NetVault Plug-in for Oracle 10.0.5 - User Guide

Pre-Restore Options: These options let you automatically prepare the database or tablespaces for the restore process during the plug-in’s restore job.

Whole Database Restore: Select this option if a complete database is being restored.

Tablespace/Datafile Restore: Select this option if individual or multiple tablespaces or datafiles are being restored.

Startup Database Nomount Before Restore: When restoring a Control File, the database must be in a NOMOUNT state. Select this option if you want the plug-in to put the database in a NOMOUNT state automatically before issuing the RMAN run block.

Mount Database Before Restore: When performing Whole Database or All Tablespaces restores, the database must be in a MOUNT state. Select this option if you want the plug-in to mount the database automatically before performing the restore and recovery. If this option is not selected, you must manually put the database in a MOUNT state before submitting the restore job to prevent the job from failing.

Shutdown Abort Database First: Available only when Mount Database Before Restore is selected. If the database is in an OPEN state, the database must be shut down before it can be opened in a MOUNT state. Select this option if you want the plug-in to run a SHUTDOWN ABORT command automatically before starting the database in a MOUNT state. If this option is not selected and the Mount Database Before Restore option is selected, the restore job fails if you do not manually shut down the database before submitting the job.

Alter Tablespaces Offline Before Restore: When restoring individual tablespaces or datafiles, the tablespace must be offline before the restore is performed. Select this option if you want the plug-in to run the ALTER TABLESPACE OFFLINE command automatically for each tablespace that is being restored.

Restore Options: These options pertain to the restore phase of Oracle®’s restore and recovery process.

Alter Tablespaces Online After Restore: When restoring individual tablespaces and datafiles, the tablespace must be returned to an online state after the restore and recovery is completed. Select this option if you want the plug-in to run the ALTER TABLESPACE ONLINE command automatically after the selected tablespaces are restored and recovered. This option enforces a recovery of the selected tablespace regardless of whether Perform Recovery is selected.

Include Recover Tablespace Clause: If you selected the Alter Tablespaces Online After Restore option, this option is selected by default, which ensures that the tablespaces are included in the recovery and brought online. Clear this option if you want to recover the tablespaces manually.

Check Read-Only Datafiles and Restore if Necessary: Select this option to include read-only datafiles in the restore. The read-only files are included only if they are needed to complete recovery. If they are not damaged, RMAN omits them.

Number of Channels: You can control the degree of parallelism within a restore job by allocating the desired number of channels. Allocating multiple channels simultaneously allows a single restore job to restore multiple backup sets in parallel. The number of channels should be less than or equal to the number of channels that was specified for the backup job.

Restore/Recover from User Defined Backup Tag: Select this option and enter a tag name to select backup sets from which to restore. Selecting this option is equivalent to the RMAN restore option FROM TAG="<tag_name>". This option overrides the default RMAN restore selection of the most recent backups or file copy available. This option also restricts the automatic selection to backup sets or file copies that were created with the specified tag. If multiple backup sets or file copies have a matching tag, RMAN selects the most recent backup set or file copy. Tag names are not case-sensitive.

Restore Source: Select the location that RMAN should use as the source for the restore. This option lets you speed up restores by ensuring that RMAN restores from the FRA even if the backup is also available on NetVault Backup media (that is, disk-based media, VTL, or tape).

Validate Restore: Validates the restore without restoring any data. The plug-in tells RMAN to select and confirm that the existing available backup sets are sufficient for the selected operation, such as an entire database restore or a single tablespace restore. This step ensures that the necessary backup sets are not corrupted and are usable. The following Validate Restore options are available:

Validate Restore Only: If this option is selected, only validation is performed.

Perform Restore if Validate Completes Without Errors: If this option is selected and the Validate Restore completes without errors, the restore is also performed.

Recovery Type: Use these options to select the type of recovery to perform.

Do Not Perform Recovery: Select this option if you want to restore the files but do not want to perform recovery.

Perform Complete Recovery: Select this option to recover an individual tablespace, multiple tablespaces, or the whole database to the most recent point, without the loss of any committed transactions.

Perform Tablespace Point in Time Recovery: Do not use this option. Tablespace Point-in-Time Recovery (TSPITR), which enables PIT Recovery on one or more tablespaces, is not currently supported.

Perform Table Level Point in Time Recovery: Select this option to recover specific tables to a specific point. Use a control (System Change Number Based, Log Sequence Based, or Time Based) to specify the point to recover to. Use the Auxiliary Destination, Recover table, and Remap table controls to provide additional options for the recovery-table task. For more information and examples, see Performing table-level recovery.

Perform Database Point in Time Recovery: Select this option if you need to return a database to its state at a past point. For example, to reverse the effect of a user error, such as dropping a table, you might want to return the database to its contents before the deletion occurred.

Point-in-time controls: You can use one of the following options with the preceding options to specify a point to recover to.

System Change Number Based: For an SCN-based PIT Recovery, select this option, and specify the SCN until which the transactions must be recovered. RMAN recovers up to, but not including, the specified SCN.

Log Sequence Based: For a log-sequence-based PIT Recovery, select this option, and specify the terminating log sequence number and the thread to which it belongs. To identify the appropriate log sequence number and thread, you can query V$LOG_HISTORY to view the logs that have been archived.

Time Based: For a time-based PIT Recovery, select this option, and set the date and time in the fields provided. The plug-in recovers up to, but not including, the specified time.

Auxiliary Destination: Use this field to specify a directory (full path) that an Oracle®-based automated auxiliary instance uses as part of the PIT Recovery process. By default, this field lists a directory within the ORACLE_HOME directory. You can change this directory to any other location. This directory must exist before you run the recovery process. For more information, see Performing table-level recovery.

Recover table: Enter a comma-separated list of tables that you want to include in a table-level recovery. For more information, see Performing table-level recovery.

Remap table: Enter a comma-separated list of tables that you want to rename as a part of a table-level recovery. For more information, see Performing table-level recovery.

Perform Trial Recovery Only: Only available for Oracle 10g and later, Enterprise Edition databases. Select this option to perform a Trial Recovery, which you can use to determine whether a recovery succeeds or encounters problems or whether a previous recovery has encountered a problem. It lets you look ahead into the redo stream to detect possible problems. The Trial Recovery applies redo in a way similar to normal recovery, but it does not write changes to disk and it rolls back its changes at the end of the Trial Recovery. If errors are encountered during the Trial Recovery, they are logged in the Oracle Alert Log as test run errors.

Recovery Options: These options pertain to the recovery phase.

Check Read-Only Datafiles and Recover if Not Current: Used with the Check Read-Only Datafiles and Restore if Necessary Restore Option. Select this option to include read-only datafiles in the recovery process. The read-only files are included only if they are needed to complete recovery. If they are not damaged, RMAN omits them.

Delete Restored Archive Logs No Longer Needed: The plug-in copies the archived redo logs to the directory from which they were backed up. Select this option to delete the restored archive logs that Oracle deems unnecessary.

Objects selected on the Create Selection Set page are ignored.

Mount Database Before Restore and Shutdown Abort Database First options on the Restore Options tab are honored.

Options selected on the Post Recovery tab are honored.

Perform Block Media Recovery: Select this option to perform Block Media Recovery and recover only the corrupted blocks versus recovering the entire datafile.

Recover All Corrupted Blocks: Select this option to recover all the corrupted blocks that are reported in V$DATABASE_BLOCK_CORRUPTION.

Specify Corrupted Blocks to Recover: When you only want to recover a certain subset of the corrupted blocks, select this option. In the corresponding text box, enter the datafile number and block number of each of the corrupted blocks that you want to recover. Enter one datafile-block entry per line in the following format:

Open Database after Recovery: Select this option to open the database automatically and make it available for normal use after the recovery process is completed during the restore. Selecting this option makes the following options available:

Read Write: Opens the database in read/write mode, which lets you generate redo logs. This option is the default if you are opening a primary database.

Read Write and Reset Logs: Opens the database in read/write mode and resets the current log sequence number to 1. It also archives any un-Archived Log files (including the current log), and discards any redo information that was not applied during recovery so that it is never applied. This option must be selected in the following situations:

After a previous OPEN RESETLOGS operation did not complete.

After a FLASHBACK DATABASE operation.

Read Only: Select this option to restrict users to read-only transactions, which prevents them from generating redo logs. This option is the default setting when you open a physical standby database, so that the physical standby database is available for queries even while archive logs are being copied from the primary database site. Oracle® has the following restrictions on opening a database with the Read Only option:

You cannot open a database in Read Only mode if it is opened in Read Write mode by a different instance.

You cannot open a database in Read Only mode if it requires recovery.

You cannot take tablespaces offline while the database is open in Read Only mode. However, you can take datafiles offline and online, and you can recover offline datafiles and tablespaces while the database is open in Read Only mode.