Book Image

Oracle Database 12c Backup and Recovery Survival Guide

Book Image

Oracle Database 12c Backup and Recovery Survival Guide

Overview of this book

The three main responsibilities of a successful DBA are to ensure the availability, recoverability, and performance of any database. To ensure the recoverability of any database, a DBA needs to have a strong backup and recovery skills set. Every DBA is always looking for a reference book that will help them to solve any possible backup and recovery situation that they can come across in their professional life. Oracle Database 12c Backup and Recovery Survival Guide has the unique advantage to be a reference to all Oracle backup and recovery options available, making it essential for any DBA in the world. If you are new to Oracle Database, this book will introduce you to the fantastic world of backup and recovery that is vital to your success. If you are an experienced DBA, this book will become a reference guide and will also help you to learn some possible new skills, or give you some new ideas you were never aware about. It will also help you to easily find the solution to some of the most well known problems you could find during your career as a DBA. This book contains useful screenshots, scripts, and examples that you will find more than useful. Most of the books currently available in the market concentrate only on the RMAN utility to backup and recovery. This book will be an exception to the rule and will become a must-have reference, allowing you to design a real and complete backup and recovery strategy. It covers the most important topics on Oracle database such as backup strategies, Nologging operations, new features in 12c, user managed backups and recoveries, RMAN (including reporting, catalog management, troubleshooting, and performance tuning), advanced data pump, Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c and SQL Developer. "Oracle Database 12c Backup and Recovery Survival Guide" contains everything a DBA needs to know to keep data safe and recoverable, using real-life scenarios.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Oracle Database 12c Backup and Recovery Survival Guide
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Types of backup


Now that you understand all types of possible failures that could affect your database, let's take a closer look at the definition of backup and the types of backups that are available to ensure the recoverability of our data.

A backup is a real and consistent copy of data from a database that could be used to reconstruct the data after an incident. Consequently, there are two different types of backups available, which are:

  • Physical backups

  • Logical backups

A physical backup

A physical backup is a copy of all the physical database files that are required to perform the recovery of a database. These include datafiles, control files, parameter files, and archived redo log files. As an Oracle DBA, we have different options to make a physical backup of our database. Backups can be taken using user-managed backup techniques or using Recovery Manager (RMAN). Both techniques will be discussed in more detail later in this book. Physical backups are the foundation of any serious backup and recovery strategy.

A logical backup

Oracle uses Oracle Data Pump to allow us to generate a logical backup that can be used to migrate data or even do a partial or full recovery of our database. The utilities available are the Data Pump Export program (expdp) and the Data Pump Import program (impdp).

Many people have a misconception of these tools in thinking that they can only be used to move data. Data Pump is a very flexible and powerful tool that if well utilized can easily become a DBA's best friend. It is not just for moving data. It can also play a crucial role in your backup and recovery strategy.

Chapter 9, Understanding Data Pump and Chapter 10, Advanced Data Pump will go into more detail about the use of Data Pump for logical backup and recovery.

Note

The old Import and Export utilities

In the previous versions of Oracle we used to work with similar utilities called exp and imp. The exp utility is deprecated since Oracle 11g, but the imp utility is still currently supported by Oracle. The imp utility allows us to recover any backup generated by the old exp program. Just keep in mind that the use of exp is not supported anymore by Oracle and using it can bring future trouble to your environment.