HOWTO (eBiz) - Automatic cloning of AppTier and DbTier. Making Apps DBA's life easier

One of the most tedious tasks a DBA has to execute is a clone of an eBiz environment. Cloning can take from a few hours to days, depending the level of automation you have and how many additional extra post steps there are after AppTier has been cloned.

Most of the companies I worked with has a large number of environment, DEV, TEST, UAT, PRE-PROD, PROD. Sometimes the list gets bigger since each individual project requires a replica of PROD. This, of course double the number of environments. You normally find at least 10+ environments during the implementation of eBiz. But, I've seen companies with 30+ environments, and that is a crazy number for an Apps DBA at the time of cloning them.

Back in 2007, I started developing a script with the intention of doing the full eBiz clone from a SOURCE to TAGET environment, including both dbTier and appTier. Most of the AD utilities allow you to pass parameter via the command line, and with a little bit of shell scripting help plus Unix skill, I managed to create a set of scripts which perform a full clone from end-to-end. Just press the button and after a few hours you TARGET will be cloned from your SOURCE.

The script works like this:

• It uses SSH public keys to connect to app and db servers. Make sure to create pub keys and add them to destination servers.
• Remotely executes commands via ssh.
• It backup SOURCE database to tape or disk. If you using disk, you need to manually copy RMAN backup pieces to TARGET server.
• It stop database and app process both in TARGET db and app tier.
• It deletes both database and app tier files from TARGET, in case the environment already exists. Make sure to double check script environment variables “clone.env” before running it.
• It uses RMAN to duplicate database from the SOURCE to TARGET.
• It copies the app tier files and Oracle Home, then runs adcfgclone for dbTechStack and appsTier.
• It uses expect to automate adclone utilities. Thanks to Ned G. for this contribution.
• In the last steps it will perform a set of post additional clone steps, like enable/disable SSO, change profile options, run adconfig, datamasking, end-date users, fix symbolic links, etc.

Limitations:

• At the moment the script does not clone a TARGET RAC or MULTINODE environment. It used to work before, but I removed some steps for RAC and MULTINODE, due to complexity of each different sites. I'm planing to work on full RAC and MULTINODE feature sometime this year.
• It assumes you know what you are doing and that Apps DBA has tested the script in a non-PROD environment. I will not assume any responsibility if the script breaks anything. Please READ the instructions and understand what the scripts does before running it.
• It assumes ssh keys and sudo commands are properly setup and that some directory path already exists. Checkout manual in the README.txt

Copyright:

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE

clone_ebiz is a script that can be used to automate your eBiz clone end-to-end without human intervention.

Copyright (C) 2007 Christian Daniel Ricci – email: ricci.christian@gmail.com

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify

it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by

the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or

(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,

but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of

MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the

GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License

along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

Download:

I am asking for a minimum donation via PayPal logo located on the right hand side of my blog (this can come as part of your department's training budget). Alternatively, you can engage my services directly, please contact me on my email.

To download the script click this link clone_ebiz.tgz.gpg (password will be emailed to you when you Donate).

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http://www.gnupg.org/download

Contributions:

• Thanks to Neil for his inputs and changes.
• Many thanks to Ned G. for his contribution with expect.

Enjoy!!! Any questions or help required, please post a comment.