Refreshing or rewinding a broken/unusable virtual PDB

A virtual pluggable database could be broken/unusable if it cannot be operated upon from the Delphix Management such that all Delphix operations involving opening or unplugging of the virtual pluggable database from its container database like Disable, Enable, Refresh and Rewind fail.

A virtual PDB can get into such a state because of (but not limited to):

• Datafile is deleted or gets corrupted

• Datafile is renamed or moved

• Oracle DB instance crashed and archive logs needed to perform recovery are lost/deleted/unavailable.

Using force option

A virtual PDB can be brought out of the bad state by Refreshing or Rewinding it with a force option. The force option is only available in the CLI. The force parameter is part of OracleRefreshParameters and OracleRollbackParameters for the Refresh and Rewind operations respectively. The default value for the force parameter is false. For details on how to use the force option, refer to CLI cookbook: Force refresh/rewind a virtual PDB

Implications of force option

Using the force option with Refresh/Rewind has the following implications:

• A forced Refresh/Rewind cannot be subsequently undone using the ‘Undo Refresh or Rewind’ functionality. A user cannot switch to the timeflow prior to the force Refresh/Rewind using the switchTimeflow API.

• Timeflow before the force Refresh/Rewind will remain in the broken state, however, any snapshots in that timeflow will continue to remain provisionable.

• In the case of Rewind, Delphix may not be able to identify the 'last good point in timeflow' for the vPDB.