Validating Backups and Testing Your Backup Strategy

As part of your backup strategy, you should periodically check whether your backups are intact and can be used to meet your recoverability objectives. You can validate your backups in the following ways:

• Select specific backup sets or image copies in Database Control and validate them. This technique indicates if a backup exists and can be restored. For this form of validation, use the Manage Current Backups pages as described in "Validating Selected Backups".

• Specify database files and let RMAN select backups to use when restoring those files, as it would for an actual restore operation. This technique ensures that your available backups are sufficient to restore the database. For this form of validation, use the Perform Recovery pages as described in "Validating Backups for Restore Operations".

  Note: Validating backups stored on tape can be time-consuming because the entire backup is read from tape.

You can set up both forms of validation as scheduled tasks in Database Control. You should incorporate both forms of validation into your backup strategy to ensure that your recoverability goals are met by your available backups.