Re: Oracle Automated DB Restore

CS wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Is there anyone has thought about automated DB restoration?

OK, so how would that work, then?

Presumably some daemon or other would magically diagnose precisely what the problem was on the non-functioning database, ranging from a corrupt block, to a lost data file, to a user having done a stupid bit of DML. The daemon would need to be aware that hardware failure renders a restoration to the original disk somewhat problematic, but would be aware of all the other spare disks it can use instead. This daemon would also be magically aware of how much downtime your business can tolerate, and hence come up with multiple proposals to effect recovery, some with a lot of downtime implied, some with less. Of course, you're not there to assess these proposals, because you want this automated, so the daemon puts its suggestions to a committee of other daemons, who assess each proposal, and finally adopt the right one.

And you, of course, would trust this mechanism to get it right, every time, without mangling your precious data, and without causing excessive downtime?

Is that roughly how it would go?

Because if it is, I think the flaws in the idea are self-evident.

> Automated backup I have heard a lot and have it scheduled and running
> every night

Because backing up means copying a well-defined set of files, and does not imperil your data, nor your uptime.

> but regarding the restoration, I just
> know about it is done by the manual way (copy/restore backup from
> production server, recover/apply log, bring up DB, etc...)
>
> If I want copy the production database backups from it's server to my dev
> server and have it done automatically, eg execute one script/command (in
> Windows 2000 environment), is there any good input on this, like using
> tools available in market ?

Ah, well, that's a slightly different matter, and there is already an excellent tool that can do this sort of thing, available for free. It's called RMAN.

It requires that you do some typing, however, because (as I hope the ironic description at the start of my reply suggests) the idea of automatically doing anything on the restore/recovery side of the equation is very, very dodgy.

Regards
HJR
>
> DB size: 100GB
> Oracle EE 8i
> Backup with RMAN
>
> Thanks !
Received on Fri Sep 24 2004 - 17:47:06 CDT