Step by Step Enable Flash Recovery Area In 11g

Enable Flash Recovery Area In 11g

Here are steps to enable the flash recovery area in 11g and then check the existing backup policy is working fine or not.

My goals are:

1) Eanble the flash recovery area
2) Enable the flashback logs for database
3) Only archive logs should go in flash recovery area
Till, now archives are getting generated on normal mountpoint on server. But, to implement the automatic deletion of archives
in physical standby environment, it required to setup FRA at PROD as well as standby site. I will come to standby part in next
post. For this post, i will only be doing FRA implement on PROD.
Currently, archives are generated on normal disk location.

SQL> archive log list;
Database log mode Archive Mode
Automatic archival Enabled
Archive destination /u05/oradata/CORE/
Oldest online log sequence 2088
Next log sequence to archive 2090
Current log sequence 2090


SQL> alter system set db_recovery_file_dest_size=10g scope=both;
System altered.
SQL> alter system set db_recovery_file_dest=’/u05/oradata/CORE’ scope=both;
System altered.
Enabling archivelog mode
SQL> alter database archivelog;
Now, i have enabled the FRA by setting above two parameters. Both parameters are dynamic and doesn’t require a database restart.
Enable database flashback logs as:

SQL> alter database flashback on;
Database altered.

Now, change the location of archive logs, so that archives now generated in FRA.

SQL> alter system set log_archive_dest_1=’LOCATION=USE_DB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST VALID_FOR=(ALL_LOGFILES,ALL_ROLES) DB_UNIQUE_NAME=CORE’ scope=both;
System altered.
SQL> alter system switch logfile;
System altered.
SQL> archive log list;
Database log mode Archive Mode
Automatic archival Enabled
Archive destination USE_DB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST
Oldest online log sequence 2089
Next log sequence to archive 2091
Current log sequence 2091
SQL>
SQL>

Now, if i go to FRA location, i will see the directory structure as:

/u05/oradata/CORE
oracore@cph-core-db01-s $ ls -lrt
total 40
drwxr-xr-x 2 oracore oinstall 256 Mar 29 2012 lost+found
drwxr-x--- 4 oracore oinstall 256 Mar 5 11:35 CORE

A new folder will be created with database name (CORE is DB name in my case). If i go to core, i will see following:

oracore@cph-core-db01-s $ cd CORE
oracore@cph-core-db01-s $ ls -lrt
total 0
drwxr-x--- 2 oracore oinstall 256 Mar 5 11:32 flashback
drwxr-x--- 3 oracore oinstall 256 Mar 5 11:35 archivelog


flashback : This will contain the file (.flb) containing the flashback logs for database.
archivelog: This will conatin the archivelogs generated in OMF format and a new folder will be creates automatically
for daily archives.
Apart from these folders, few more folders will be created depending upon you put backups in FRA or not.
backupset: This will contain the RMAN backup files.
datafile : This will contain the image copies backups.
autobackup: This will contain the controlfile autobackup.
controlfile: This will contain the controlfile, if you put one of the controlfiles in FRA
onlinelogs : This will contain online redo log member, if one member is put in FRA.
Now, when i switch logfile, archive got generated in FRA and parameter log_archive_format has no effect on file name
generated in FRA.

SQL> archive log list;
Database log mode Archive Mode
Automatic archival Enabled
Archive destination USE_DB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST
Oldest online log sequence 2089
Next log sequence to archive 2091
Current log sequence 2091
SQL>