Options to Consider for Your Oracle 12c WebCenter Upgrade

By: Brandon Prasnicki | Technical Architect

If you search the Oracle knowledgebase on how to upgrade your existing Oracle WebCenter Content (WCC), Imaging, or Portal instance from 11g to 12c, your options are to do an in-place upgrade or to migrate the entire repository using Oracle WebCenter Content supported tools.  However, if an upgrade consists of new hardware (on-premise), new cloud Infrastructure (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform etc), upgraded operating systems (Microsoft Windows or Linux) along with database upgrade (Oracle Database 12c), the only supported method is to use these supported migration tools.  To move the content from one machine to the next, this process consists of the following:

  1. Install 12c on the new environment
  2. Create the 12c schemas with RCU
  3. Create and configure the 12c domain
  4. Migrate the WCC configurations with CMU and Archiver
  5. Migrate the WCC content with Archiver

While this is a straightforward approach, the question becomes:  Is this feasible?

The answer to that question is:  It depends.

With any upgrade project, TekStream Solutions evaluates the scope of the upgrade and migration and makes recommendations on the appropriate approach.  Here is a high-level outline of starting points considered during the TekStream QuickStream process:

  1. Is the repository small? This supported methodology is a good approach and alternative for instances that do not hold a lot of content.  We have seen situations for implementations that leverage WCC as a backend for implementations like Portal where the content repository isn’t very large.  For this, the supported methodology is a decent alternative.
  2. Are there opportunities to decommission old Enterprise Content Management Systems? Sometimes there is an opportunity to also mix in and decommission old content repositories. Examples include old shared filesystems not currently managed by any enterprise content management systems (CMS), or even little-used old CMS systems where, depending on the customer license structure, the ROI of rolling into an Oracle WebCenter Content (WCC) instance makes sense during the time of upgrade.  Examples of this include but are not limited to Adobe and Documentum etc.  For this, TekStream utilizes a proprietary utility called “Content Loader” to handle WCC delta migrations, and merge deprecated CMS application content.
  3. Is the repository large? For very large repositories, Tekstream uses a cost-effective approach called the “out of place” in-place upgrade which eliminates the need to migrate the content.  The ‘supported’ Oracle approach simply is not feasible, as repositories with millions of content items would take months and maybe even years to migrate.  Examples of implementations that include large repositories include Digital Asset Management (DAM), Records Management (RM) and even some regular Content Management repositories.   When Oracle states this “out of place” in-place upgrade is not a supported approach, they are strictly referring to all the ‘gothchas’ that can occur.  The support team members at Oracle are not the consultants to handle such an approach.  That is where TekStream solutions come in to guide and implement the upgrade to a successful outcome.
    1. Have we seen ‘gotchas’ in this approach? Certainly.  Every version and situation has its nuances.  TekStream’s QuickStream process digs deeper into identifying unique customer situations to account for during a migration.  Tekstream has proven to handle these challenges and deliver successful implementations.  Our background expertise performing these upgrades before has proven vital to customer success.
    2. Could a customer do this approach by themselves? Honestly, probably not.  We are here to guide you through this approach and avoid the pitfalls that can occur.  We have been through this before, and are here to guide and deliver a successful upgrade.

TekStream Solutions makes sure that the system is migrated, upgraded and in a clean, working, and supported state at the completion of the project.   This approach has proven to save customers a lot of time and money.  TekStream also offers extended support and is an Oracle Managed Services provider to give customers great peace of mind and frees up internal resources for more demanding in-house projects.

Want to learn more about Oracle 12c WebCenter upgrades? Contact us today!