Fast (Flash) Recovery Area and RMAN's CHANNEL DEVICE TYPE DISK FORMAT

I just learned RMAN's CHANNEL DEVICE TYPE DISK FORMAT...

RMAN> CONFIGURE CHANNEL DEVICE TYPE DISK FORMAT '/backup/rman/full_%u_%s_%p';

will override the FRA's setting.

My first Oracle post - manual switching of logfile

This is my first Oracle-related post so bear with me.  I just learned there are two (2) ways to manually make an archive log or switch from one to another: ALTER SYSTEM SWITCH LOGFILE and ALTER SYSTEM ARCHIVE LOG CURRENT.

So what's the difference?  The SWITCH LOGFILE is faster.  It moves to another log file while the archiver process writes in the filesystem.  The ARCHIVE LOG CURRENT waits for the writing to finish before moving to the next redo log.  It says the latter is the best practice.  There are more deeper explanation than this so you know the drill (Google).

Below is the summary to perform the switch.

• The database must be in Archive Mode proper directories are set.
• Get the current redo log - select * from v$log;
• Execute - alter system switch logfile;
• Get the current redo log file again
• Execute - alter system archivelog current;

My test environment

OS: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.5 (Tikanga)

Oracle: Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.1.0 - Production