Best Oracle Apps DBA Cloning Interview Questions 11i/R12 [ 2023 ]

Oracle Applications DBA EBS (E-Business Suite)
Cloning Interview Questions with Answers Part 1

1. What is cloning and why is it required?
Ans : 
• Cloning is the process of creating an identical copy of the Oracle application system.
It is required due to following reasons
• Creating a test copy of your production system before upgrading.
• Moving an existing system to a different machine.
• To test some patches
• Creating a development copy of your environment to be used by the developers.

2. What is rapid clone?
Ans : 
Rapid Clone is the new cloning utility introduced in Release 11.5.8. Rapid Clone leverages the new installation and configuration technology utilized by Rapid Install

3. How do I determine if my system is rapid clone enabled?
Ans : 
First, verify system is AutoConfig enabled. Then, verify that you have applied the latest Rapid Clone patch.

4. Explain the cloning process?
Ans :
1. Run adpreclone as applmgr and oracle user on source Perl adpreclone.pl dbTier as oracle user Perl adpreclone.pl appsTier as applmgr user
2. Take the cold/hotbackup of source database
3. Copy the five directories appl,comn,ora , db,data to target
4. Rename the directories, and change the permisssion
5. Set the inventory in oraInst.loc
6. Run perl adcfgclone.pl dbTier as oracle user,if the backup type is cold
7. If the backup type is hotbackup then Perl adcfgclone.pl dbTechStack. Create the control file on target from the control script trace file from source Recover the database Alter database open resetlogs
8. Run autoconfig with the ports changed as per requirement in xml.
9. Run perl adcfgclone.pl appsTier as applmgr
10. Run autoconfig with the ports changed as per requirement in xml.

5. What are the steps to clone from a single node to a multi-node?
Ans : 
• You must login as the owner of file system once the database cloning is done.
• Run the adcfgclone.pl from the common_top/clone bin.
• Accept for target system having more than one application tier server node.
• Collect the details for processing node, admin node, forms node, and web node.
• Now you get a prompt for the various mount point details and it creates the context file for you.
• Follow the same steps from all the nodes.

6. What are the files you need to copy from APPL_TOP for creating a clone application system?
Ans : 
• APPL_TOP
• OA_HTML
• OA_JAVA
• OA_JRE_TOP
• COMMON_TOP>/util
• COMMON_TOP>/clone
• 806 ORACLE_HOME
• iAS ORACLE_HOME

7. Does clone preserve the patch history?
Ans : 
• Yes, Rapid clone preserves the patch history in following locations
• RDBMS ORACLE_HOME: preserves the OUI oraInventory.
• iAS ORACLE_HOME: preserves the OUI oraInventory
• 806 ORACLE_HOME: preserves the patch level and Oracle inventory
• APPL_TOP and Database: preserves the patch level and history tables.

8. What are the scripts do you use while Apps cloning?
Ans : 
• A type of script that’s made a comeback in hot scripts is clone script.
• adpreclone.pl prepares the source system and adcfgclone.pl configures the target system.
• Both the scripts are located in $COMMON_TOP/admin/scripts/contextname directory.
• Adpreclone.pl collects information about the database.
• It also creates generic templates of files containing source specified hardcore values.

8a. What are the pre-reqs for cloning complete Application file system?

9. What are the pre-upgrade steps that need to be taken for the up gradation of non_11i instance to 11.5.10?
Ans : 
• First, you need to take a complete backup of the application system.
• Run the TUMS utility
• Review the TUMS report
• Maintain the multilingual tables
• Rename the custom database objects
• Check attachment file upload directory
• You need to save the custom.pll

10. How often do you clone?
Ans: 
Cloning happens biweekly or monthly depending on the organization requirement.

11. How much time does it take to upgrade, clone?
Ans: 
Clone usually takes around 48hrs to copy and configure and upgrade depends on the database size and module involved. upgrade from 11.5.9 to 11.5.10.2 will take around 3-4 days and 11i to R12 upgrade will take around 4-5 days.

12. When do we run FND_CONC_CLONE.SETUP_CLEAN?
Ans:
FND_NODES table contains node information, If you have cloned test instance from production still the node information of production will be present after clone in the test instance.
we use FND_CONC_CLONE.SETUP_CLEAN to cleanup FND_NODES table in the target to clear source node information as part of cloning.
Below syntax to execute:
SQL> sho user
USER is "APPS"
SQL> EXEC FND_CONC_CLONE.SETUP_CLEAN;
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL> commit;
Commit complete.

This will delete all the entries in the fnd_nodes table, to populate it with target system node information, Run autoconfig on DB node and Applications node.

13. What is the location of adpreclone.pl for oracle user?
Ans : $RDBMS_ORACLE_HOME/appsutil/scripts/

14. What is the location of adcfgclone.pl for oracle user?
Ans : $RDBMS_ORACLE_HOME/appsutil/clone/bin

15. What is the location of adpreclone.pl for applmgr user?
Ans : $COMMON_TOP/admin/scripts/

16. What is the location of adcfgclone.pl for applmgr user?
Ans : $COMMON_TOP/clone/bin

17. How do we find adpreclone is run in source or not ?
Ans : 
If clone directory exists under RDBMS_ORACLE_HOME/appsutil for oracle user and $COMMON_TOP for applmgr user.

18. How many clonings you have done?

19. What are the clone errors, you have encountered?

20. What does pre clone script do on source system?

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