Overview
A large number of our customers are adopting Oracle Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM), which is the successor to the Xen hypervisor based Oracle VM. In this article, we examine how one can quickly clone an Oracle database running on an Oracle Linux KVM.
Cloning and refresh of Oracle databases is a common operational activity performed by DBA teams. There are different methods using which clones can be created/refreshed. If the cloning/refresh method can take advantage of space-efficient and nearly instantaneous Purity Snapshots, the operation can be completed in a matter of minutes. In the case of Oracle Linux KVM, for making use of snapshot-based cloning and refresh, the database needs to be on virtual disks that use Direct LUNs instead of Storage Domains. Direct LUN enables a virtual machine to directly access RAW block-based storage, in our case, FlashArray volumes without the abstraction layer between the virtual machine and the storage.