Multitenant Snapshot Copy using ZFSSA [Thin Database Cloning]

Starting with Oracle 12.1.0.1 it was also possible using snapshot clones with pluggable databases within the multitenant database architecture. It was limited to file systems that support sparseness and ACFS. With the first patch set 12.1.0.2 it’s possible to use direct NFS as well for snapshot copies.

Multitenant thin cloning can be managed on Oracle storage like ASM:ACFS and ZFSSA. Special thought here is not to use the clonedbparameter. This will force to use the thin cloning on database level instead the snap and clone technics inside the ZFSSA. For ZFSSA the snapshot copy command needs a key store keystore with the password of the ZFSSA server to communicate. The communication from the Database site is done with the executable ZFSSAADM which will be delivered with the Oracle software tree of the RDBMS. See my blog Using on ZFSSA:ZFSSAADM - Copy On Write (COW) on ZFS Storage Appliance (ZFSSA)

In this blog I will demonstrate and describes the steps to enable thin provisioning and instantaneous cloning features of Oracle Database 12c when it is deployed on Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance.

Thin Cloning of PDBs is a Snap with Oracle Storage

Oracle VM VirtualBox : Clone or Copy a Virtual Disk

As a virtual machine environment user, I regularly create ‘base’ images of machines that I can reuse . So when I need a new machine, I simply create a copy of the virtual disk and add any additional software I need, this save me a lot of time instead creating new virtual environments.

In VirtualBox, copying a virtual disk is a bit of a pain. If you copy the disk in Windows Explorer and try and use it in a new VM, VirtualBox will have a display an error shown below.