A long time ago my colleagues published PERL scripts to assist especially with cross platform Transportable Tablespace migrations. The PERL scripts allow you to utilize incremental backups. This way you can decrease the downtime in a migration with large databases significantly. But there are different MOS Notes for xTTS PERL scripts available. Which one should you take?

Transportable Tablespaces and Incremental Backups

The biggest pain points in a transportable tablespace migration are usually the size of the database and its complexity. With RMAN Incrementally Rolled Forward Backups you can tackle the size aspect. Instead of having a long downtime to copy terabytes of files from A to B during the read-only phase of the transport activity (tablespaces have to remain in read-only mode for transportable tablespaces during the copy and export meta contents operation), you can leverage incremental backups.

You will always start with a Level-0 imagefile copy backup which has the same size as your database. But your tablespaces can remain read-write mode during the backup.

In the following phase you will create Level-1 incremental backups. With those, you will roll forward. Still your tablespaces remain read-write.

When you get downtime, the tablespaces need to be set into read-only mode before you trigger the final incremental backup and roll forward again. But this final incremental backup usually has just a few gigabyte. It completes much faster than a copy operation of terabytes. Then you will start the transport phase.

In order to ease that process of RMAN Incremental Backups, even cross platform and cross Endianness, we deliver PERL scripts. You can download them from MOS notes.

The PERL scripts

You can find a two showcase presentations explaining the PERL scripts a bit more in detail in the Slides Download Centeron the blog.

The following MOS Notes give you access to PERL scripts supporting the RMAN Incremental Backup pathtogether with either Transportable Tablespaces or Full Transportable Export Import:

• PERL script for Oracle 11g:
  • MOS Note:1389592.1 – 11G – Reduce Transportable Tablespace Downtime using Cross Platform Incremental Backup
• PERL scripts for Oracle 12c:
  • MOS Note: 2005729.1 – 12C – Reduce Transportable Tablespace Downtime using Cross Platform Incremental Backup
• PERL scripts V4 – NEW and IMPROVED
  • MOS Note: 2471245.1 – V4 Reduce Transportable Tablespace Downtime using Cross Platform Incremental Backup
• PERL scripts for the ZDLRA
  • MOS Note: 2460552.1 – Cross Platform Database Migration using ZDLRA

The last MOS Note refers to a special version for the Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance which is a big added value if you have a ZDLRA or plan to purchase one: It can become your migration vehicle. See the Migrate to ExaCC slides above for more details.

Which PERL scripts should you use?

Clearly you should use the PERL scripts V4 delivered via MOS Note: 2471245.1.

We keep the previous versions of the scripts on MOS only in case you started a project already. The V3 version got updated with the most recent fixes but MOS Note: 2471245.1 has the new and improved version of the scripts (V4) which you should use from now on.

To point to the new V4 release, the older notes have now this INFORMATION BOX:

NOTE: Consider using the new release of this procedure, version 4. This version has drastically simplified the steps and procedure. Before proceeding, review: 
V4 Reduce Transportable Tablespace Downtime using Cross Platform Incremental Backup Note 2471245.1

–Mike