Clone an Autonomous Database from a Backup

Shows the options to select a backup as the clone source for cloning Autonomous Database.

Perform the following prerequisite steps as necessary:

  • Open the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Console by clicking the navigation icon next to Oracle Cloud.

  • From the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure left navigation menu click Oracle Database and then, depending on your workload click one of: Autonomous Data Warehouse, Autonomous JSON Database, or Autonomous Transaction Processing.
  1. Choose your region. See Switching Regions for information on switching regions and working in multiple regions.
  2. Choose your Compartment. See Compartments for information on using and managing compartments.
  3. Select an Autonomous Database instance from the list in your compartment.
  4. On the Details page, from the More actions drop-down list, select Create clone.
  5. On the Create Autonomous Database clone page, choose the clone type from the choices:
    • Full clone: creates a new database with the source database’s data and metadata.
    • Refreshable clone: creates a read-only full clone that can be easily refreshed with the source database’s data.

      See Use Refreshable Clones with Autonomous Database for more information.

    • Metadata clone: creates a new database with the source database’s metadata without the data.
  6. In the Configure clone source area, select the Clone source option:
    • Clone from database instance: This creates a clone from a running database. See Clone an Autonomous Database Instance for details and steps with this selection.

    • Clone from a backup: This selection creates a database clone using a backup. Select this option.

      Note:

      Clone from backup is not supported when the source database has the Database Version Oracle Database 23ai
  7. In the Configure clone source area, select the Backup clone type:
    • Point in time clone: Enter a timestamp to clone in the Enter Timestamp field.

    • Select the backup from a list: Enter From and To dates to narrow the list of backups then select a backup to use for the clone source.

    • Latest backup timestamp: See Clone an Autonomous Database from Latest Backup for information on this clone option.

  8. Provide basic information for the Autonomous Database.
    • Choose your preferred region: from the list, select the region where you want to create the clone.

      Note: the list only shows the regions that you are subscribed to.

      For the clone type Clone from a backup as the clone source, when you choose another region other than the current region for your clone target, using either the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure CLI or Terraform you can only perform such a cross-region clone from the remote region. That is, call the create clone API from the remote region to which you want to clone, with the source database OCID as that of the source that you want to clone from.

    • Create in Compartment: See Compartments for information on using and managing compartments.

    • Display name: Specify a user-friendly description or other information that helps you easily identify the resource.

      You can use the name provided, of the form: Clone-of-DBname or change this to the name you want to use to identify the database. The supplied DBname is the name of the source database that you are cloning.

    • Database Name: Specify the database name; it must consist of letters and numbers only. The maximum length is 30 characters. The same database name cannot be used for multiple Autonomous Databases in the same tenancy in the same region.

      The default database name is a generated 16-character string.

  9. Select a value for Choose a workload type from the following options.
    • Data Warehouse: This creates an Autonomous Data Warehouse type clone.

    • Transaction Processing: This creates an Autonomous Transaction Processing type clone.

    • JSON: This creates an Autonomous JSON Database type clone.

    • APEX: This creates an APEX type clone.

    Note:

    The unavailable cloning options are grayed out. See Clone Autonomous Database to Change Workload Type for more information on cross workload cloning.
  10. Configure the database (ECPU compute model)
    • Always Free: Select to show Always Free options.

      You can only create a free instance in the tenancy's Home region.

    • Choose database version: Select the database version. The available database version is Oracle Database 19c.

      Notes for selecting a database version with Clone from a backup selected:

      • When the source database version is Oracle Database 19c, you can clone from a backup and select an Oracle Database 19c clone.

    • ECPU count: Specify the number of CPUs for your database. The minimum value for the number of ECPUs is 2.

    • Compute auto scaling: By default compute auto scaling is enabled to allow the system to automatically use up to three times more CPU and IO resources to meet workload demand. If you do not want to use compute auto scaling then deselect this option.

      See Use Auto Scaling for more information.

    • Storage: Specify the storage you wish to make available to your database. Depending on your workload type you have these options:

      • Data Warehouse: Specify your storage in Terabytes (TB).

        For a Full Clone, the minimum storage that you can specify is the source database's actual used space rounded to the next TB.

      • Transaction Processing or JSON: Specify your storage in Gigabytes (GB) or Terabytes (TB). Enter the size in the Storage field. Select GB or TB for the Storage unit size.

        For a Full Clone, the minimum storage that you can specify is the source database's actual used space rounded to the next GB.

    • By default, the IO capacity of your database depends on the number of ECPUs you provision. When you provision 384 TB of storage, your database is entitled to the full IO capacity of the Exadata infrastructure, independent of the number of ECPUs you provision.

      Autonomous Database uses Exadata Smart Flash Cache to automatically cache frequently accessed data, delivering the high I/O rates and fast response times of flash. The amount of flash cache for your database depends on the amount of storage you provision, or the amount of allocated storage if you enable storage auto scaling.

      If you want to provision more than 384 TB of storage, file a Service Request at Oracle Cloud Support.

    • Storage auto scaling: By default storage auto scaling is disabled. Select if you want to enable storage auto scaling to allow the system to automatically expand to use up to three times more storage.

      With storage auto scaling disabled, the guaranteed minimum flash cache size is 10% of your database's provisioned storage size.

      With storage auto scaling enabled, the guaranteed minimum flash cache size is 10% of your database's provisioned base storage size or its allocated storage size, whichever is higher.

      See Use Auto Scaling for more information.

    • Show advanced options: Click to show the compute model options or if you want to create or join an elastic pool:

  11. Backup retention

    By default the automatic backup retention is 60 days.

    Automatic backup retention period in days You have the option to select the automatic backup retention period, in a range from 1 to 60 days. You can restore and recover your database to any point-in-time in this retention period.

    This option is not available with the OCPU compute model.

    See About Backup and Recovery on Autonomous Database for more information.

  12. Create administrator credentials.
    • Username This is a read-only field.

    • Password Set the password for the Autonomous Database Admin user. The password must meet the strong password complexity criteria based on Oracle Cloud security standards. For more information on the password complexity rules see Create Users on Autonomous Database - Connecting with a Client Tool.
    • Confirm password Specify a value to confirm the password.
  13. Choose network access

    Note:

    After you clone your Autonomous Database you can change the network access option you select for the cloned instance.
    • Secure access from everywhere

      By default all secure connections are allowed from everywhere.

    • Secure access from allowed IPs and VCNs only

      This option restricts connections to the database according to the access control rules (ACLs) you specify. To add multiple ACLs for the Autonomous Database, select this option and click Add access control rule.

      See Configure Access Control Lists When You Provision or Clone an Instance for more information.

    • Private endpoint access only

      This option assigns a private endpoint, private IP, and hostname to your database. Specifying this option allows traffic only from the VCN you specify; access to the database from all public IPs or VCNs is blocked. This allows you to define security rules, ingress/egress, at the Network Security Group (NSG) level and to control traffic to your Autonomous Database.

      See Configure Private Endpoints When You Provision or Clone an Instance for more information.

  14. (Optional) Provide contacts for operational notifications and announcements

    Click Add contact and in the Contact email field, enter a valid email address. If the database you are cloning has a customer contact list, the list is copied. To enter multiple Contact email addresses, repeat the process to add up to 10 customer contact emails.

    See View and Manage Customer Contacts for Operational Issues and Announcements for more information.

  15. (Optional) Click Show advanced options to select advanced options.
    • Encryption Key

      Encrypt using an Oracle-managed key: By default Autonomous Database uses Oracle-managed encryption keys. Using Oracle-managed keys, Autonomous Database creates and manages the encryption keys that protect your data and Oracle handles rotation of the TDE master key.

      Encrypt using a customer-managed key in this tenancy: If you this option, a master encryption key from a Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Vault in the same tenancy is used to generate the TDE master key on Autonomous Database.

      Encrypt using a customer-managed key located in a remote tenancy: If you this option, a master encryption key in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Vault located in a remote tenancy is used to generate the TDE master key on Autonomous Database.

      See Use Customer-Managed Encryption Keys on Autonomous Database for more information.

    • Maintenance

      Patch level By default the patch level is the patch level of the source database. Select Early to configure the instance with the early patch level. When cloning a source database with Early patch level, you can only choose the Early patch level for your clone.

      See Set the Patch Level for more information.

    • Management

      Shows the character set and national character set for your database.

      See Choose a Character Set for Autonomous Database for more information.

    • Tools

      If you want to view or customize the tools configuration, select the tools tab.

      See Configure Autonomous Database Built-in Tools when you Provision or Clone an Instance for more information.

    • Security attributes

      Add a security attribute to control access for your resources using Zero Trust Packet Routing (ZPR) policies. To enter security attributes during provisioning you must already have set up security attributes with Zero Trust Packet Routing. You also can add security attributes after provisioning.

      Note:

      You can apply Oracle Zero Trust Packet Routing (ZPR) policies to a private endpoint.

      Specify a Namespace, Key, and Value security attribute.

      Click Add security attribute to add additional security attributes.

      See Overview of Zero Trust Packet Routing for more information.

    • Tags

      If you want to use Tags, enter the Tag key and Tag value. Tagging is a metadata system that allows you to organize and track resources within your tenancy. Tags are composed of keys and values which can be attached to resources.

      See Tagging Overview for more information.

  16. Click Create Autonomous Database Clone.

On the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure console the State shows Provisioning... until the new database is available.

Notes:

  • If there is an ongoing clone from backup operation on a source database, you cannot initiate a new clone operation on the same backup being cloned until the ongoing operation completes. Thus, you cannot clone from backup twice concurrently from a specific backup (for example, a specific timestamp or a specific selected backup from the list of backups).

  • For external tables, partitioned external tables, and the external partitions of hybrid partitioned tables a backup does not include the external files that reside on your Object Store. Thus, for the clone from backup operation, it is your responsibility to backup, and restore if necessary, the external files associated with external tables, external partitioned tables, or the external files for a hybrid partitioned table

  • With clone from backup, the Oracle Machine Learning workspaces, projects, and notebooks of the source database are not cloned to the new database.

See Notes for Cloning Autonomous Database for additional information on cloning.

See Cloning an Autonomous Database for information on using the API.

Clone an Autonomous Database from Latest Backup

When you choose to clone from latest backup, this selects the latest backup as the clone source. You can choose this option if a database becomes unavailable or for any reason when you want to create a clone based on the most recent backup.

Follow the steps in Clone an Autonomous Database from a Backup and in the Clone source area, select Clone from a backup and Select the latest backup timestamp to clone to create a clone that recovers the most recent backup data that is available for the Autonomous Database instance (the clone source) from the database backup and logs backup.

After Autonomous Database has finished provisioning the clone, query the view dba_pdbs to see the last_recover_time and last_recover_scn columns. These columns provide the saved timestamp and the saved SCN of the data from which the cloned database was created.

For example:

SELECT last_recover_time, last_recover_scn FROM dba_pdbs;