Cloud Manager Magic # 11

24 July 2020 Update:   See Step (8) for update.

It's been nearly 2 years since Cloud Manager gave us fully automated PeopleTools Upgrading - the magic button. You can read my reaction to it here.

On 10 July 2020 the Oracle PeopleSoft team released Cloud Manager 11  (VFO and CFO ) with features like multi node backup, database refresh, new OCI shapes, stop/start VMs associated with an environment, Kibana and Elasticsearch on mid-tier node, extended us of the native OCI File System and much more.

Very excited to get my hands on CM11 but I resisted the temptation to just install a new instance using the OCI Resource Manager stack available on Oracle Cloud Marketplace.  Instead, I decided to upgrade my existing CM10 instance.   Here's how this breathtaking piece of fully automated Selective Adoption magic went.  I've broken it down into steps with some commentary that I hope will be useful to someone.

(1) Subscribe to the Interaction Hub channel updates in the CM Repository.  If you didn't know Cloud Manager application is part of the Interaction Hub.  I had already subscribed to the IH channel after first installing CM10 back in December 2019 in order to pickup essential PRPs required to provision 8.58 environments..  All the necessary DPK files for CM will be automatically download once the channel is subscribed.  I strongly recommend that you  only do a backup of the CM system when there are no outstanding repository downloads.  If you get your File System files and the CM meta data out of synch then it be difficult to rectify these.

(2) Backup Cloud Manager.  My chosen method of backing up Cloud Manager, before I begin a major upgrade, is to simply shutdown the PeopleSoft domains and backup both the boot volume and attached block volume storage devices using the OCI console.  It takes just a few minutes and allows me to restore back the entire VM back to the pre-upgraded state.

(3) Setup Cloud Manager for update.  If you've been using CM10 before then you've probably already gone into Cloud Manager Settings > Manage Updates so that you could apply the required PRPs.  If not, then just specify the necessary OCI and PeopleSoft PUM attributes making sure you select the correct subnets - ft for the Full Tier and win for the PeopleSoft Client.

(4) Verify required DPKs.  Don't worry if you forget this step.  I didn't realise that patch 03 was required to be in the Repository even though my plan was to apply patch 05.  It's because the base IH image is shipped on 03.  So.... watch out for this little warning highlighted below as we'll see later.  You need 8.58.03 patch in the repository.  If you need it just unsubscribe and subscribe again specifying the minimum patch level to download.

(5) Click the Apply button and select the target tools patch (05 in my case) for CM11 plus a final chance to review the Update Attributes.

This will kick off a self update process. You can't monitor some parts of the upgrade while logged into the very system that's being upgraded so the next screen provides a set of scripts that allow you to monitor progress (get_status), retry a failed step and mark a step as manually completed.  Putty into your CM instance as user opc to execute these.

(6) Validation and Creation of PUM Source steps
The self update process begins with a pre-update validation and patching of the mechanism which does the self updating.  This is a kind of patching the patching process before it begins.  During Step 1 the PIA and App domains will restart so if you're in you'll get kicked out while this happens.

Next, a PUM Source template is created so that an instance of IH Image 11 Update Source environment can be provisioned.  This will have a name of CDMSLFUPDnnnn and will be a Full-Tier and Windows Client topology.

The PUM Source Environment takes about 2 hours to build.  I think the reason why the Pre Tools Validation step can't happen earlier is because CM doesn't know what base Tools version is needed by the PUM Source until it''s provisioned.

This is a minor issue easily resolved by unsubscribing and subscribing to the Linux and Windows PeopleTools 858 Channel.  Once downloaded you can restart the failed step 4 by clicking the arrow button and selecting Retry Failed Step.

(7)  All the other steps will continue in sequence.  Once it gets to Upgrading PeopleTools step it's unlikely you'll be able to remain logged in.  If you drop into Putty you can use the delivered script to get the status of the self update process.

(8) That's it.  Amazing!  

24 July 2020 Update:  I got so carried away with Cloud Manager reporting that all steps had completed successfully that I completely forgot to go and check in the Cloud Manager Online Documentation to see what else needed to be done,  It clearly states that after the self updating process completes you should login as root and run $PS_APP_HOME/cloud ./post_upgrade_script.sh . I wonder why this couldn't be automated?

Note #1: If any point of this had failed it would not have been an amazing experience and how I wonder how easy it would have been to fix and restart the process?  Deep knowledge of the inner workings of Cloud Manager is not easily obtained.

Note #2: Because my branding logo and background Fluid homepage image were both implemented using Event Mapping then they are still there even after a major PeopleTools upgrade.  Nice!

I can't claim to have "done" the CM 11 upgrade but I can claim to have "pushed the buttons".  And all done from my lock-down office by the front door working on a desk bureau handed down to me from my Dad who received it himself as a 21st birthday present.  That makes this desk 60+ years old!  It fits my laptop perfectly - almost like it was designed with this in mind.  It's old... well made.... with a forward thinking design and it's still creating value for another generation.