What is a good strategy for making a 'golden' backup for Testing environmnt
Hi,
I need to make a backup of a Test database and keep this particular backup as the 'golden' backup. After the 'golden' backup has been taken, I will hand over the Test database to developers and let them perform testing. After their testing is completed, I will need to restore the Test database back to the 'golden' image. Then I will hand over the database to developers again for their testing. Then after their testing has been completed, I will need to restore back to the 'golden' image again. This process will repeat many times over.
What is the best backup plan for this scenario?
Should I do a hot or cold backup of the Test database and tag = 'golden' ? Is a cold better than a hot in this senario?
And when I restore, do I have to open with resetlogs? I am going to have to restore to 'golden' image many times, so will 'resetlogs' be an issue?
After 'restore', do I need to 'recover' to tag='golden'?
What would be the rman scripts to backup the 'golden' copy and what would be the rman script to 'restore' to the 'golden' image?
One way for me to handle this senario is to shutdown the database, tar all the datafiles, control files, log files, all dump files, spfiles, etc. Then when developers are done, untar the files back to their original locations. Is this a good strategy? Or is using RMAN the better strategy? Please advice. Thank you in advance.