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Thread: How to practice restores

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jan 2001
    Posts
    216

    How to practice restores

    We use hot backups on all our 15-20 production databases. Some of the dbs are 20G and some upto 100G. Since this is a new job for me, I want to practice restores of all these dbs atleast once to begin with. How do I go about doing it?

    I did clone a couple of the small dbs on other servers. But cant do it for all dbs as there is not enough room. Please advise.

    Also, how often should restores be practiced? (1. to ensure backups are good and 2. to keep restore skills uptodate)

    Thanks!

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Sep 2002
    Location
    England
    Posts
    7,334
    get a test machine and restore the database - break that database and restore it again.

    basically get a test machine and go through all of the recovery scenarios

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jan 2001
    Posts
    216
    Is practising for one database good enough or should I clone each of the 20 dbs and practice on each? That will take forever... but without practicing for each, how can we ensure all backups are good?

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Mar 2002
    Location
    Mesa, Arizona
    Posts
    1,204
    Here's the rule of thumb: Practice recovering what you can't afford to loose.

    It doesn't matter how big the database is.

    Lead your new company to get a disaster recovery plan. That plan should include a failover scenario.

    How often you have a practice disaster recovery depends on at least 2 things; changes and your confidence in the recovery process.

    We have a goal to do a complete failover two times a year. It takes a weekend and everyone is on board.
    "I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them." Isaac Asimov
    Oracle Scirpts DBA's need

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Nov 2000
    Location
    greenwich.ct.us
    Posts
    9,092
    I believe you should do a test restore at least once a quarter.
    Jeff Hunter

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