APPS MIGRACTION

Most of the HP shops running Applications are mostly on PA-RISC based systems. HP plans to offer PA-RISC-based servers through 2008 and support the systems through 2013, and continue to push for Itanium based servers. Apps customers are asking for possible migration paths to port their applications from PA-RISC to Itanium basesd systems. This post gives detailed summary of how you can achieve this.

For release 11i Oracle had certified HP Itanium under “split configuration”, wherein your database node can run on HP-Itanium and apps tier runs on other supported platforms. Note that as of 11.5.10.2 Apps Tier is NOT supported for HP-UX Itanium.
Currently Oracle supports following platforms for its middle tier:

1. HP Tru64
2. HP-UX PA-RISC
3. IBM AIX Based Systems
4. Linux x86
5. Solaris Operating System SPARC
6. Windows 2000/Windows Server 2003 (x86)

However as of R12, oracle has certified HP Itanium as certified platform for Apps Tier, which means both your db tier and apps tier can run on HP Itanium. Hence if you are planning to port your applications (both db and apps tier) to HP-UX Itanium, then you will have to upgrade to R12 first.

Here are the summarized steps:

Database Tier: The database migration from HP-UX on PA-RISC to HP-UX Itanium (IPF) and from Itanium (IPF) to PA-RISC by copying the datafiles is possible. Starting with RDBMS 9.2.0.7 and 10.2.0.2, it is supported to copy the database files (control files, redolog/archivelog files, data files) from HP-UX on PA-RISC to HP-UX Itanium (IPF) and from Itanium (IPF) to PA-RISC. While HP-UX on PA-RISC is big endian because of the processor, the Itanium processor adapts to the endianess of the OS and is in this case also big endian. Follow these steps to migrate db-tier.

1. Patch the target operating system to the required level and make sure it has all the required OS patches and packages (e.g. ar, cc,aCC, make etc.) for more details check:Oracle Applications Release 12.0.4 Installation Manual

2. Configure the target system as per Oracle installation and configuration guide.

3. Install the required Oracle RDBMS software (9.2.0.7 or above, 10.2.0.2 or above) on the target platform (Itanium)

4. Patch the Oracle RDBMS to the required level.

5. For copying the database (using tar, cpio, dd etc.) from the source to the target system, create the required volume groups, logical volumes, file systems, raw devices etc. on the target system

6. Shutdown the Oracle database on the source system

7. Copy all the required Oracle database files, including control files, date files, undo, redo logs, Oracle initialization file etc. to the target system.

8. If required, regenerate the control file (for example when changing the file locations on the target system).

9. Setup and configure the Oracle listener etc.

10. Startup the database on the target system.

Apps Tier: For Apps tier you will need to install R12 on itnanium (follow: Note 402307.1 – Oracle Applications Installation and Upgrade Notes Release 12 (12.0) for HP-UX Itanium) and upgrade to R12 running 4440000.drv on HP-UX Itanium platform.