Cloning for Release 11i and 12

Fully Automated Cloning for Release 11i and 12

Cloning is the process of creating an identical copy of an already existing Oracle Applications system.  Cloning is a regular part of an Apps DBA's responsibilities, so you're probably already familiar with the latest Rapid Clone utility and its predecessor,  adclone.pl, the original AD Clone Utility.  If you've used those tools in the past, you likely also know that overall cloning process requires some user intervention for things like the APPS password and so on. 

A customer recently asked whether the following cloning process can be fully automated, so that no user intervention is required at all:

1. Shut down the PROD environment for both the application server and database tier
2. Do an offline preclone of both tiers
3. Copy both tiers to another server (the sandbox environment)
4. Restart the PROD environment
5. Do an offline postclone of both tiers for the sandbox environment
6. Start the sandbox environment

In researching that, I was pleased to learn that this kind of automation is a new feature in the latest Application Management Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite for Enterprise Manager Grid Control 10gR3. 

The management pack automates the cloning of both Release 11i (11.5.10 with ATG RUP4) as well as Release 12 environments.  You go through a step-by-step interview process to configure the clone routine once, and then you can reuse the cloning routine as many times as you wish.  In addition, the cloning routing can send out a notification if it failed.

Very slick.  If you've had a chance to try this, I'd be interested in hearing about your experiences with this new feature.