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RDS for Oracle Adds Self-Service Upgrade Prechecks and a New Event to Cut Patching Downtime!

AWS What's New ★★★★ View Markdown
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Hi everyone, it's Shii-chan!

AWS What's New aws.amazon.com

Here's a patching update that database folks will love.

What was announced?

In AWS What's New, Amazon RDS for Oracle gained two capabilities:

  • You can run a minor version upgrade precheck yourself
  • A new RDS event tells you when your DB instance is accepting connections again during patching

The story so far

At the start of every minor version upgrade, RDS for Oracle checks for conditions that would prevent it from completing, such as:

  • Insufficient free storage
  • Invalid Oracle-maintained objects
  • Invalid triggers

If a check found a problem, the upgrade stopped, and you had to fix it and schedule the upgrade again. These checks only ran as part of the upgrade itself.

What changes

You can run the precheck any time, so you can find and fix problems before your maintenance window.

The new event also tells you the moment the instance accepts connections, so you can bring applications back while remaining maintenance tasks continue, which reduces downtime!

Dive Deep

The precheck

Run this procedure:

rdsadmin.rdsadmin_precheck_tasks.precheck_minor_upgrade
  • It is read-only and doesn't affect your workload
  • It reports every issue it finds in a single log
  • You can fix issues and rerun it until it passes

The new event

During a minor version upgrade or an operating system update, RDS for Oracle emits RDS-EVENT-0596 as soon as your DB instance is accepting connections. The remaining maintenance tasks complete while the database stays online.

You can subscribe through RDS event notifications or Amazon EventBridge, which could be handy for automating reconnection or alerting your team.

Availability

Available in all AWS commercial and AWS GovCloud (US) Regions where RDS for Oracle is offered.

Wrap-up

  • Run minor version upgrade prechecks yourself, any time
  • The precheck is read-only and gathers all issues in one log
  • RDS-EVENT-0596 signals when connections are accepted, helping cut downtime
  • Available in commercial and GovCloud (US) Regions

This one is for DBAs who want fewer surprises and less downtime when patching RDS for Oracle!

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