One Click Clone - fully automated EBS 11.5.10.2 cloning (DB and APPS side)

Although the current version of the EBS 11.5.10 "Cloning Oracle Applications Release 11i with Rapid Clone" it is considered a major and most stable release EBS version for all 11.x releases. Oracle EBS 12.x version will not be treated as though I have no experience, according to what is written, it is obvious progress in cloning part, but shutting down source database instance is still present. Another way of official cloning is a visual approach through OAM (Dashboard|Site Map|Maintenance|Clonning group).
Both types of cloning ("visual" or "completely by hand") have the following restrictions:

• Can not be automated, requires constant human interaction
• Visual type of cloning still require additional work in some of the shell-a (running Linux commands)
  
• It is necessary shut down starting instance. Because in most of the cases this is production, I find out a big minus for any real usage
• Other smaller inconvenience, not visible to most of the users, but rise up on bigger Oracle EBS installations.

Mine story starts when I was APPS DBA, on biggest EBS project in Croatia, and have to manage 18 EBS instances (mostly developers). Cloning of them was a every day job and performed (mostly) during the night (PROD has to be shut down). Let me tell you that in that time cloning lasted 5-8 hours at least (no RMAN usage but plain datafiles copy over network). After several months, totally drained and with no motivation, I start to dig how to automate this or leave the job ASAP. The last step of the story begins when I have circled the whole story. This moment come after I read the article in a magazine about Linux use of (auto) expect module, a non-standard Linux package, which enabled automated entry in interactive scripts.
All other is history which I'd like to represent here in few words....

• "One Click Clone" (later reference as "OCC") provides non Apps DBA and ordinary system administrator way to automate Oracle EBS cloning without any special knowledge
• The OCC method did not require additional hardware or exotic configuration. OCC does not depend on any one hardware platform (for example, a snapshot expensive storage systems, etc.)
• The procedure has been tested in a Linux environment and all the scripts are set to work in the bash shell.
  With minor modifications in the scripts, I believe it would be possible to do the same for the Windows environment (Windows as OS for Oracle EBS is something that I warmly advise to avoid).
  
• AFAIK, this method has not been published in the world (according to available data from the Internet, and Metalink). The very idea of human cloning came after approx. 80 instances and the desire to automate the process.
• Other positive aspects of OCC methods are the following:
  
• Cloning is carried out fully automated (crontab) with the online activities of all the starting system (DB and APPS side) and no too big overhead on starting (source) servers. Overhead on the destination servers (APPS and DB side) is significant and affects the performance on them during cloning. Here is primarily concerned overhead on the disks as a clone of the database with 100+ GB of datafiles DB and cca. 600,000 files on the APPS side
• There small amount for more automation, and I’m now very close to complete the installation process from zero. This means out of the box installation from the empty server that has just the OS to "up and running," EBS instance!
  To prove that concept is almost finished, you see from the procedure f_prepare_db_server which prepare all settings on an empty server and which is the precursor for function f_db_create_oracle_home that should do the creation of a new $ ORACLE_HOME.
  
• If I ever get a chance to back to APPS DBA job, I’ll do that part to the very end (right now I do not have environment and work different job-this is life in Croatia!). I can promise this because it is really a quite rudimentary part in its proceedings which I have done several times manually and never has time to put that on paper ... 8-(
  

Used literature

When cloning and work with Oracle EBS generally, I would point official documentation from Oracle with special accent on next topics

Oracle RMAN

Note Id:73912.1 RMAN: Creating a Duplicate Database
Note Id:73912.1 Creating a Duplicate Database on a New Host

Oracle EBS general

Note Id:285267.1 Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and Database FAQ

Oracle EBS cloning

Note Id:216664.1 FAQ: Cloning Oracle Applications Release 11i
Note Id:230672.1 Cloning Oracle Applications Release 11i with Rapid Clone
Note Id:364565.1 Troubleshooting RapidClone issues with Oracle Applications 11i
Note Id:398619.1 Clone Oracle Applications 11i using Oracle Application Manager (OAM Clone)

Oracle EBS Autoconfig

Note Id:218089.1 Autoconfig FAQ
Note Id:315674.1 How To Verify if Autoconfig is Enabled on 11.5.x
Note Id:165195.1 Using AutoConfig to Manage System Configurations with Oracle Applications 11i
Note Id:341322.1 How to change the hostname of an Applications Tier using AutoConfig
Note Id:270519.1 Customizing an AutoConfig Environment

Oracle EBS System Administration

Note Id:189487.1 System Administration FAQ's
Note:457166.1 FNDCPASS Utility New Feature: Enhance Security With Non-Reversible Hash Password

Cusomers reactions

I have successfully implemented solution on several sites and have one written feedback form.
So you can ask them about live chat impressions.

How to proceed

For all details and steps to implement this solution on your site please contact author on email: damir dot vadas (monkey) gmail.com