Remember your dreams

Remember your dreams
Remember your dreams

Friday, December 3, 2010

Cannot find backups when restoring database to new host.


Restore database to different host.

Oracle 11gR2. 11.2.0.1.0
Linux RH5
NetBackup 6.5.5

You may want to restore your production database to a different host, for example, to the development host database server, for testing purposes. This allows you to test your current backups and rehearse the necessary steps required in the event of a real emergency or hardware failure on the production host. In the event that you cannot rebuild the production environment in a reasonable time frame whether waiting on parts or technical expertise, this may be the answer to getting your production back up and running in hours compared to days.

Regardless of your reasons, it is a great method of testing backups and your restoration capabilities.

* RECOMMENDATION *
Rehearse, document, and practice your ability to recover the database on a regular basis. This should be part of your regular monthly tasks. When disaster strikes you will be glad you have routinely rehearsed these procedures.

I am using a development environment identical to my production environment (I know, nice eh?). Identical versions of Oracle are on both severs and my production specific directories already exist on my development server.

If your production directory structure does not exist on the development server then restore those folders from a backup of the production server. You can create them, but it is much easier to just restore them.

* IMPORTANT *
Be sure to delete any prod archive log folders on the dev server that were restored from the production server. This is important because you do not want this information cataloged during the restore (it will prevent you from finding the desired backup sets to restore). Our assumption is a total failure of the production sever so the only archive logs we want have been included in our last backup.

In this example I will restore my production instance, prod, to the development database, dev, server. I will shutdown the dev instance although you can opt to modify your memory parameters (modifying Oracle memory parameters to run both prod and dev on the same server).

-- On the development server. --
1. Recreate your production directory structure.

2. Delete any production archive log file directories.

3. Create a prod password file.
\
4. Shut down emctl for dev.

%
emctl stop dbconsole
Stopping Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Database Control ...

... Stopped.


Shutdown the DEV instance

%
sqlplus / as sysdba
SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.1.0 Production on Fri Dec 3 08:38:12 2010

Copyright (c) 1982, 2009, Oracle. All rights reserved.

Connected to:

Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.1.0 - 64bit Production

With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options


SQL> shutdown immediate;

Database closed.

Database dismounted.

ORACLE instance shut down.

SQL> quit


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