Bring Your Own Image (BYOI) – Enabling Migration to OCI for Siebel Version 17.x and Older

In a previous Siebel article, we learned about the Siebel Cloud Manager (SCM) tool that helps to migrate Siebel from on-premises to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). If you missed it, please reference it here.

As SCM only supports Siebel 18.2 and later versions, this feature cannot be used for prior Siebel releases – i.e. Siebel 17.x and older. To cover these versions, Oracle introduced another feature known as Bring Your Own Image. With the Bring You Own Image feature, Siebel Enterprise can be migrated as is from on-promises to OCI

The end-to-end migration process of Siebel Enterprise to OCI using the BYOI feature includes the following high-level steps.

Prepare and export the source Siebel server image from the on-premises location to create an instance on OCI
  • Prepare and Create the Image: This step is required to prepare and create the image from the on-premises Siebel Enterprise instance
  • Convert the Image: To launch the instance using a custom image in OCI, the image must be in either a VMDK or QCOW2 format. If the custom image exists in any other format, then it must be converted to VMDK or QCOW2
  • Export the Image to OCI Object Storage: Once the image is created and converted to a supported format, upload the image to OCI Object Storage
  • Import the Image: Once the image is uploaded to OCI Object Storage, import the image to the custom image section
  • Create the Instance: Create a new instance in OCI using the custom image
Perform the post VM migration tasks

After you have completed migrating the image, you will need to complete the following post migration tasks:

  • Edit the host and TNS entry files in case of hostname changes
  • Validate the database connectivity
  • Remove and recreate the Siebel Gateway security profile
Remove the Siebel profiles from SMC (Siebel Management Console) and redeploy them

This step is required if there is a change in the hostname of the servers. Once the Siebel VM is migrated, proceed with these tasks:

  • Remove the existing profile from SMC
  • Redeploy the same profile with the new host name
Update the Siebel CRM to the latest version
  • Finally, apply the latest updates to Siebel AI, SES Module, Tools, and Clients

Best Practices

See below for some of the best practices recommended by Oracle for an optimal migration experience:

  • Try to gather all possible details about the existing deployment
  • Identify the areas which will require host name changes
  • Avoid file write issues by launching the Siebel update wizard with administrator privileges
  • Recreate the ODBC data sources using the Oracle DB client
  • Avoid removing Siebel, Gateway, and Tomcat services using the system command line. Instead, login to SMC to remove all deployed profiles correctly
  • Thoroughly review the post instance database setup logs to make sure all database level changes applied correctly without any errors
  • Use the OCI File Storage Service for the Siebel file system
To summarize, this feature eliminates the need for a fresh implementation of Siebel in OCI by helping to move everything from on-premises virtual machines to OCI. Thereby reducing the overall time and effort of the migration.