Oracle Backup and Recovery Options and Methods

To get the most from this course you should have a basic understanding of the Windows operating system, basic SQL syntax, and the following Oracle database concepts:

1. Oracle database architecture
2. Oracle instance
3. The Oracle data dictionary
4. Basic Oracle database administration techniques
5. Basic Oracle backup and recovery structure
6. Basic knowledge of Oracle database failures

Oracle Database, across different versions, is fundamentally designed with a robust architecture that minimizes the probability of system failures. However, the nature and handling of database failures can show variations based on enhancements and new features introduced in each version. Let us focus on two major versions you're interested in: Oracle 11g and Oracle 12c.
Oracle 11g had substantial features to handle database failures, including RMAN (Recovery Manager) for backup and recovery, Data Recovery Advisor for diagnosing and rectifying failures, Flashback Technology to reverse human errors, and Automatic Storage Management (ASM) to manage disk resources.
Oracle 12c built upon these capabilities and introduced several new features to improve availability and resilience against failures:

1. Data Redaction: This feature in Oracle 12c protects sensitive data from being exposed to unauthorized access, thereby mitigating potential security-related failures.
2. Oracle Flex ASM: In Oracle 11g, every database instance required a dedicated ASM instance, causing potential failures in case the ASM instance went down. Oracle 12c introduced Flex ASM, which allows an ASM instance to serve multiple database instances. This reduces the risk of a database going down due to an ASM instance failure.
3. Far Sync Standby Database: Introduced in Oracle 12c, it improves the Data Guard configuration by allowing a standby database to be placed at a remote location without any impact on performance. This reduces the chance of data loss due to catastrophic failures.
4. Application Continuity: It masks outages from end-users and applications by providing a consistent view of the database sessions, thereby reducing the chance of application failures.
5. Pluggable Databases (PDB): This multitenant architecture isolates different database instances, thereby preventing a failure in one PDB from affecting others.

While the fundamental types of failures that can occur in Oracle databases remain generally consistent (like media failures, user errors, or application errors), the mechanisms to handle them and protect against them have been improved and enhanced in Oracle 12c as compared to Oracle 11g. Please be aware that understanding and properly configuring these features are key to effectively mitigating and managing potential database failures.

If you do not feel comfortable with one or more of these topics and techniques, you may want to consider taking the first course in this series as well as the course in Oracle Database Administration. If you do not have the skills listed here, consider taking Backup and Recovery Concepts.
In the next lesson, you will learn what you need to take this course.