Direct NFS Clonedb is a feature in 11.2 that you can use to clone your databases. Kevin Closson explains what it is in this post. In his demo videos he is using a perl script to automate the process of generating the necessary scripts. That script is not publicly available as of today but the MOS note 1210656.1 explains how to do the clone manually without the perl script.
Tim Hall also has a step by step guide on how to do the cloning in this post. He also uses the perl script mentioned above.
We have been testing backups and clones on Exadata connected to a 7410 ZFS Storage Appliance, I wanted to share our test on Direct NFS Clonedb. This test is on a quarter rack x2-2 connected to a 7410 storage via Infiniband. A RAC database will be cloned as a single instance database and the clone database will opened in one db node.
Enable Direct NFS on Exadata
For security, as of today default Exadata installation disables some services needed by NFS. To use NFS on Exadata db nodes we enabled those services first.
service portmap start
service nfslock start
chkconfig --level 345 portmap on
chkconfig --level 345 nfslock on
Recent Exadata installations come with Direct NFS (dNFS) enabled, you can check if you have it enabled by looking at the database alert log. When the database is started you can see this line in the alert log if you have dNFS enabled.
Oracle instance running with ODM: Oracle Direct NFS ODM Library Version 3.0
If it is not enabled you can use this command after stopping the database to enable it.
make -f $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/lib/ins_rdbms.mk dnfs_on
Mount the NFS share
I am assuming 7410 is configured and NFS sharing is up on it at this point. To mount the NFS share you can use a mount command like this on Exadata db nodes.
mount 192.168.27.105:/export/backup1 /backup -o rw,bg,hard,intr,rsize=131072,wsize=131072,intr,nodev,nosuid,actimeo=0
Back up the source database
You can use OS copies or RMAN image copies to back up the database for use in the cloning process. Here are the commands we used, do not forget to create the target directory before.
sql 'alter database begin backup';
backup as copy database format '/backup/clone_backup/%U';
sql 'alter database end backup';
Prepare the clone db
To start the clone database we need an init.ora file and a create controlfile script. You can back up the source database's control file to a text file and use it. In the source database run this to get the script, this will produce a script under the udump directory (/u01/app/oracle/diag/rdbms/dbm/dbm1/trace in Exadata).
SQL> alter database backup controlfile to trace;
Database altered.
After editing the script this is the one we can use for the clone database.
CREATE CONTROLFILE REUSE SET DATABASE "clone" RESETLOGS NOARCHIVELOG
MAXLOGFILES 1024
MAXLOGMEMBERS 5
MAXDATAFILES 32767
MAXINSTANCES 32
MAXLOGHISTORY 33012
LOGFILE
GROUP 1 (
'/u01/app/oradata/clone/redo01.log'
) SIZE 4096M BLOCKSIZE 512,
GROUP 2 (
'/u01/app/oradata/clone/redo02.log'
) SIZE 4096M BLOCKSIZE 512,
GROUP 3 (
'/u01/app/oradata/clone/redo03.log'
) SIZE 4096M BLOCKSIZE 512
DATAFILE
'/backup/clone_backup/data_D-DBM_I-1222199824_TS-UNDOTBS1_FNO-3_bnm5ajrp',
'/backup/clone_backup/data_D-DBM_I-1222199824_TS-SYSTEM_FNO-1_blm5ajro',
'/backup/clone_backup/data_D-DBM_I-1222199824_TS-SYSAUX_FNO-2_bmm5ajro',
'/backup/clone_backup/data_D-DBM_I-1222199824_TS-UNDOTBS2_FNO-4_bom5ajrp',
'/backup/clone_backup/data_D-DBM_I-1222199824_TS-GNS_DATA01_FNO-7_bqm5ajrp',
'/backup/clone_backup/data_D-DBM_I-1222199824_TS-USERS_FNO-5_bpm5ajrp',
'/backup/clone_backup/data_D-DBM_I-1222199824_TS-USERS_FNO-9_bsm5ajrp',
'/backup/clone_backup/data_D-DBM_I-1222199824_TS-USERS_FNO-10_btm5ajrp',
'/backup/clone_backup/data_D-DBM_I-1222199824_TS-USERS_FNO-8_brm5ajrp'
CHARACTER SET AL32UTF8
;
/u01/app/oradata/clone is a directory on the local disks, you can also use NFS for redo logs if you want to. The DATAFILE section lists the image copies we have just produced using RMAN. You can get this list using this sql, be careful about the completion time because you may have previous image copies in the same directory.
select name,completion_time from V$BACKUP_COPY_DETAILS;
Now we need an init.ora file, we can just copy the source database's file and edit it.
SQL> create pfile='/backup/clone.ora' from spfile;
File created.
Since the source database is a RAC database you need to remove parameters related to RAC (like cluster_database, etc...). You also need to change the paths to reflect the new clone database, like in the parameter control_files. Here is the control_files parameter in this test.
*.control_files='/u01/app/oradata/clone/control.ctl'
I also use a local directory, not NFS, for the control file.
There is one parameter you need to add when cloning a RAC database to a single instance database.
_no_recovery_through_resetlogs=TRUE
If you do not set this parameter you will get an error when you try to open the clone database with resetlogs. MOS note 334899.1 explains why we need to set this. If you do not set this this is the error you will get when opening the database.
RMAN> sql 'alter database open resetlogs';
sql statement: alter database open resetlogs
RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-00569: =============== ERROR MESSAGE STACK FOLLOWS ===============
RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-03009: failure of sql command on default channel at 02/22/2011 16:13:07
RMAN-11003: failure during parse/execution of SQL statement: alter database open resetlogs
ORA-38856: cannot mark instance UNNAMED_INSTANCE_2 (redo thread 2) as enabled
Now we are ready to create the clone database.
Create the clone db
After preparing the init.ora file and the create controlfile script we can create the database.
export ORACLE_SID=clone
SQL> startup nomount pfile='/backup/clone.ora';
ORACLE instance started.
Total System Global Area 3991842816 bytes
Fixed Size 2232648 bytes
Variable Size 754978488 bytes
Database Buffers 3087007744 bytes
Redo Buffers 147623936 bytes
SQL> @cr_control
Control file created.
Now we need to rename the datafiles and point them to a NFS location we want. dbms_dnfs is the package needed for this.
begin
dbms_dnfs.clonedb_renamefile('/backup/clone_backup/data_D-DBM_I-1222199824_TS-UNDOTBS1_FNO-3_bnm5ajrp','/backup/oradata/undotbs1.263.740679581');
dbms_dnfs.clonedb_renamefile('/backup/clone_backup/data_D-DBM_I-1222199824_TS-SYSTEM_FNO-1_blm5ajro','/backup/oradata/system.261.740679559');
dbms_dnfs.clonedb_renamefile('/backup/clone_backup/data_D-DBM_I-1222199824_TS-SYSAUX_FNO-2_bmm5ajro','/backup/oradata/sysaux.262.740679571');
dbms_dnfs.clonedb_renamefile('/backup/clone_backup/data_D-DBM_I-1222199824_TS-UNDOTBS2_FNO-4_bom5ajrp','/backup/oradata/undotbs2.265.740679601');
dbms_dnfs.clonedb_renamefile('/backup/clone_backup/data_D-DBM_I-1222199824_TS-GNS_DATA01_FNO-7_bqm5ajrp','/backup/oradata/gns_data01.264.741356977');
dbms_dnfs.clonedb_renamefile('/backup/clone_backup/data_D-DBM_I-1222199824_TS-USERS_FNO-5_bpm5ajrp','/backup/oradata/users.266.740679611');
dbms_dnfs.clonedb_renamefile('/backup/clone_backup/data_D-DBM_I-1222199824_TS-USERS_FNO-9_bsm5ajrp','/backup/oradata/users.274.741357097');
dbms_dnfs.clonedb_renamefile('/backup/clone_backup/data_D-DBM_I-1222199824_TS-USERS_FNO-10_btm5ajrp','/backup/oradata/users.275.741357121');
dbms_dnfs.clonedb_renamefile('/backup/clone_backup/data_D-DBM_I-1222199824_TS-USERS_FNO-8_brm5ajrp','/backup/oradata/users.273.741357075');
end;
/
The first parameter to dbms_dnfs is the backup image copy name we set in the controlfile script, the second parameter is the target filename which should reside in NFS. You can create this script using the following sql on the source database.
select 'dbms_dnfs.clonedb_renamefile('''||b.name||''',''/backup/oradata/'||
substr(d.file_name,instr(d.file_name,'/',-1)+1)||''');'
from v$backup_copy_details b,dba_data_files d
where b.file#=d.file_id
and b.completion_time>sysdate-1/24;
If you have multiple image copies be careful about the completion_time predicate. In this example I am looking at the image copies of the last hour.
If the target location in the dbms_dnfs call is not on NFS here is what you will get:
SQL> exec dbms_dnfs.clonedb_renamefile('/backup/clone_backup/data_D-DBM_I-1222199824_TS-USERS_FNO-10_b1m59uem','/u01/app/oradata/clone/users.275.741357121');
BEGIN dbms_dnfs.clonedb_renamefile('/backup/clone_backup/data_D-DBM_I-1222199824_TS-USERS_FNO-10_b1m59uem','/u01/app/oradata/clone/users.275.741357121'); END;
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-01511: error in renaming log/data files
ORA-17513: dNFS package call failed
ORA-06512: at "SYS.X$DBMS_DNFS", line 10
ORA-06512: at line 1
I got this error in my first try and searched in MOS and Google for some time with no results. Then I realized that my target locations was not on NFS but was on local disk.
As we renamed the datafiles and they are pointing at the NFS location, now we can open the clone database.
SQL> alter database open resetlogs;
Database altered.
At this point we have a clone database ready to use.
The target directory we used shows our files.
[oracle@dm01db01 oradata]$ ls -l
total 98523
-rw-r-----+ 1 oracle dba 10737426432 Feb 22 16:44 gns_data01.264.741356977
-rw-r-----+ 1 oracle dba 17179877376 Feb 22 16:44 sysaux.262.740679571
-rw-r-----+ 1 oracle dba 17179877376 Feb 22 16:44 system.261.740679559
-rw-r-----+ 1 oracle dba 17179877376 Feb 22 16:44 undotbs1.263.740679581
-rw-r-----+ 1 oracle dba 17179877376 Feb 22 16:44 undotbs2.265.740679601
-rw-r-----+ 1 oracle dba 10737426432 Feb 22 16:44 users.266.740679611
-rw-r-----+ 1 oracle dba 2147491840 Feb 22 16:44 users.273.741357075
-rw-r-----+ 1 oracle dba 2147491840 Feb 22 16:44 users.274.741357097
-rw-r-----+ 1 oracle dba 2147491840 Feb 22 16:44 users.275.741357121Even though ls shows their size equal to the source database file sizes, du shows us the truth.
[oracle@dm01db01 oradata]$ du -hs *
129K gns_data01.264.741356977
74M sysaux.262.740679571
2.8M system.261.740679559
15M undotbs1.263.740679581
5.4M undotbs2.265.740679601
129K users.266.740679611
129K users.273.741357075
129K users.274.741357097
129K users.275.741357121The datafile sizes are minimal since we did not do any write activity on the clone database yet. These sizes will get bigger after some activity.
