How to Move/Restore DB to New Host and File System using RMAN (Doc ID 1338193.1)

Last updated on NOVEMBER 08, 2023

Applies to:

Oracle Database - Enterprise Edition - Version 9.2.0.6 and later
Oracle Database Cloud Schema Service - Version N/A and later
Gen 1 Exadata Cloud at Customer (Oracle Exadata Database Cloud Machine) - Version N/A and later
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure - Database Service - Version N/A and later
Oracle Database Cloud Exadata Service - Version N/A and later
Information in this document applies to any platform.

Goal

NOTE: In the images and/or the document content below, the user information and environment data used represents fictitious data from the Oracle sample schema(s), Public Documentation delivered with an Oracle database product or other training material. Any similarity to actual environments, actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended in any manner.

For the purposes of this document, the following fictitious environment is used as an example to describe the procedure:

Source Database:
DB_NAME: PRIM

Copied Database:
DB_NAME: TEST

How to relocate a database to a new server

You may need to restore a database to a new server due to the following reasons:
1) confirming your disaster recovery strategy
2) moving the database to a new server

NOTE: If your intention is to clone the database, you should use the RMAN duplicate command. Do not use a restore/recover database to clone your database.

This note will work for all file systems - ASM, OCFS, raw, cooked etc.

The steps can be summarized as:

1) take a backup of the database on the existing host
2) on the new host, restore the controlfiles, datafiles and tempfiles to the new location
3) on the new host, rename the online redo logs
4) use NID to change db_name and dbid

Important Note: During the restore and recovery process, do NOT connect to the production database's recovery catalog, even if you are using one to perform the backup. The production database's recovery catalog will get confused if there are multiple databases with the same DBID.

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/backup.112/e10642/rcmadvre.htm#BRADV908

Assumptions

1) the existing and new hosts are running on the same operating system and RDBMS patchsets. Restoring to a different platform and/or RDBMS patchset is quite complex and will not be addressed in this note.

2) all datafiles and tablespaces are onlined and accessible