Backup Pluggable Databases

Oracle 12c New Feature: How to backup pluggable databases

Oracle 12c introduced the new multi-tenant feature called Pluggable Databases (PDB). We will show how to take a backup of the pluggable database components in this post.

Setup for RMAN with Oracle 12c

In order to use the Oracle 12c Recovery Manager (RMAN) utility for pluggable database backups, you need to first enable archivelog mode.

Once archivelog mode is enabled, we can take a backup of the pluggable database

rman target sysbackup

Now we can verify that the backup image is available from RMAN for our pluggable database

Backup for root component of Oracle 12c Pluggable Databases

Backup database ;    # Both database backup CDB and PDB all       

Pluggable database backup above the command.

In a nutshell, an Oracle 12c PDB consists of two parts: a root component and a seed component that includes the data. Earlier we performed a full database backup of the entire pluggable database but let us say that we just want to backup the root itself. We can do so with the RMAN command BACKUP DATABASE ROOT as shown in the following example:

Now let us verify the root backup for our PDB with Oracle 12c:

Stay tuned when we visit how to restore pluggable databases with RMAN and Oracle 12c!

RESTORE & RECOVER root (Container)

RMAN> restore datafile 6;

RMAN>restore database root;

RMAN>recover database root;

RESTORE & RECOVER PDB

RMAN> restore datafile 29 pluggable database pdb1;   # restore datafile 29;

RMAN> restore pluggable database pdb1;           # restore pluggable database pdb1,pdb2,pdb3;

RMAN> recover pluggable database pdb1;