned, Enterprise Manager runs the prepare_clone.pl script at the source. This is a Perl script that prepares the source for cloning. It takes a snapshot of the information required for cloning. This is generally located in the following location: $ORACLE_HOME/clone/bin/prepare_clone.pl
During this phase, prepare_clone.pl parses files in the source Oracle home to extract and store the required values.For more information on the parameters to be passed, refer to the respective product documentation for cloning.
At the destination Oracle home, Enterprise Manager unarchives the Oracle home and executes clone.pl. This is a Perl script that performs all parts of the cloning operation automatically, calling Oracle Universal Installer and various other utilities, as required. This script makes use of the cloning functionality in Oracle Universal Installer, and takes care of the specifics that Oracle Universal Installer may have missed. This script updates the Central Inventory of the box where the home is being cloned, and the Oracle home inventory ($ORACLE_HOME/inventory).
You must have Perl 5.6 or above installed for cloning, and ensure that the path environment variable to the correct perl executable is correctly set.
Note: The cloned home and source home will not be identical in size, as the cloned home will have additional files created during the cloning operation.
You can clone any Oracle home that Enterprise Manager recognizes as a clonable home.
Enterprise Manager Grid Control 10g R2 recognizes most Oracle products as "out-of-box clonable". This means that the installed Oracle homes of most Oracle products can be cloned as is, and do not require any additional support files to perform the cloning operation. The following table lists the Oracle Products (and their versions) for this release of Grid Control that are "out-of-box clonable".
| Oracle Product | Versions |
|---|---|
| Database | 9.2.0.x, 10.1.x, and 10.2.x |
| RAC Database | 10.2.x |
| iAS (Oracle Internet Application Server) | 9.0.4.x, 10.1.2.x, 10.1.3.x |
| Oracle Clusterware | 10.2.x |
However, if you want to clone a Database 9.2.0.x, and Application Server 9.0.4.x Oracle home, you must patch Grid Control with the appropriate "Clone Support Files" before starting the cloning operation. These Clone Support Files are released as one-off patches that must be applied on Grid Control, and are available on OracleMetaLink.
The Clone Support Files are usually released after the latest Patchset release for each of these products(Database9.2.0.x, and/or Application Server 9.0.4.x.) When cloning an Oracle home that is not "out-of-box" clonable, ensure you have downloaded the latest support files for such Oracle products (that do not have built-in support for cloning) from OracleMetaLink, onto the Management Service Oracle home. You must also ensure that the Oracle product runs on the same platform as the Management Service.
Important: While Grid Control is packaged with "Clone Support Files" for these products, it is recommended that you always check for the latest version of the Clone Support Files that are available on OracleMetaLink.
Note: The "Clone Support Files" that are packaged are specific to the platform of Grid Control.
For example, if the Management Service is installed on the Solaris platform (SPARC), then the clone support files for some Oracle products that run on the Solaris platform are installed in the Management Service home. The clone support files for these products enable you to clone the product Oracle homes on the Management Service platform.
If you try to clone the Oracle home for one of these products on another platform, you may receive a message that states the clone support files for the product on that platform are not installed. In this case, you must install the appropriate support files for the product on that platform into the Management Service home.
If you receive an installation error message stating that the clone support files are not installed, it could be because the clone support files for the product on that platform were made available after this Enterprise Manager release. You can download the latest clone support files for the product from OracleMetaLink, and retry the installation. Enterprise Manager will now be able to clone Oracle homes for that product.
Updated clone support files for different releases of products on various platforms can be downloaded from OracleMetaLink.
To locate these clone support files at OracleMetaLink:
Go to http://metalink.oracle.com and navigate to the Advanced Search option under Patches and Updates.
Select Enterprise Manager Grid Control (emgrid) product from the drop-down list.
Select the appropriate release, platform, and the patch type.
Enter "Clone Support Files" in the Description field, and click Search. The patch Release Notes includes instructions for installing the updated clone support files in the Management Service home.
The Provisioning application in Grid Control helps you create clone components that you can then store in a Software Library. Using the Provisioning application, you can create the following clone components:
Oracle iAS Clone
Oracle Database Clone (The Database Clone here corresponds to the Database Oracle home cloning only, and not the database instance cloning.)
Oracle Clusterware Clone
The Oracle Software Library stores various versions of the software binaries, and acts as a repository for these software components. See About Components, and Configuring the Software Library for more information.
In this release of Grid Control, you can clone the following Application Server 10.1.2.0.2 mid-tier installations types:
J2EE and Web Cache middle tier
Portal and Wireless middle tier
Business Intelligence and Forms middle tier
Business Intelligence and Forms
Oracle Application Server Forms and Reports Services. For this release, this component is shipped in a separate CD-ROM with Oracle Application Server.
Business Intelligence Services. For this release, this component is shipped in a separate CD-ROM with Oracle Application Server.
For Oracle Database home cloning, after cloning the Oracle home, you can use the Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA) to create a new database instance in the new Oracle home, or use the Enterprise Manager Clone Database tool to clone the source home database instance to the new Oracle home. See About Database Cloning for more information.
Related Topics
Cloning Oracle Homes From Software Library
Cloning Database Clusters (RAC)
Cloning Database Clusters (RAC)
Configuring the Software Library
Enterprise Manager Information Roadmap
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