Data recovery
The final step in moving to a proactive environment is to ensure that the database can be recovered in time of need.
To achieve this, an actual recovery of the production database must be performed at least once a year to check that:
The backups are working correctly
There are storage devices available that can be used to recover the database
There is sufficient knowledge and expertise in recovering the database
The time to perform a recovery is understood
The back-up strategy should be reviewed and the following questions should be asked:
If the database increases in size, can the backups cope?
Will the size of export files grow? If so, is there sufficient storage to contain them?
Will the length of time for a backup to run increase?
Is there sufficient disk storage to handle an increase in the size of the database?
The ability to perform a recovery includes testing the following scenarios:
A datafile is lost
The redo logs are lost (and mirroring is not activated)
The latest backup failed, and recovery has to be performed from an older backup
Once the move has been made into a proactive environment, discipline is required to ensure that the environment remains stable. This means that regular database reviews have to be performed, security enforced, and recovery procedures tested. It is very easy to slip and move back into a reactive environment.
So, the encouragement is there to move to a proactive database environment. Such an environment offers a lot of advantages, including an increase in database uptime, minimizing the chance of problems and errors occurring, finding problems quickly, and also an improvement in productivity.
It is not easy to move to such an environment and when reached it requires discipline to maintain it. Once reached though, the benefits are many and should offer you greater control and flexibility in managing the database.