What is the significance of using the clone.pl script to clone an existing ORACLE_HOME to a new one?

In short, when using the clone method, Oracle will relink your binaries and update your Inventory.
Afterwards, your new ORACLE_HOME can be treated individually like any other ORACLE_HOME.

From Oracle Support note 565009.1:

Cloning re-plays all the actions that were performed during the installation of the Oracle Home like relinking, updating the inventory, etc., and hence the cloned home can be patched using OPatch, and patchsets can be installed to it.

Simply copying the Oracle Home is not supported.

By [simply] copying the Oracle Home from one server to another, all the above mentioned actions are not performed and also it is not possible to apply patches or patchsets to a copied Oracle Home.

If the Oracle Home has to be deployed to multiple destinations with the same configuration, cloning is the only supported method.


For a step-by-step instruction on how to perform such a clone, please see an excellent article by Eric Jenkinsson found here.