Oracle Fast Recovery Area (FRA)

Oracle FRA location is to simplify the backup and recovery management for the Oracle database. Flash Recovery Area can be defined as a single, centralized, unified storage area that keep all the database backup & recovery related files and performs those activities in Oracle databases.

Note: previous to 11gR2, FRA was known as Flash Recovery Area. From 11gR2 onwards, its known as Fast Recovery Area.

You can (must) define the FRA location during the database creation using DBCA.

This is recommended by Oracle and it helps in simplifying database administration.

Reasons to configure FRA

• Reduces and simplifies database administration tasks

• Oracle takes care of managing files inside the FRA

• All backups are placed in one central location

• Automatically cleanup of old backups under FRA location

• Manages Oracle flashback logs

• Stores RMAN backups, control file, redo logs and archive logs

The fast recovery area is an Oracle-managed directory, file system, or Oracle Automatic Storage Management disk group that provides a centralized storage location for backup and recovery files.

Oracle creates archived logs and flashback logs in the fast recovery area. Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) can store its backup sets and image copies in the fast recovery area, and it uses it when restoring files during media recovery.

Oracle Database automatically manages this storage, deleting files that are no longer needed. When you issue the RMAN BACKUP command without specifying a backup destination, RMAN automatically backs up to the fast recovery area if it is configured.

Configure FRA

If you did not specify a location for the fast recovery area during installation, the installation process automatically configures a fast recovery area in the Oracle base directory.

Oracle recommends, however, that the fast recovery area be located on a separate storage device from the database files.

Assume that you want to want to place the fast recovery area in the directory /u02/oracle/fra and you want its size to have an upper limit of 10 GB.

Specify the size of the fast recovery area using the following command

ALTER SYSTEM SET DB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST_SIZE = 10G;

Specify the location of the fast recovery area using the following command:

ALTER SYSTEM SET DB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST = '/u02/oracle/fra';

Note: The DB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST_SIZE parameter must be set before the DB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST parameter.