Creating and Sizing the Oracle Fast Recovery Area

When creating the fast recovery area, place it on a separate disk from the database binaries and data files. For this example, I am using the C drive because this is on a VM, which is what is available.

The size of your fast recovery will also depend on several factors

Space available at the OS level
Size of your backups
Your backup retention policy

The size and location of the fast recovery area are managed by two parameters: db_recovery_file_dest and db_recovery_file_dest_size. To view the current settings for these parameters, log into your database and execute the command: show parameter reco. If you have not set the parameters, they will both be null.

Creating and Sizing the Oracle Fast Recovery Area size and Location Parameters

You will need to set the db_recovery_file_dest_size before you can set the db_recovery_file_dest. If you try to set the db_recovery_file_dest first, you will get the following error:

alter system set db_recovery_file_dest = 'C:\fast_recovery_area'
Error report -
ORA-02097: parameter cannot be modified because specified value is invalid
ORA-19802: cannot use DB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST without DB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST_SIZE

To set the db_recovery_file_dest and db_recovery_file_dest_size run the following commands.

alter system set db_recovery_file_dest_size=100G;

alter system set db_recovery_file_dest = 'C:\fast_recovery_area';

Creating and Sizing the Oracle Fast Recovery Area Set db_recovery_file_dest

Now, check to see your changes.

Creating and Sizing the Oracle Fast Recovery Area db_recovery_file_dest See Changes

The database does not need to be bounced for the changes to take effect. This can be verified by running the following:

set line 200
col name for a30
col value for a30
col issys_modifiable a30
select name, value, issys_modifiable
from v$parameter
where name like 'db_recovery%';