Re: Oracle: how to demonstrate successful restore?

From: Daniel Fink <danielwfink_at_yahoo.com>
Date: 25 Jan 2006 20:42:35 -0800
Message-ID: <1138250555.006535.325900@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>

Always, always, always test recoveries in a non-production environment. It is a great idea to use a production backup to do so (kills two birds with one stone). Need to refresh a development/test environment? How about using the latest production backup?

Think about different recovery scenarios. Loss of a single table, loss
of a datafile, loss of a device, controller, system, data center, etc.
Work out how you would recover from each, how long it would take, how

much data would be lost, etc.

Presented for your consideration
"The responsibility of a DBA is not to back up the database...the responsibility of the DBA is to recover the database!" (paraphrase of Tim Gorman).

I recall a discussion at a user group meeting where a dba was telling the story of a new tape drive in their backup system. Seems that there was a slight miscalibration and the head would move a fraction of a millimeter each time it wrote a new tape. Tapes would write successfully, would be verified successfully...and could not ever be read again!

I myself went through a situation where a bug caused the database to be unrecoverable. Not fun!

Regards,
Daniel Fink Received on Wed Jan 25 2006 - 22:42:35 CST