During recent testing, a datafile from one of our development databases was deleted. At the same time the same datafile was also deleted from the standby database. So this meant that our development primary and standby databases were no longer available.

However Dbvisit came to our rescue, and the functionality we have been recommending to our customers for a number of years now actually saved us! We employed Dbvisit to successfully recreate our primary and standby databases.

We have the following development servers:
Dev servers 1
dbvisit11 – primary database server
dbvisit12 – standby database server for dbvisit11

Dev servers 2
avisit31 – primary database server
avisit32 – standby database server for avisit31

Dev servers 2 are a clone of dev servers 1 with the same databases.
Due to the deletetion of the datafiles, the databases on dbvisit11 and dbvisit12 were gone.

Here is what we did to get the databases back on dbvisit11 and dbvisit12:

  1. Logged onto avisit32 and used dbvisit_setup to automatically create a new standby database on dbvisit12.
  2. Activated the standby database on dbvisit12 to become a new primary database.
  3. Used dbvisit_setup on dbvisit12 to create a new standby database on dbvisit11.
  4. Used graceful switchover to switch the roles between dbvisit12 and dbvisit11.

And so in 4 easy steps we had our databases back on our Dev servers 1: dbvisit11 (primary database) and dbvisit12 (standby database).

It is very rewarding to be able to use our own technology to recover a primary and standby database.