duplicate to a future date

If you work with large databases, you often wait way to long for the clones. Typically you want to duplicate a 10TB database to production timestamp 9am, and you start at 9am and then you wait for hours.

Is it possible to start the clone, let’s say, at midnight, and set until time 9am?

No! You’ll get 

RMAN-06617: UNTIL TIME (2016-05-21 09:00:00) is ahead of last NEXT TIME in archived logs (2016-05-20 23:58:52)

But… you could start to restore the datafiles at midnight. 

sqlplus sys/***@db02 as sysdba <

This is exactly when RMAN does when you issue a duplicate. You could use the supported RESTORE command instead of the unsupported RESTORE CLONE command. But then it'll get a bit more complex as you need to find out the location of your backup and so on.


At 9am, you issue your duplicate, and you'll see


skipping datafile 1; already restored to file /db02/system01.dbf
skipping datafile 2; already restored to file /db02/sysaux01.dbf
skipping datafile 3; already restored to file /db02/undotbs1_02.dbf
skipping datafile 4; already restored to file /db02/users01.dbf



You just saved nine hours 🙂

1 thought on “duplicate to a future date”

  1. Satish

    Hi Laurent,

    Can you pls update the complications here.
    But then it’ll get a bit more complex as you need to find out the location of your backup and so on.

    Thanks,
    Satish

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