Thinking about parting ways with Oracle’s data center?  Whether the move is being considered or the decision is made, I have a few tips to help you get started.  I won’t be discussing the pro’s and con’s of hosting with Oracle, but offering practical advice for those of you in the early planning stages of your migration.

Review Your OOD Service Contract

This is something you’ll want to do as soon as possible.  You’ll obviously want to confirm your contract end date and plan your migration accordingly, but you’ll also want to be on the lookout for any terms and conditions that affect your project plan and budget.  If you plan to decommission services prior to the contract end date, check for applicable early termination fees.

Review Your Software License Agreements

You’ll want to review these agreements to be sure you actually own licenses for all the software you plan to use in the new data center.  There may be cases where software gets included in the OOD base services and made available without an explicit license.  For example, we’ve found this to be true with Enterprise Manager.  The point here is to be sure you have what you need before you start and plan for the expense if additional licenses are going to be required.

Gather Key Facts about the Current Environment

If you don’t already have operating system and database access for the current Oracle systems, get it ASAP.  Once you have it, review the systems to gather critical information to help you plan your future infrastructure needs.  Take note of things like number of processors, memory requirements, file system structure, storage requirements, OS versions and configurations, database size, etc.  Perform this review for all tiers.  In addition to this “physical” review of the systems, Oracle will provide you documentation that will supplement the information you’ll gather on your own.  Request a “Customer Storage Report” from your Oracle Service Delivery Manager (SDM) to get an idea of storage requirements for the environment.  While you’re at it, request the “OSA90” as well.  OSA90 is the ”Service Architecture Design Document” which describes the infrastructure supporting your Oracle hosted applications, at least as it was initially designed.

Inventory and Review Your RICE Elements

You’ll want to take an inventory of all RICE elements, (R)eports, (I)nterfaces, (C)onversions, and (E)xtensions and complete an impact assessment for the server migration.  You’ll most likely spend considerable time on this task if there are integrations between your Oracle system and non Oracle and/or external systems.  Take note of things like FTP processes that may require changes after the data center move.  For example, data interfaces to banking institutions would need to be reviewed and impact assessed.

Notify Oracle of Intent to Decommission OOD Services

A simple email to Oracle notifies the parties that be and sets the wheels in motion with Oracle.  Check with your SDM to get the special email account.  Your email will need to include things like customer name, your CSI number, planned decommission date, etc.  In return, expect to receive an automated reply with your official “Decommission Reference Guide” attached.  The decommission guide provides key dates and tasks, essentially a very high-level to-do list.

Submit SR Requesting Decommission Media

When you’re ready to build the first environment in the new data center, you’ll need to submit an SR requesting the folks at Oracle to take the necessary backups and place your files on appropriate storage media.  Plan to submit the SR 72 hours before the date you want the backups taken and media created.  It may happen sooner, but OOD’s policy is 72 hours. Also be aware that OOD does not offer overnight shipping, they use 2 or 3 day.  If you require overnight shipping, you need to state this in the SR and provide carrier account information for a registered carrier (ie. FedEx, UPS, etc.).  You’ll also want to be very clear on the type of storage media to be used.  Oracle offers a few options, a couple of different tape drives as well as USB drives.  Figure out which way you want to go before submitting the SR.  In our experience, this has taken anywhere from one to three weeks to get good data in hand.

Request Pre-Clone Procedures from Oracle On Demand

If your source and target environments are compatible and you plan to use Rapid Clone to create your new environment, you may want to start kissing up to your SDM now.  I’ve been told from folks in the On Demand team, that by policy, they do not run autoconfig and preclone on the database tier, a requirement if you plan to clone the environment.  We have had luck getting them to do this by the way.  If you’re headed down this path, plan extra time for Oracle to apply Autoconfig and Rapid clone patches before creating your backups and like any other patch, you’ll need to apply and test in all environments (ie. dev, test, prod).  This can add significant delays to your timeline, so plan accordingly.

Obtain Installation Media and Documentation

Log an SR requesting installation media and documentation for all of your licensed products.  You may not use this stuff during your migration, but definitely something you’ll want to have on hand.

If you have questions regarding OOD migrations, feel free to comment and I’ll get back to you.  For those that have gone through the process and have additional tips to add to the list, please feel free to add your comments as well.