Best Practices for Cloud Restores

Recovery best practices ensure that, in the event of a failure, backups required to recover your Oracle database are available and usable.

Use the following recovery best practices:

• Crosscheck your backups periodically

  Use the RMAN CROSSCHECK command to crosscheck backups. It is recommended that you crosscheck backups before you run a DELETE OBSOLETE command. Crosschecking marks missing backup sets or backup pieces as expired in the RMAN repository, but does not delete or remove the actual files. Any backup sets and backup pieces marked as expired are excluded from subsequent backup, restore, and recover operations.

  After a CROSSCHECK command, you can review and confirm any missing backup files using he REPORT EXPIRED command. Subsequently, running a DELETE EXPIRED command deletes expired backups from the RMAN repository.

• Validate backups to check for physical and logical corruptions

  After a backup operation, use the RMAN BACKUP VALIDATE command to check the data files for physical corruptions. To check for logical corruptions, include the CHECK LOGICAL clause in the BACKUP VALIDATE command.

• Verify that the backups are restorable

  Use the RMAN BACKUP RESTORE command to check if backups are restorable and if they contain physical or logical corruptions. The command performs a block level check of the backups and verifies that all required database files are available, thereby ensuring that an actual restore can be performed. It is recommended that you validate backups on a regular basis.

  Note that this command does not consume CPU, memory, storage, or network resources. It only reads the backup sets and checks for corruption. The data is streamed from the cloud to the on-premise database for validation purposes and is discarded after the validation. For large backup sets, this command can take longer to complete.