Oracle EBS R12 Upgrade Best Practices

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Value Delivery - Core to Our Mission

E-Business Suite
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OBIEE, Pre-Built BI
Analytics
Hyperion EPM
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Integration
Infrastructure
Services

Subject Matter
Experts
Best Practice
Methodology
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Service Delivery

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Agenda
Focus EBS R12
Upgrade Best Practices
Upgrade Issues
Lessons from Previous Upgrades

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Focus EBS R12

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Roadmap
Oracle EBS Roadmap
Major
11.5.10
Release
Minor
Release

Nov 2004

12.0

12.1

Planned 12.2..
12.1.2

Jan 2007 May 2009

12.1.3

Rup 1..Rup 2..

Dec 2009 Aug 2010

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Support Timeline

Exception for first 13 months of

sustaining support
Extended support period ends by Jan
2015

Extended support period extended

by nineteen months till Jan 2018

New fixes for Severity 1 production issues

United States Form 1099 updates for the 2013 tax year
Payroll regulatory updates for the US, Can, UK, and Aus for each
countrys fiscal year ending in 2014
Image Ref. Steven Chan Blog

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R12 Technology Stack

Logical Architecture

Copyright 2012. Apps Associates LLC.

Supported Upgrade Paths

Upgrade Path information on below MOS note:
Database Preparation Guidelines for an E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1
Upgrade [ID 761570.1]
E-Business Suite Releases
11.5.9 (base or CU1) with 9.2.0.x or 10.1.0.x database
11.5.9 CU2 with 9.2.0.x or 10.1.0.x database
11.5.9 CU2 with 10.2.0.2 database
11.5.9 CU2 with 10.2.0.3 database
11.5.9 CU2 with 10.2.0.4 database
11.5.10 (base or CU1) with 9.2.0.x or 10.1.0.x database
11.5.10.2 with 9.2.0.x or 10.1.0.x database
11.5.10.2 with 10.2.0.2 database
11.5.10.2 with 10.2.0.3 database
11.5.10.2 with 10.2.0.4 database
11.5.10.2 with 10.2.0.5 database
11.5.10.2 with 11.1.0.6 or 11.1.0.7 database
11.5.10.2 with 11.2.0.1, 11.2.0.2, or 11.2.0.3 database

Available Paths
Path A
Path A
Path A
Path D
Path D
Path A
Path A, Path B, or Path C
Path B or Path C
Path B, Path C, or Path D
Path B, Path C, or Path D
Path C or Path D
Path C or Path E
Path E

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Recommended Upgrade Paths

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Upgrade Best Practices

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Plan Your Upgrades

Single upgrade projects vs. Multiple upgrade projects
Database Upgrade, Platform Migration, OATM Migration

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Test Cycles

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Review the Hardware

Allocate Hardware for Upgrade
CPU
Size of the database
Number of workers
Amount of data processed

Memory
Infrastructure / Number of nodes

Disk
IOPS
High IOPS value (1100-4500) is seen during UPG phases

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R12 Facts
Increased Java processing
50% increase in memory consumption
Batch processing jobs are multi-threaded
Minimal CPU Processing speed increased

3% growth observed for 3 years worth upgraded data

Read/Write disk access time around 10-20 ms for better
performance
Direct IO/Concurrent IO [ID 418714.1]

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Upgrade Resources
Review Data model comparison reports
Database object definition differences for each supported database
object type
MOS note: 1290886.1

Review EBS File system comparison report

Provides a comprehensive comparison of file system artifacts
between different Oracle E-Business Suite releases for important
file types
MOS note: 1446430.1

Review Preinstall patches report

Any patch that fixes upgrade itself (critical upgrade failures,
upgrade performance issues)
MOS note: 1448102.1

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Identify the Tasks

Run the Upgrade Manual Script to identify specific tasks

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Best Practices
Prepare/Upgrade the Database
INIT.ORA
SGA
PGA
R12 Specific Parameters (396009.1)

No Archive log mode

Bigger Redo logs
Purge recycle bin objects
purge dba recyclebin;

Size Tablespaces
Auto extend ON

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Best Practices [continued]

Prepare/Upgrade the Applications
Gather stats with GATHER_AUTO
Run purge programs to flush obsolete data
Move to shared APPL_TOP
Disable custom indexes, triggers
Disable AOL audit trial

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18

Best Practices [continued]

Complete Pre-Downtime Tasks
Staging area
Download all patches
Drop event alert triggers in custom schema
Operating System pre-requisites
Install 12.1 Techstack
Upgrade Java to latest certified version
Compile the invalid objects and capture their information
Product specific tasks identified from Tums report

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Best Practices [continued]

Tune Java
Default Java version with R12.1 is 1.6.0_10
Excessive memory consumption
Upgrade Java version to 1.6.0_32 or latest 1.6.0_35

Error occurred during initialization of VM. Could not reserve enough

space for object heap.
Edit ADJRIOPTS entry in your $APPL_TOP/admin/adovars.env file
change "-mx512m" to "-mx1024m" (minimum)
Edit ADJREOPTS entry in the APPS XML file and increase the -mx size
to the same value

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Best Practices [continued]

Number of AD Workers
1 or 1.5x #Cores

Parallel AD Improves Patching Performance

Distribute workers across application nodes

Batch Size
1K Default
Test between 1k and 10k

Merge NLS Patches

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Best Practices [continued]

Preinstall performance patches
Apply Help and NLS patches online
Apply HRGlobal driver online

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Best Practices [continued]

Merge and apply Product specific Post upgrade Patches
62 Patches merged to 10 Patches
20 hours patching reduced to 8 hours

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Best Practices [continued]

Immediate backups required after 12.1
Upgrading to 12.1.3 is a multi-step process
Intermediate upgrade to 12.1

Allocate parallel channels for backup

Prepare your net backup to run backups from new R12
file system
Wherever possible automate backups using scripts

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Other Tools Can Be Considered

Oracle Application Testing Suite
OATS for scalability, performance and load testing
Test kit also available for R12.1.3

User Productivity Kit

UPK for self-service training through interactive user interface
simulations

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Issues

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Upgrade Issues
RapidWiz pre-install checks fail
Workers failed due to hardcoded APPS / APPLSYS
username in scripts
Socket Read Timeout Errors with Database
Several scripts failing with a ORA-29855 executing
ODCIINDEXCREATE
Error adsstats.sql

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Post Upgrade Issues

R12 Look and Feel
Patch 14103263 and complete post steps

IBY tables encrypted

Upgrade Issues and Solutions for Oracle Payments [ID 1466998.1]

Customizations
Re-Create Custom Database Directory locations

Other Product Specific Issues

Unable To Complete Sub Ledger Journals Using
xla_journal_entries_pub_pkg.complete_journal_entry [ID 1344561.1]
Patch 10388305: In Oracle Purchasing, the fix to display tax name, tax
code in the XML used for PDF generation - 8842297 was causing
regression issues
Patch 11883614: Derive intercompany accounts from specific rules for
many to many intercompany journals with intercompany mode is (1,2,3)

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Lessons Learnt

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Lessons Learnt
Mock upgrades before actual upgrade
Minimize issues during upgrade
Allocate enough hardware resources
Proper time estimates
Upgrade by Request
Extent of Integrations with upgrade

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References
Oracle Applications Release 12 Upgrade Sizing and Best Practices [ID
399362.1]
Planning Your Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) Upgrade from Release 11i to
Release 12 [ID 1406960.1]
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B53825_01/current/acrobat/121upgrade.pdf
COLLABORATE 2010: EBS R12.1 Presentation and Helpful R12 Upgrade
Notes [ID 1080606.1]
http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/benchmark/appsbenchmark/description-166952.html#R12
http://www.oracle.com/us/support/library/lifetime-support-applications069216.pdf
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/oem/app-test/oats930-test-starterkit-ebs1213-1524432.pdf

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Thank You