This topic fits very well as I present about +100 TB migrations today at the “Harmony” User Group Conference in Finland.

Finland in May
The question whether the PERL scripts for RMAN incrementally rolled forward backups we deliver via MOS Note 1389592.1 (11G – Reduce Transportable Tablespace Downtime using Cross Platform Incremental Backup) will be supported for migrations to non-Exadata systems such as Oracle SuperCluster as well.
And yes, now we got an update into the note saying:
Although preferred destination system is Linux (either 64-bit Oracle Linux or a certified version of RedHat Linux), this procedure can be used with other Unix based operating systems. However, any non-Linux operating system must be on 11.2.0.4.
Please be aware that “Unix” is important here:
The scripts are not supported (and won’t work) if you use them with MS Windows platforms.
Another caveat with the note to be aware of:
It does not talk explicitly about “Full Database Migrations”. And not about Full Transportable Export/Import. I’ve had several customers hitting this trap using the procedure described in the note but ending up with just parts of their database being migrated. Please keep in mind that you will have to move everything in SYSTEM tablespace (and potentially in SYSAUX such as AWR) as well as otherwise you’ll end up with data but will miss your grants, roles, synonyms etc. That’s why we highly recommend the Full Transportable Export/Import procedure as it takes care on all this.
You may please download my slide deck about how to use the PERL scripts for a large migration – it’s the talk I gave at Harmony Conference 2017:
- Super-large Migrations – Reduce the Downtime with RMAN Incremental Backups and Full Transportable Export/Import
- Upgrade to Oracle Database 12.2 – Live and Uncensored
–Mike
Thank you for the share.
Hi! first off, thank you so much for the powerpoints, etc. for this process… So far my tests with this have been great ( the scripts make it surprisingly easy!), but one of our requirements is that on the destination server, the datafiles will be located on several different mountpoints. Do you know if there an easy way to do this? The xtt.properties file appears to only allow 1: storageondest
Sophie,
do it afterwards. As I’d silently assume you’ll move to Oracle Database 12.1 there’s the “Online Move of Datafiles” feature:
https://docs.oracle.com/database/121/ADMIN/dfiles.htm#ADMIN13837
I doubt that the scripts really will support it in the near future.
Cheers
Mike
Hi Mike,
One (maybe stupid) question regarding “Super-large Migrations – Reduce the Downtime with RMAN Incremental Backups and Full Transportable Export/Import” you have posted.
Is this procedure (especially steps run after every incremental backup through the PERL scripts) affected in any negative way by the fact that at the same period of it’s execution, other RMAN backups (to SBT not Disk) are running (for standard every day backup purposes)?
Thank you in advance,
Hi KBak,
this is actually not a stupid question.
I can tell you that we have seen issues with ZDLRA when we did too many actions at the same time (i.e. regular backup of the database + inc backups).
Ideally you uncouple such activities.
Cheers,
Mike