In addition to using the automatically created OCR backup files, you should also export OCR contents before and after making significant configuration changes, such as adding or deleting nodes from your environment, modifying Oracle Clusterware resources, and upgrading, downgrading or creating a database. Do this by using the ocrconfig -export command, which exports OCR content to a file format.
Caution:
Note the following restrictions for restoring OCR:
The file format generated by ocrconfig -restore is incompatible with the file format generated by ocrconfig -export. The ocrconfig -export and ocrconfig -import commands are compatible. The ocrconfig -manualbackup and ocrconfig -restore commands are compatible. The two file formats are incompatible and must not be interchangeably used.
When exporting OCR, Oracle recommends including "ocr", the cluster name, and the timestamp in the name string. For example:
ocr_mycluster1_20090521_2130_export
Using the ocrconfig -export command also enables you to restore OCR using the -import option if your configuration changes cause errors. For example, if you have configuration problems that you cannot resolve, or if you are unable to restart Oracle Clusterware after such changes, then restore your configuration using the procedure for your platform.
Oracle recommends that you use either automatic or manual backups, and the ocrconfig -restore command instead of the ocrconfig -export and ocrconfig -import commands to restore OCR for the following reasons:
A backup is a consistent snapshot of OCR, whereas an export is not.
Backups are created when the system is online. You must shut down Oracle Clusterware on all nodes in the cluster to get a consistent snapshot using the ocrconfig -export command.
You can inspect a backup using the OCRDUMP utility. You cannot inspect the contents of an export.
You can list backups with the ocrconfig -showbackup command, whereas you must keep track of all generated exports.
This section includes the following topics:
Importing Oracle Cluster Registry Content on Linux or UNIX Systems
Importing Oracle Cluster Registry Content on Windows Systems
Note:
Most configuration changes that you make not only change OCR contents, the configuration changes also cause file and database object creation. Some of these changes are often not restored when you restore OCR. Do not restore OCR as a correction to revert to previous configurations, if some of these configuration changes should fail. This may result in an OCR ___location that has contents that do not match the state of the rest of your system.